Download or read book A Mighty Fleet and the King s Power written by Tim Clarkson and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2023-04-06 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated in the middle of the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man is like a stepping-stone between the lands that surround it. In medieval times, it played an important role in the histories of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales. This book explores the first part of that turbulent era, tracing the story of the Isle of Man from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. It looks at the ways in which various peoples – Britons, Scots, Irish, English and Scandinavians – influenced events in Man over a period of more than 800 years. A large portion of the book is concerned with the Vikings, a group whose legacy – in place names, old burial mounds and finely carved stones – is such a vivid element in the Manx landscape today.
Download or read book Clearance and Improvement written by Tom M. Devine and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social and economic changes included an increase in production of food and raw materials, in turn sustaining the remarkable growth of towns and cities over this period. However, in the folk memory of Scotland the social and cultural costs of the revolution loom much larger: the loss of land for many thousands of families; the rise of individualism and the decline of neighborhood; the death of old rural societies which had formed Scotland's character for many generations. The drama and tragedy of Highland history during this period have attracted many authors, whereas the Lowland experience, that of the majority of Scots, hardly any. This book attempts to redress that balance, and in so doing examines why this extraordinary era, inextricably associated with failure, famine and clearance in Gaeldom, is remembered as one of 'improvements' in the Lowlands, where the folk memory of dispossession, if it ever existed, is long lost in collective amnesia. In so doing, Devine addresses an issue which goes right to the heart of the nation's past.
Download or read book Cromwell Against the Scots written by John D. Grainger and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After an introduction establishing Cromwell's war against the Scots from July 1650 to May 1652, this book discusses Charles' landing and Fairfax's resignation as commander-in-chief of the English Republican Army, both events occurred on the same day. It then addresses the causes of the war, Charles II's landing in Northern Scotland from the Continent. The story continues chronologically, from Cromwell's invasion of Scotland, through the Battle of Dunbar, and the slow establishment of the king's power over the Scottish government. The end came with the fall of the last of the Scottish castles, Dunnottar, to English conquest. The Scots enjoyed a distinct military recovery after the Dunbar defeat, but their aims and those of the king were always at cross purposes: the king was intent on the invasion of England, the Scots on resistance to English conquest. Finally, Cromwell's manoeuvres in the summer of 1651, and the English victory at Inverkeithing, allowed the king to invade England. This ended in another Scots defeat at Worcester. The removal of the Scots Army to England meanwhile allowed the English under Monck to complete their conquest of Scotland. Throughout, the political dimension, particularly in Scotland, is kept in view. At the end, the author comments on the relevance of these events to the present Scottish situation.
Download or read book The Rough Wooings written by Marcus Merriman and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2000-12-27 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'Rough Wooings', fought by major figures of sixteenth-century Europe for the hand of the young Mary Queen of Scots, were wars as intense, wide-ranging and devastating as the wars of the three Edwards which ravaged fourteenth-century Scotland. But the Wooings were wars of independence as well. As the kings of England and France vied to control the bestowing of Mary's hand in marriage, so Scotland itself strove to remain free of them. And Scotland won, although it was a close-run thing. The politics and international diplomacy involved were as sophisticated and complex as the century provides; the warfare and political literature as revolutionary and modern as for any part of Europe. Protestant zealots were forged on its anvil; massive navies ranged the North Sea; Italian military technology was brought to bear. All for one of the most fascinating queens in history. This is the story of her beginning, a rich and vibrant epic involving many of the major figures of early modern history: Henry VIII of England, François I and Henri II of France bestride the canvas, but even they cannot obscure the beguiling figure of the young Mary Queen of Scots.
