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19 December 2009
Episode #2.5
In the 20th century, Scotland's old...
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In the 20th century, Scotland's old industry decayed even worse then England's. After the Great War arms effort, this meant low wages, high unemployment, dependency on British aid. Various opinions conflicted whether Scotland should rely on English solidarity, strive for full independence or accept an in-between autonomous status, known as Devolution. The last won out in the end, after the discovery of North Sea oil in the 'Scottish' part of UK territorial waters.
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08 December 2009
The Price of Progress
The 1764 Jacobite defeat at Culloden...
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The 1764 Jacobite defeat at Culloden left Scotland divided and bankrupt. A Scottish diaspora throughout the colonial British empire (e.g. Culloden plantation on Jamaica), including Jacobite exilees, played a key part in building a rich, confident Scotland. Instead of fatal religious fanaticism, enlightened capitalist modernity was successfully adopted in science, overseas commerce, industry and society by self-made Scots, as studied by Adam Smith. Glasgow became their leading, opulent merchant port city, exploiting the colonies. Its small rich elite owning everything and wretched masses soon awoke literate protest against inequality at home and merciless slavery. Both helped sparkle the American Revolution.
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01 December 2009
Lets Pretend
Fleeing the usurper William of...
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Fleeing the usurper William of Orange, toppled king James II Stuart resided in Louis XIV's grand spare palace St.Germain-des-Prés, with a Jacobite court in exile. William wanted war on Catholic France, so he granted parliament a liberal regime. Scotland was ignored, in famine because of the war and denied the English colonial trade until William Patterson founded the Royal Bank - and trading Company of Scotland, which made a quarter of the country's sparse cash vaporize in the Panamanian Darien colony. Effectively paying off the impoverished nobles and promising religious and other freedoms enables queen Anne, succeeded to William after a fatal fall, to 'bribe' the Union treaty in the early 1500s. Louis's fleet would fail to bring the Stuarts in exile on planned invasions of Scotland, and after 13 years a long peace was signed. Impopular taxes stirred rebellion against the union anyhow, but even when dashing 'bonnie prince Charles, heir to James III, acted upon it without waiting for the French, his initial success was wasted by a war council already near London, instead the defeat at Culloden reduced the Jacobite pretenders to specters, while the Hanoverians who succeeded to Anne established the union to last.
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24 November 2009
Gods Chosen People
In 1633, Charles I Stuart, a Catholic...
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In 1633, Charles I Stuart, a Catholic at heart, turned his belated royal entry in Scotland into a disaster by imposing a more 'lavish' Anglican style on its native, staunchly austere protestant Presbyterian 'kirk' (church). It's the prelude to a series of bitter, at times bloody conflicts. Key events include the 1638 the National Covenant, the 1640 war, the 1642 Scottish part in the English civil war. Similar religious strife occurred in the reigns of Charles II, James II, open Catholics in continental exile, and the protestant challenger, the Dutch usurper William of Orange, consort of Queen Mary.
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31 January 2009
Project Britain
At Scottish king James V's 1542...
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At Scottish king James V's 1542 death, his infant heiress Mary was coveted as a bride by Henry VIII to avoid his Anglican England being invaded by Catholic enemies from the north. Despite a treaty signed by nobles and an English invasion, her guardians got her exiled to France to the glorious Loire chateaus court. There she is betrothed to King Henri's son, dauphin Fran?ois - fourth in line for the English throne, (to hope for a Franco-British Catholic empire), but Henry's illegitimate daughter Elisabeth succeeds. Francois II's fatal ear infection left Mary a widowed dowager. Scotland turns Puritan protestant and therefore against Catholic Mary, who yet returns and charms her way into the nobles' favor by making her faith private. She weds English playboy Henry Darnley, who gives her an heir but is denied royal power and murdered, although by whom is unclear. After her second marriage the nobles force Mary to abdicate, Elisabeth imprisons her after an escape. Infant James is raised by Knoxite Buchanan, who doesn't spare his behind to instill protestantism and people's rights. After incarceration for being influenced by Catholic 'French' cousin Esme Stuart, James escapes, raises an army and seizes absolute power. James reigns as a skillful Machiavellian, survives the barren Virgin Queen and expects to subdue Westminster parliament, but only starts another century of Anglo-Scottish clashing, now within a semi-united Britain.
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