0309A

AT THE OUTSET of the 17th century, the British Isles could be depicted as three kingdoms and a province, but by 1700 they were being recast as one kingdom and three provinces. In the aftermath of regal union in 1603, Scots took comfort in the depiction of the multiple kingdoms as British, which effectively countered the traditional hegemonic claims of the English crown. James I, as the founder of the Stuart dynasty, made Great Britain a leading European power and projected his imperial crown through frontier, foreign and colonial policies. When his son Charles I attempted to impose social, economic and religious uniformity throughout the British Isles, the Scots were to the fore in instigating revolution, which, in turn, sought the replacement of regal by confederal union during the 1640s. Oliver Cromwell's emphatic rejection of the Stuart dynasty and confederal union led to the temporary triumph of Greater England during the 1650s. All three kingdoms were formally restored in 1660 but Scotland, like Ireland, effectively continued as a satellite state with parliament clearly subordinated to directives emanating from the court. In the 1660s the Scots had promoted commercial confederation but by the 1670s, when this attracted English support, the debate had largely moved on from closer political union to colonial collaboration, a development given a particular steer by James, Duke of York, who had been dispatched to govern Scotland during the Exclusion Crisis of the early 1680s in England. After he, as James II, was removed from the throne, English hegemony was reasserted, at the behest of Parliament and the ruling ministry, as much as the crown.
   The accomplishment of Anglo-Scottish Union in 1707, which had been denied parliamentary warrant from the Scottish Estates in 1689 and 1702, can be attributed to various influences. Diplomatic brinkmanship, military intimidation and political manipulation on the part of the English ministry of Queen Anne was compounded in Scotland by economic defeatism, financial chicanery and, above all, political ineptitude within the Scottish Estates. Notwithstanding spin-doctoring by William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, who argued that Wales had thrived since its incorporation with England in the 16th century, the Scottish public remained opposed.
   Just as the failed Anglo-lrish Union of 1703 can be seen as the exclusive project of the English interest in Ireland, there is a temptation to view the successful Anglo-Scottish Union in 1706-7 not as an inclusive British project but as insider-dealing by politicians intent on acting as the English interest in Scotland. On the one hand, patronage and other political influence were exercised to shore up support for Union. On the other hand, issues of principle not the sole preserve of the opponents of Union. The vote was won decisively in the Scottish Estates through the managerial sophistication of James, Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, and his associates in the Court Party.
   The realities of British state formation were expressed appositely on May 9th, 1707. Eight days after the treaty became operative, Governor Handasyd of Jamaica was notified by the Council of Trade and Plantations, �that Scotchmen' were now to be looked upon 'as Englishmen to all intents and purposes whatsoever�.
   Britain was now a grand imperial construct of global potential. The sea, as much as the land, gave territorial integrity and frontier definition to the British Isles. The maritime environment shaped trading patterns eastwards into continental Europe, the Mediterranean and the Levant, and, at the same time, conditioned the transatlantic expansion of colonialism westward, first to Ireland and then to North America and the Caribbean. Sea-travel by boat remained the most important mode of communication, not just in the fjord-contoured Celtic peripheries, but in linking communities in Scotland and northern England into global entrepots. From Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Newcastle, Amsterdam and Rotterdam were as accessible as London.
   The development of navigable inland waterways, no less than improved roads, was vital to the agricultural transformation and growing commercial diversity that was taking hold, most notably in southeast England. Crop rotation and mixed husbandry in East Anglia was complimented by the expanded specialisms in market-gardening and hop-growing in Kent and the Thames Valley. The cloth trade, traditionally dominated by London and Norwich, was now sustaining the expansion of urban centres from the Midlands to the south coast. Urbanisation, in turn, fuelled the expansion of coal mining from south Wales, through Lancashire and Tyne and Wear, to the Firth of Forth, and iron-smelting flourished in the Forest of Dean and south Yorkshire.
   The 'little ice age' of the 1690s made sustainable farming in upland northern districts more marginal, but it also stimulated reclamation and drainage in the hinterland of more fertile districts throughout the British Isles. Climatic changes did not affect the relative demographic stability of England and Wales, where population had risen from an estimated 4.4 million around 1600 to an estimated 5.4 million in 1700. Scotland grew more modestly, from around 800,000 to no more than 1.2 million, but this reflects a catastrophic famine that endured for five years from 1695. Having been a net exporter of grain for most of the 17th century, Scotland was unprepared for dearth. Nonetheless, agricultural productivity recovered promptly in the decade following 1700.
   Ireland's population, though, is believed to have doubled from 1.4 million around 1600 to about 2.8 million at the outset of the 18th century. However, this was partly the result of considerable emigration from England and Scotland that continued, despite the political disruptions of civil wars and conquest in mid-century, from the plantation of Ulster in 1608 through to the Scottish famine of the 1690s.
Farm consolidation, which promoted population removal and relocation, was particularly marked in England before the 1640s and had extended into Wales, Ireland and throughout Scotland, including the Highlands, by the 1680s. While the growth of villages as centres for agricultural labour and the domestic pursuit of textile manufacturing remained most pronounced in England, local markets based on burgeoning nucleated settlements proliferated.
   In a predominantly agrarian society, seasonal employment patterns, poverty and vagrancy were perennial problems. The drift into petty crime was an urban phenomenon, while highwaymen attained notoriety along the main roads from London to the north. In rural Ireland, as in the Scottish Highlands, communal traditions of banditry persisted. Piracy found global opportunities for commercial gain. One notorious pirate, William Kidd, commenced his seafaring career in his home port of Dundee, and was sailing as a legitimate privateer against the French in the West Indies and off the coast of Africa by 1689. He be-came an established sea captain and ship owner in New York, and in 1695 received a royal commission to apprehend pirates molesting East India Company vessels. But from his base at Madagascar, Kidd turned to piracy and was caught while returning to New York. Shipped prisoner to London and tried for murder and five charges of piracy at the Old Bailey, he was hanged in 1701.

    Crime, however, was also the product of growing prosperity as a traditional economy developed into a commercialised one. This shift, which proceeded at diverse rates throughout the British Isles, was given a major boost by the emergence of London as an imperial entrepot as well as Europe's foremost city. Its population, of around 575,000 by 1700, was far in excess of the 354,000 that inhabited the whole of Wales. London's development as the commercial, financial and artistic centre of the Augustan Age provided Britain's major stimulus to the emergence of a consumer society. The need to feed this expanding population stimulated the development of the droving trades in sheep and cattle. Livestock from the Highlands and Borders of Scotland, as from Wales, were fattened up in the pastures of the home counties before being slaughtered for the London market. The money earned from droving supported the expansion of marginal settlements in upland areas - despite the climatic change - as farmers now had the means to purchase grain rather than having to rely on their own crops.
More in Part B....