How can Scotland become the majority power in the British Isles instead of England? How would that affect history?
The Failure of England
- Thread starter Hannibal.Caesar
- Start date
Keenir
Banned
you mean other than Cromwell bankrupting England without the Republic ever ending?
hm
it would be the Scots that flood their royal blood with German mistresses, while the pure-er--blooded English royalty dominate the culinary and (globally) the culture of the entire world...so much so that, even centuries later, people would write books entitled How The English Saved Civilization and How the English Made The Modern World.
James VI/I moves the royal court to Scotland. Nova Scotia stretches from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Hudson River.
the black plague hits England particularly hard, but due to quarantine and other measures Scotland remains (relatively) unscathed. after the Plague dies down, England is extremely depopulated, and Scottish settlers began trickling down to settle in the empty land. Over centuries Scotland becomes the more populous country on the Isles, keeping England as a satellite while Scotland colonizes the new world.
I'm guessing that here you have to mean post dark-ages PODs when there was a 'England' and a 'Scotland'.
I'd think you would have to reunite Northumbria with Scotland at least even if its by Scotland's doing this time rather then Northumbrian.
I hope this isn't built on assumptions of Scotland being special though.
Scotland is really just the anglo-saxon kingdom which escaped unification and has a bunch of foreign mountain men in its north.
I'd think you would have to reunite Northumbria with Scotland at least even if its by Scotland's doing this time rather then Northumbrian.
I hope this isn't built on assumptions of Scotland being special though.
Scotland is really just the anglo-saxon kingdom which escaped unification and has a bunch of foreign mountain men in its north.
Not so. The early Scottish kingdom was based on Gaelic culture, not on Anglo-Saxon. It was only from the time of Malcolm III (1060s-70s) that English culture became at all significant, and even then it took a couple of centuries for Scotland to become majority Anglophone. The Saxon culture was also brought into Scotland in tandem with Norman culture, as a deliberate tactic of the House of Canmore to reduce influence from the Gaelic north by focusing the kingdom more on Lothian and the border region.
And when was Northumbria ever united with Scotland in the first place?
As for the POD, I was going to suggest that a good one would be if the Gododdin had never been established as a Roman vassal state in Lothian. This would have allowed early Pictish domination of southern Scotland, and once Roman Britain declined, of Northumberland as well.
But if it had to be after the Scottish and English kingdoms existed, that's a pretty small window. I'd say from the 900s to the 1290s. The best POD that I can see would be the Battle of the Standard in 1138. If David wins a decisive victory, and establishes real control over northern England, he may be able to permanently detach the territory north of the Tees. Subsequent good luck in wars might allow Yorkshire and Lancashire to be taken.
Another POD could come in the 900s, although here the problem is that the Scots kingdom is focused too far north, and could exert no real control over the area from Forth to Tees. The last opportunity would be in the mid-13th century, because from the 1290s national identity is arguably too developed to allow easy assimilation of northern England into a Scottish kingdom.
Really, it's a difficult POD to engineer, and requires some extraordinary luck - continued civil wars in England, and good military organisation and leadership in Scotland. For a slightly odder POD, how about if the Danes conquered Scotland instead of northern England, and established a powerful state which subsequently took over Northumbria and Mercia?
I had this (unrelated) idea while researching This Fair Conjunction for the Reformation to backfire on Henry, shoving the country into a civil war between the Catholic North and the Anglican South. If James V could exploit this somehow then we could end up with a strong (in comparison) Scotland, a rump Kingdom of England and a neutral zone of Lordships in the North. As much as it goes against my Anglophilia, I have to admit that I find that idea strangely a-
-ppealing. What did you think I was going to say?
-ppealing. What did you think I was going to say?
And a few years later the puppet regime rises up and throws off the Scots.
Its impossible without a great swathe of 'England' becoming 'Scotland'. You can't beat geography. The south of England is always going to have more people than Scotland. Due to its position relative to the continent it is likely to be richer unless the continent is a complete mess.
I suppose you could try a *scouring of the south*, but such would probably have to be done every few generations to keep the region in line.
You can try and balkanise 'England' but the resulting kingdoms etc would have to be very small if they are to not be a threat to Scotland.
Its impossible without a great swathe of 'England' becoming 'Scotland'. You can't beat geography. The south of England is always going to have more people than Scotland. Due to its position relative to the continent it is likely to be richer unless the continent is a complete mess.
I suppose you could try a *scouring of the south*, but such would probably have to be done every few generations to keep the region in line.
You can try and balkanise 'England' but the resulting kingdoms etc would have to be very small if they are to not be a threat to Scotland.
So something like my idea of the bickering Lordships in the North? And don't imagine that Scotland would be at it alone, since France would be very interested in keeping England as weak as possible.
In a sense, you may be right, since Scotland would never be able to devote its full attention to any colonisation schemes for fear of the English rising again.
If you can somehow prevent/greatly slow the unification of the various anglo-saxon kingdoms?
67th Tigers
Banned
The Republic was an economic golden time, masses of money moved into the United Republic due to its religious tolerance (especially Jewish and Muslim money) and the Republic boomed. Cromwell switched the English course from being just another European kingdom to aping, and overtaking the Dutch Republic and the creation of the First Empire.
Wait, the Republic was a time of religious tolerance? I really need to find out more about Cromwellian England.
67th Tigers
Banned
The first (legal) synagogue and mosque were opened in England under Cromwell, it was a time of great religious freedom for everyone bar the Catholics.
However, the anti-Catholicism has a lot to do with Charles II's attempt to rally the Catholic population of the three kingdoms into revolt rather than bigotry. I can go to wikipedia now and read the Cromwell hated all Catholics, which is a simple repetition of 1650's propaganda and has been shown to have no basis in truth. Cromwell was a liberal who believed in tolerating (if not approving) of all other faiths and denominations.
But even if you have a bickering north (something which is unlikely to last indefinately) you will still have the fact that southern England will be superior to Scotland with regards to economy, population and so on.
Even if you try and keep some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, I would be tempted to say some of these would match Scotland and certainly an alliance of 2-3 would carry more weight.
Also the French won't care one bit about 'England'. They have far bigger fish to fry on the continent. So while they would like 'England' to be weak, they are unlikely to be expending substantial resources on it.
Scotland will have to keep 'England' down alone and she simply doesn't have the resources to accomplish this in anything but the immediate-short term.
67th Tigers
Banned
Gaelic? They were a Norse culture, the same as the Normans, while Northumbria was a Danish/ North German culture....
Perhaps, if possible, Scotland, not England, could colonize Ireland. This would certainly be troublesome, but they might not mind being ruled by other Celts as much. The position in Ireland would allow for reinforcements from there to bolster the Scottish Army, among other things. I do not know how plausible this is though.
Early Scotland wasn't 'Scotland' at all though. It was as you say gaelic, firmly in the north. The majority of Scotland's power and most of its population are in the lowlands.
Yeah in times past this wasn't so great a issue due to less people all around and other factors but if/when Scotland developes into a prosperous nation the Northumbrian cultured lowlands will win out.
At Northumbria's height it ruled the lowlands.
That's how so much of 'Scottish culture' is mostly just a variation of northern English.
The best analogy for Scotlands actual situation is Prussia- the English (or Anglish rather) stole everything off them including their name.