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5 Episodes 2009 - 2009
Episode 1
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.
Episode 2
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.
Episode 3
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.
Episode 4
1792 brought France and soon the continent its socio-political revolution, Scotland new sheep breeds which made the greedy Highland chiefs, by now London-based aristocrats, expel the farming clansmen to coastal crofts, which thrive on the new crop potatoes until the blight. Sir Walter Scott's novels revived Scotland's romantic feudal past now it was truly over. Hoping to stop class struggle, which failed as Radicals's attempted revolution, Scott invented the 'tartan traditions' for king George IV's royal visit to Scotland. But the emancipatory ideas would still win the crucial aspiration, electoral reform.
Episode 5
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.