Forget my piracy claim, this claim needs evidence that is considerably stronger than “because Darien”. What evidence is there that in the absence of English threats against individuals in the Scottish establishment, the state would not have survived into the 1730s say?
For some context, the Scottish state was powerful enough for its army to occupy the counties of Northumberland and Durham in England for a year as recently as 1640/1.
But that is not actually true. There were 2 queens on island of Great Britain in the 1560s - Elizabeth of England and Mary of Scotland. The present queen is descended from the one who was not in fact sovereign over England.
Yup. The personal union, which preceded the real union, between England and Scotland, came into being in 1603, when the reigning King of Scotland also ascended to the English throne. Of course the dynasties of the two countries had already been closely intertwined before that (which is why James succeeded to the English throne); but it’s not simply a case of Scotland being annexed into England.
It is on you, because you are claiming that Scotland’s economic crisis (which was real, certainly no scare quotes) was caused, or partially caused, by England, which is not true.
It was caused by the failure of the Darien Scheme, and by bad harvests and famine in the late 1690s.
If you think otherwise, then it’s up to you to provide credible information to the contrary.
Sure, because it was French and Spanish privateers that were preying on Scottish shipping. Nothing to do with England.
Who exactly said that it wouldn’t have survived? Certainly not me. You are arguing against a straw man.
You misunderstand my wording - I meant I don’t have the evidence on me right now as I don’t have the time to look for it and I’m anyway conceding the point.
You wrote that it was in the process of failing. If that means something other than that it wouldn’t have survived then you could have been clearer.
Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_in_Wales_Acts_1535_and_1542
This is the key passage:
The use of “Queen of England” does exclude the three other components of the United Kingdom, and substitutes England for the United Kingdom, which is the sovereign state in issue. England is not a sovereign state.
The other Commonwealth realms aren’t relevant to this discussion, since no-one is suggesting that the term “Queen of England” stands in her role as Queen of Canada.
So what was the Monmouthshire debate about, if there was no Wales that Monmouthshire could possibly be part of?
it’s not simply a case of Scotland being annexed into England.
Indeed. The whole notion of “Great Britain” and unifying the parliaments came from James VI/I. Neither parliament was keen and the idea was kicked into the long grass, until the Jacobite succession became an issue. And after the union, according to Linda Colley’s “Britons”, it was as much the pro-union Scots who were keen to push the concept of “Britain” (to the point of using “North Britain” instead of “Scotland”), as the English.
1.Quite right. There is a peerage of England. However, there have not been any additions to the peerage of England since the Act of Union of 1707. Similarly, there is a peerage of Scotland, but there have not been any additions to the peerage of Scotland since 1707. Peers created after that date were in the peerage of Great Britain. That lasted until 1801, when the Act of Union of Ireland came into force, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Peerages since then have generally been in the peerage of the United Kingdom. (There was also a separate peerage of Ireland, and there were some creations in the peerage of Ireland post-union, in the 19th century.)
2.Yes, there is the Church of England. There is also the Church of Scotland, the Church in Wales, and the Church of Ireland, which operates in Northern Ireland. Each of the four components of the United Kingdom has its own Protestant national church. But that does not mean the Church of England is predominant.
3.Yes, there is an English flag, to symbolise the country of England. It is not the flag of the United Kingdom, which is the Union Jack. Nor is the flag of England the symbol of the other three countries. Each of them has their own flag: the flag of Scotland, the flag of Wales. There are two unofficial flags of Northern Ireland, the Ulster Banner and the St Patrick’s saltire, but the Union Jack is the official flag used in Northern Ireland.
4.Yes, there are England national sports teams, but those teams play in leagues or games where the other British countries have their separate teams, such as the Commonwealth Games or FIFA. Wales and Scotland both have their own teams in those cases. The English team is not the British team. See the wiki article on the Home Nations, and also the article on the Union of European Football Assocations, which is how England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales compete in FIFA events. However, for other events, such as the Olympics, there aren’t separate national teams: they compete as “Great Britain” - even when the Games are held in London, England.
Sure. And there are Scots people, Welsh people, and Northern Irish people. It’s not appropriate that the term “England” should be used to subsume them.
I think this is a good analogy. The UK, as it is set up now, has been called a regime of asymmetric federalism: It is split into four countries (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), and three of these four countries have their own legislatures. It’s not exactly true federalism as in the US, because in true federalism, the component states possess their powers inherently by virtue of being states, whereas in the UK, these legislative powers have been delegated (devolved) to the component countries by the central Parliament; but it’s close enough, in the sense that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have their own parliaments with the power to legislate autonomously within defined areas of competence.
