The Scottish Question, by James Mitchell

T.C. Smout once wrote that the shadow cast by the Union of 1707 over Scottish history, both backwards and forwards, was a very long one indeed. Whether the Scottish referendum of 18 September 2014 will have a similar impact is one of the questions that James Mitchell explores in his latest book. The final chapter is prospective, and evidently publisher and author view the book mainly as a contribution to a better understanding of the contexts for the current debates on the future of the Union, which probably explains the absence of footnotes. In place of them, a rather sketchy bibliographical essay is included at the end of the book. In so far as it offers a new approach to some fairly well trodden paths, it is less through focusing on the shifting fortunes of Scottish nationalism and its various political incarnations than on how Scotland has related to the rest of the United Kingdom and debates about how it should be governed. As Mitchell declares in his introduction, ‘Our capacity to be blinded by the highs and lows of politics and to ignore the living, vital everyday is astounding. A focus on punctuations at the expense of the general narrative is a mistake’. He certainly does not ignore the ‘punctuations’, but sets them clearly in a broader context of exploring how the Union state has governed and catered for the distinctive interests (perceived and real) of Scotland.

Art · Context (archaeology) · Home rule · Law and economics · Literature · Mistake · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Referendum · Shadow (psychology) · Sociology · State (computer science) · History · Law · Political Systems and Governance · Scottish History and National Identity