Download or read book Kingship and the Commonweal written by Roger A. Mason and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major collection of essays brings together in readily accessible form the fruits of research into the political thought and culture of Renaissance and Reformation Scotland. As a collection, it ranges from detailed studies of the writings of figures of international standing, such as John Mair, John Knox, George Buchanan and King James VI and I, to more discursive explorations of the changing self-perceptions of the Scottish political community during an era of dramatic political, cultural and religious upheaval. Each essay is self-contained, making its own contribution to a specific area of research. All are variations on the crucial theme of kingship and the commonweal, analysing from a variety of perspectives the way in which the changing nature of the relationship between the Scottish crown and the Scottish people was perceived and articulated by contemporaries. At once focused and ranging, this important collection illuminates in original and innovative ways how a traditionally conservative political community came to terms not only with the cultural influences emanating from Renaissance Europe, but with the revolutionary impact of the Reformation, the constitutional crisis of the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, and the increasing likelihood and eventual reality of union with England.
Download or read book Columba written by Tim Clarkson and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2012-09-28 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: St Columba is one of the most important figures in the early history of the British Isles. A native of Donegal and a nobleman of royal ancestry, his outstanding religious career spanned both sides of the Irish Sea. On the Scottish island of Iona he founded his principal monastery where he served as abbot until his death in AD 597. Iona eventually became the centre of a powerful federation of monasteries that preserved a memory of Columba and nurtured the saintly cult that grew around him. Drawing on contemporary sources – particularly the writings of Adomnán, abbot of Iona from 679 to 704 – and the latest modern research, this book traces Columba's achievements and legacy. It examines his roles as abbot, scholar and missionary as well as his involvement in the affairs of kings in both Ireland and northern Britain.
Download or read book From an Antique Land written by Anne MacLeod and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at visual images as an alternative and undervalued source of evidence for ideas about the Scottish Gaidhealtachd in the period 1700 - 1880. Illustrated with 100 plates, it brings together many little known and previously unrelated images. Addressing the textual bias inherent in Scottish historical studies, the book examines a broad range of maps, plans, paintings, drawings, sketches and printed images, arguing that the concept of antiquity was the single most powerful influence driving the visual representation of the Highlands and Islands from 1700 to 1880, and indeed beyond. Successive chapters look at archaeological, ethnological and geological motives for visualising the Highlands, and at the bias in favour of antiquity which resulted from the spread of these intellectual influences into the fine arts. The book concludes that the shadow of time which hallmarked visual representations of the region resulted in a preservationist mentality which has had powerful repercussions for approaches to Highland issues down to the present day. The book will appeal to historians, art historians, cultural geographers, and the general reader interested in Highland history and culture.
Download or read book The Wild Black Region written by David Taylor and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the fascinating story of Badenoch, a forgotten region in accounts of Scottish history. Situated in the heart of the Highlands and with its own distinct historic and geographic identity, Badenoch was in the throes of dramatic change in the post-Culloden decades. This ground-breaking study reveals some radical differences from trends across the rest of the Highlands. Foremost was the role of the indigenous entrepreneurial tacksmen in driving the rapidly growing commercial economy as cattle graziers, drovers and agricultural improvers, inevitably provoking confrontation with the absentee and ostentatious Dukes of Gordon. Meanwhile, the common people still operated within a subsistence farming economy heavily dependent on a surprisingly sophisticated use of their mountain environment. Though suffering great hardship, they too were quick to exploit any potential commercial opportunities. Economic forces, social ambition and post-Culloden legislation created intolerable pressures within the old clan hierarchy, as Duke, tacksman and erstwhile clansman tried to forge their individual - and often irreconcilable - destinies in a rapidly changing world. In doing so, all were increasingly drawn into the wider, and often lucrative, dimensions of British state and empire.
Download or read book Jordan Fantosme s Chronicle written by Ronald Carlyle Johnston and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2018-06-07 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jordan Fantosme was a twelfth-century cleric, teacher and poet, possibly a member of the royal or baronial court, writing for King Henry II. His Chronicle describes some of the events and actions of the civil war between Henry II and his eldest son Henry, the 'Young King', during 1173 and 1174. The main focus of the text, including most of Fantosme's explicitly eyewitness accounts, is on the fighting in Northumberland, where King William I of Scotland, in support of the Young King, broke off ties with Henry II and invaded the north of England. Fantosme's vivid portrayal of the skirmish outside Alnwick, in which King William the Lion was captured, is one of the most memorable parts of this extraordinary account. Fantosme's reputation was that of a naïve and trustworthy reporter, and his Chronicle is regarded as a reliable source, but it is a much more elegant and sophisticated text than originally thought. In his introduction to this translation of the Anglo-Norman text, R. C. Johnston discusses the author's uncertain identity, whether he was an eyewitness to events of the war and problems with the manuscripts. He also reassesses the literary and aesthetic value of the Chronicle, revealing Fantosme as a highly competent and talented story-teller capable of manipulating episodes for stylistic reasons.