England does not have such a legislature; those matters which are, in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, under the control of the respective legislatures, are, for England, governed by the UK Parliament - including the MPs from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. To put it bluntly: Scottish voters have a say on internal matters of England, but English voters do not have a say on the same internal matters for Scotland.
This has parallels to the District of Columbia. It is subject to the control of the national parliament (Congress), including those members of Congress elected in, say, Texas, but the DC voters do not have a corresponding say in the same matters for Texas.
So would it be correct that the US President is the “President of the District of Columbia”? It is, in the same sense it is correct to say that Elizabeth II is the “Queen of England”, and by the same arguments as those we’ve read in this thread. The US President resides in DC, holds powers in DC, is the head of state and government in the country of which DC is a part, and there is nobody in DC who could otherwise be referred to as its President. But do we call him the President of DC? Hardly.
IMO this is far more relevant than the technicalities of the monarch’s title and NATO meetings and the District of Columbia and whatever else. The use of “England” presses on a sore spot, with living people, that the other strictly-incorrect term in common usage (“Great Britain”) does not.* The points made about how the post-union state was totally dominated by England and was regularly referred to as “England” by people in power for centuries afterward don’t mitigate that annoyance but enhance it. Unfortunately, the change in language to accommodate these real concerns happened well after the English language was exported around the globe, so the places that aren’t exposed to current feelings about nationality in the UK still use the retrograde language as standard.
*The basic existence of the British state outside of Great Britain is obviously a big issue, but the name seems not to be. I doubt this thread would have been so completely derailed if it had been about the “King of Great Britain.”
I don’t think the analogy holds at all - the District of Columbia is NEVER referred to as a country and neither is Texas (although we love to say we can be one whenever we want to). Whereas England, Wales, Scotland are.
Is Biden the President of Texas, then?
Wakes continued to exist as an administrative unit, with its own courts and local government. Monmouthshire seems to have been too close to England, so for some purposes, like court circuits, it was treated as part of England.
The wiki article on Monmouthshire has a good run-down on it, in the section “Ambiguity over status”:
Hit send too soon.
Because Texas is a “state”, which is often used as an equivalent term for a country in international law.
This thread is an excellent reminder of just how fundamentally weird the UK is, socio-politico-constitutionally speaking.
I had a history lecturer who started out a module on the forming of the UK by pointing out that now that following the demise of the USSR no longer existed, the UK was on the only state that was a union of different countries. It’s an odd way to make a country and like with any long-term process run by humans, has resulted in a lot of anomalies and lot of confusing terminology. There’s no underlying logic or unifying principle by which you can deduce e.g. the number of legal systems because the UK wasn’t created in a particularly logical or principled fashion. Rules which seem to work everywhere else (e.g. every country has a national team therefore if it has a national team it’s a country) don’t quite work and in fact, perfectly normal words like “country” seem to have different meanings in different contexts too.
Where complex systems like this exist, approaching on the assumption that previous experience of different systems is a useful guide, or that simple logic will be your friend, will inevitably let you down.
But she is descended from Henry VII, who was sovereign over England.
However, I am not talking about simple heredity here. There has been a continuous succession of sovereigns over England (ignoring Cromwell) since 1066, but their other realms have come and gone.
There has equally been a continuous succession of sovereigns over Scotland.
I disagree with the second sentence. England (and the same goes for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) is never referred to as a country in the sense of a sovereign state, for the simple reason that it isn’t one. It is, of course, referred to as a country within the United Kingdom, but that is a wholly different meaning of the word “country”. Cf. the similar issue with the meaning of “state” as referring to one of the fifty states of the US, which is not synonymous with the term “state” as a sovereign entity under international law. In non-US parlance (and, particularly, in international law parlance), it is quite common to use the word “state” in roughly the same meaning as “country” elsewhere, namely that of a sovereign entity, but that doesn’t mean that England is an independent sovereign entity just because it has the “country” label, just as it does not mean the same for Texas simply because Texas has the “state” label. So I concur with @Northern_Piper: Elizabeth II is “Queen of England” in the same sense as Joe Biden is “President of Texas” or “President of the District of Columbia”.
The argument in support of this usage would be stronger for the smaller Crown dependencies of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, which are legally not part of the UK but whose foreign affairs are managed by the UK. They are also under the British monarchy, but as separate entities, whereas England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are all part of the same monolithic entity, the UK.