Top Scotland Resources

Scotland ( Alba in Scottish Gaelic and sometimes known also as Caledonia) is a country or nation and former independent kingdom of northwest Europe, and one of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Scotland has a land boundary with England on the island of Great Britain and is otherwise bounded by seas and oceans.

The Parliament is elected with a Proportional Representation electoral system, namely, the Additional Members System. This is unlike Westminster which is still elected by the First Past the Post method. It is elected every four years and contains 129 members (referred to as MSPs).

Until 1832 Scottish politics remained very much in the control of landowners in the country, and of small cliques of merchants in the burghs. However by 1885 around 50% of the male population had the vote, the secret ballot had become established, and the modern political era had started.

Most Scottish industry and commerce is concentrated in a few large cities on the waterways of the central lowlands. Edinburgh, on the Firth of Forth, is a cultural centre, the capital of Scotland, and one of the the top financial centres in Europe. Glasgow, one of the largest cities in the UK, lies on the Clyde; it is Scotland's leading seaport and was once a centre of shipbuilding and it supports numerous light industries. Although heavy industry has declined, the high-technology Silicon Glen corridor has developed between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Tourism is also very important.

The written history of Scotland largely begins with the coming of the Roman empire to Britain. Although the pre-Roman inhabitants occasionally used writing for commemorative purpose, these societies favoured a strong oral history. With the loss of the druidic tradition (due to war, famine, and particularly the proscriptions of later Christian missionaries), the people forgot much of this lore. The only surviving pre-Roman account of Scotland originated with the Greek Pytheas of Massalia who circumnavigated the British islands (which he called PretThe British Saint Ninian conducted the first Christian mission in Scotland. From his base, the Candida Casa (present-day Whithorn) on the Solway Firth, he spread the faith in the south and east of Scotland and in the north of England. However, according to the writings of Saint Patrick and Saint Columba, the Picts appear to have renounced Christianity in the century between Ninian's death (432) and the arrival of Saint Columba in 563. The reason is not known. The Gaels re-introduced Christianity into Pictish Scotland, gradually pushing out worship of the older Celtic gods. The most famous evangelist of that period, Saint Columba, came to Scotland in 563 and settled on the island of Iona. Some consider his (possibly apocryphal) conversion of the Pictish King Brude the turning point in the Christianization of Scotland.

From 1652 to 1658, Scotland formed an integral part of the Puritan-governed Commonwealth, under English control but gaining equal trading rights. Upon its collapse, nominal independence returned with the restoration of Charles II to the throne. Scotland regained its parliament, but the English Navigation Acts prevented the Scots from sharing its commercial success to escape impoverishment. A formal frontier between the two countries was re-established, with customs duties which, while they protected Scottish cloth industries from cheap English imports, also denied access to English markets for Scottish cattle on the hoof or Scottish linens (Braudel 1984 p 370).

In 1603, the Scottish King James VI inherited the throne of England, and became James I of England. James moved to London and only returned to Scotland once. In 1707, the Scottish and English Parliaments signed the Treaty of Union, which was deeply unpopular in Scotland, as it had been negotiating from a position of economic weakness and suffering from English tariffs. Implementing the treaty involved dissolving both the English and the Scottish Parliaments, and transferring all their powers to a new Parliament sitting in London which then became the Parliament of the United Kingdom. A customs and monetary union also took place.