Download or read book Image and Identity written by Dauvit Broun and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume looks at the way that perceptions of Scottish identity have changed through the centuries, from early medieval to modern times. 'The idea of Scotland as a single country, corresponding to the realm of the king of Scots, and of the Scots as all the kingdom's inhabitants, may only have taken root during the 13th century.' – Dauvit Broun 'The 18th century is marked by a period of often competing Scottish identities, and the emergence of the British state as a complicating factor in the equation.' – R. J. Finlay 'Scottish identity has never been a fixed, immutable idea, whether held in the head or in the gut . . . some of the most enduring myths of Scotland's Protestant identity were, like Ireland's Catholic identity, creations of the 19th century: they included Jenny Geddes as a Protestant Dame Scotia, throwing a stool into the works of an Anglican-style church, and the Magdalen Chapel in Edinburgh, the home of a staunchly Catholic graft guild throughout much of the 1560s becoming the "workshop of the Reformation" in John Knox's time.' – Michael Lynch
Download or read book Labour in Glasgow 1896 1936 written by J.J. Smyth and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2000-12-21 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first single overview of Labour's electoral progress in Glasgow from its hesitant steps in the shadow of Liberalism to the moment it became the dominant party in the city in parliamentary and municipal politics. The unfolding narrative is not one of uninterrupted progress but a more complex story of partial breakthroughs and setbacks. Labour's electoral challenge is detailed over forty years and focuses on local elections more than parliamentary. This allows a broader and fuller picture to be presented rather than the narrower emphasis on the 'Red Clydeside' period of the Great War and immediately after. The Great War was the critical turning point. After 1918 Labour emerged from being a permanent minority to a position where it could genuinely seek to present itself as the major political voice in Glasgow. The nature of this transformation is identified as both the radicalising effect of the war itself and the attendant changes this provoked in Labour's attitude to its actual and potential constituency. Unlike other studies of the franchise system, the view expressed here is that the franchise was biased against the working class and this operated against Labour. However, Labour was effectively handicapped by its own ambivalence towards complete democracy, fuelled by fear of the poor and belief in the reactionary tendencies of the existing female local electorate. While the war resolved the franchise issue for Labour, in Glasgow the Party's own mobilisation over housing provided the means to appeal to the new female electorate.
Download or read book Glencoe and the End of the Highland War written by Paul Hopkins and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Hopkins, an authority on early Jacobitism, sets the Massacre of Glencoe in its true context. The book describes the tensions in the Highlands between the Restoration and the End of the Revolution and the influence on the Highlands of national politics. Besides filling a blank in our knowledge of the Highlands in the decade following the Massacre, the book transforms our perspective on lowlands politics by showing that the Inquiry was part of a secret patriotic campaign to break the aristocracy's political stranglehold and increase the Scottish parliament's powers.
Download or read book Bishops and Covenanters written by Ann Shukman and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2012-10-15 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the young Protestant monarch William of Orange fail to make his mark on Scotland? How did a particularly hard-line 'Protester' branch of Presbyterianism (the last off-shoot of the Convenanting movement) become the established Church in Scotland? And how did it come about that Scotland suffered a kind of 'cultural revolution' after the Williamite revolution, nipping in the bud the proto-Enlightenment? This book reviews the political events that led to the abolition of episcopacy in 1689 and with it the concerted attack on the parish clergy. It explores for the first time the background and influences that led to the brutal 'rabbling of the curates' in south-west Scotland. It explores the mind-set of the notorious Covenanting tract Naphtali (1667), and of its author Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees, who was the author of the Act establishing hard-line Presbyterianism in 1690, and became Lord Advocate of Scotland in 1692. The purges of the universities after the 1690 Act led to a hardening of attitudes, and the on-going purging of the parishes led ultimately to the emptying of two-thirds of all the parishes of Scotland. The book suggests how these events contributed to the notion of 'King William's ill years'.
