In 1707, the kingdom of Scotland forged a treaty, the Treaty of Union, with the kingdom of England to form Great Britain. Why? Why did it do this?
We were an independent country. We had been since William Wallace and Robert the Bruce ejected the English invaders of Edward Longshanks and his son. But for hundreds of year before the English invaded, we were an independent nation, one of the oldest in the whole of Europe. So why, 400 years after the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, did we suddenly just give it up?
I know you’re busy, so TL;DR..
Actually, we sold our independence. There was no glorious joining of two countries into one. There was no joyous coming together. There is no ‘precious’ Union. The only thing precious was our own, hard-won independence being torn from us by a country intent on accomplishing by any means what Edward Longshanks couldn’t – to keep Scotland in the iron grip of England, permanently and forever.
Aided and abetted by our greedy aristocracy, who took English bribes without question in returning for passing the Act of Union in 1707, our independence, our nationhood, our very country, was bought and sold for English gold. And if they didn’t sell, well, there was an army camped on our border just waiting to pummel us into submission.
There never was a glorious and joyous coming together of Scotland and England. Instead, Scotland was shackled to England to create a ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’, a UK that was – and still is – firmly under England’s control.
This is no precious Union.