Countries Histories

Anniversaire: 11/08/1986

Here, we can speak about countries and their Histories....

So, I start with, of course, my dear Scotland...

Scotland (Gaelic: Alba) is a nation in northwest Europe and one of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom. It occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain and shares a land border to the south with England. It is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. Apart from the mainland, Scotland consists of over 790 islands.
Edinburgh, the country's capital and second largest city, is one of Europe's largest financial centres.Scotland's largest city is Glasgow. Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union.
The Kingdom of Scotland was an independent state until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union resulted in a union with the Kingdom of England to create the Kingdom of Great Britain.Scotland's legal system continues to be separate from those of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland; and Scotland still constitutes a discrete jurisdiction in public and in private law.The continued independence of Scots law, the Scottish education system, and the Church of Scotland have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and Scottish national identity since the Union. However, Scotland is no longer a separate sovereign state and does not have independent membership of either the United Nations or the European Union.

History with more details:

Repeated glaciations, which covered the entire land-mass of modern Scotland, have destroyed any traces of human habitation before the mesolithic period. It is believed that the first post-glacial group of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 10,000 years ago, as the ice sheet retreated after the last ice age. Groups of settlers began building the first permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. A site from this period is the well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the Mainland of Orkney.
The written history of Scotland began with the arrival of the Roman Empire in southern and central Great Britain, when the Romans occupied what is now England and Wales. Roman occupation of Scotland was a series of brief interludes. In 83/4 AD the general Gnaeus Julius Agricola defeated the Caledonians at the battle of Mons Graupius, and Roman forts were briefly set along the Gask Ridge close to the Highland Line. Three years after the battle the Roman armies had withdrawn to the Southern Uplands. They erected Hadrian's Wall to control tribes on both sides of the wall,but it effectively became the main northern border for the Romans throughout much of the later occupation of Britain, although they held the Antonine Wall in the Central Lowlands for two short periods. The last of these was during the time of Emperor Septimius Severus from 208 until 210. The extent of Roman occupation of any significant part of Scotland was limited to a total of about 40 years, although their influence on the southern section of the country occupied by Brythonic tribes such as the Votadini and Damnonii would still have been considerable.
The Kingdom of the Picts was the state which eventually became known as "Alba" or "Scotland". The development of "Pictland" was a natural response to Roman imperialism. Another view places emphasis on the Battle of Dunnichen, and the reign of Bridei m. Beli, with another period of consolidation in the reign of Óengus mac Fergusa. The Kingdom of the Picts as it was in the early 8th century, when Bede was writing, was largely the same as the kingdom of the Scots in the reign of Alexander. However, by the tenth century, the Pictish kingdom was dominated by what we can recognise as Gaelic culture, and had developed an Irish conquest myth around the ancestor of the contemporary royal dynasty, Kenneth MacAlpin.
From a base of territory in eastern Scotland north of the River Forth and south of the River Oykel, the kingdom acquired control of the lands lying to the north and south. By the 12th century, the kings of Alba had added to their territories the English-speaking land in south-east and attained overlordship of Galloway and Norse-speaking Caithness, by the end of the 13th century, the kingdom had assumed approximately its modern borders. However, processes of cultural and economic change beginning in the 12th century ensured Scotland looked very different in the later Middle Ages. The stimulus for this was the reign of King David I. Feudalism, government reorganisation and the first legally defined towns, called burghs, began in this period. These institutions and the immigration of French and Anglo-French knights and churchmen facilitated a process of cultural osmosis, whereby the culture and language of the low-lying and coastal parts of the kingdom's original territory in the east became, like the newly-acquired south-east, English-speaking, while the rest of the country retained the Gaelic language.
The death of Alexander III in 1286, followed by the death of his grand-daughter Margaret, Maid of Norway, broke the succession line of Scotland's kings. This led to the intervention of Edward I of England. Edward established John Balliol as a sub-king, but this relationship broke down, leading to an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at total takeover by the English crown. This was famously opposed by William Wallace (the better heros in Scotland) and others in the Wars of Scottish Independence, and in the divided country Robert the Bruce, Earl of Carrick, became king. War with England continued for several decades, and a civil war between the Bruce dynasty and the English-backed Balliols lasted until the middle of the 14th century. Although the Bruce dynasty was successful, David II's lack of an heir allowed his nephew Robert II to come to the throne and establish the Stewart (or Stuart) Dynasty. The Stewarts ruled Scotland for the remainder of the Middle Ages. The country they ruled experienced greater prosperity from the end of the 14th century through the Scottish Renaissance to the Reformation. This was despite continual warfare with England, the increasing division between Highlands and Lowlands, and a large number of royal minorities.
In 1603, James VI King of Scots inherited the throne of the Kingdom of England, and became also King James I of England. With the exception of a short period under The Protectorate, Scotland remained a separate state, but there was considerable conflict between the crown and the Covenanters over the form of church government. After the Glorious Revolution and the overthrow of the Roman Catholic James VII by William and Mary, Scotland briefly threatened to select a different Protestant monarch from England. In 1707, however, following English threats to end trade and free movement across the border, known as the Alien Act, the Scots Parliament and the Parliament of England enacted the twin Acts of Union, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
The deposed Jacobite Stuart claimants had remained popular in the Highlands and north-east, particularly amongst non-Presbyterians. However, two major Jacobite risings launched from the Highlands in 1715 and 1745 failed to remove the House of Hanover from the British throne. This paved the way for large scale removals of the indigenous populations of the Highlands and Islands, known as the Highland Clearances.
Following the Scottish Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, Scotland became one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of Europe. After World War II, Scotland experienced an industrial decline which was particularly severe. Only in recent decades has the country enjoyed something of a cultural and economic renaissance. Economic factors which have contributed to this recovery include a resurgent financial services industry, electronics manufacturing, and the North Sea oil and gas industry. The Scottish Parliament was established by the United Kingdom Parliament, by the Scotland Act 1998.