Download or read book Alexander III 1249 1286 written by Norman H. Reid and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year 2019 Presiding over an age of relative peace and prosperity, Alexander III represented the zenith of Scottish medieval kingship. The events which followed his early and unexpected death plunged Scotland into turmoil, and into a period of warfare and internal decline which almost brought about the demise of the Scottish state. This study fills a serious gap in the historiography of medieval Scotland. For many decades, even centuries, Scotland's medieval kingship has been regarded as a close likeness of the English monarchy, having been 'modernised' in that image by the twelfth- and thirteenth-century kings, who had close relationships with their southern counterparts. Recent research has cast doubt on that view, and this examination of Alexander III's reign is based on a view of Scottish kingship which depends on much firmer continuity with its earlier, celtic past. It challenges accepted truth, revealing that the nature of state and government, and the relationships between ruler and subject, were quite different from the previous 'received view'. On the cusp of a dynastic catastrophe which led to economic and political disaster, Alexander III's reign captures a snapshot of Scotland at the end of a period of sustained peace and development: a view of the medieval state as it really was.
Download or read book She is But a Woman written by Fiona Anne Downie and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2006-10-23 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She is but a Woman, the first in-depth study of medieval Scottish queens, investigates the relationship between gender and power in the medieval Scottish court by exploring the art of queenship as practised by Joan Beaufort and Mary of Guelders, queens of James I and James II. These women were excluded from authority but clearly possessed power as wives and mothers of kings. They established and cultivated relationships with members of the court, learned about Scottish political life and supported their husbands in the business of government. The book examines for the first time the arrivals of Joan and Mary in Scotland, their social and political status, their relationships with their husbands and families, and their roles in international diplomacy. This modern re-evaluation of the role and power of the medieval queen is a thematic exploration rather than a biographical study. It situates the experiences of Joan and Mary within a broader European context and provides a new perspective on Scotland's political, social and cultural links with Europe in the fifteenth century.
Download or read book Women in Scotland c 1100 c 1750 written by Elizabeth L. Ewan and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 1999-11-16 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays addresses women in Scotland in the medieval and early modem period, drawing on archival sources from Court of Session records to Middle Scots poetry. The editors argue persuasively that it is important to know about Scotswomen from all social levels. The book includes a time line and introductory bibliographical essay. The twenty essays in the collection are arranged under the themes of religion, literature, legal history, the economy, politics and the family. They demonstrate the connections between Scottish women's experience and those in England and the continent, as well as highlighting what was unique for the history of Scottish women. Through this comprehensive review of the feminine situation during more than six hundred years of Scottish history, the reader will discover how women really lived and what they really thought, whatever their place in society.
Download or read book The Scottish Empire written by Michael Fry and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2002-02-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of Michael Fry's remarkable book charts the involvement of the Scots in the British empire from its earliest days to the end of the twentieth century. It is a tale of dramatic extremes and craggy characters and of a huge range of concerns - from education, evangelism and philanthropy to spying, swindling and drug running. Stories of Scottish regiments on the rampage, cannibalism and other atrocities are contrasted with the deeds of heroic pioneers such as David Livingstone and Mary Slessor. Above all it tells how the British empire came to be dominated and run by the Scots, and how it truly became a Scottish empire. As the empire transformed Scotland beyond recognition, so was the Empire shaped by the Scots - a remarkable achievement from the population of so small a country, which was itself neither nation nor fully province, neither fully colonizer nor fully colonized. Michael Fry's energetic and colourful account is one of the classics of modern Scottish history.
