Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-century Scotland: Commemoration, Nationality and Memory

This book exposes ever-changing attitudes to Scotland’s national heroes, from Wallace the unionist paragon to Knox the national hero. At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, James Coleman sheds light on how Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Overturning current, popular orthodoxy, Coleman explores the potent legacy of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, through to the controversial figure of the reformer, John Knox, to the largely neglected religious radicals, the Covenanters, the heroes who once played a vital role in the formation of the virtues that made 19th-century Britain great. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this volume uncovers a reading of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to the now dominant narratives of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. It includes detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes. It uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’. It shines a new light on the mindset of 19th-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British.It overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry.

Reviews of Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-century Scotland: Commemoration, Nationality and Memory

'A salutary warning to today's politicians and pundits. Even the recent past is too slippery to be invoked convincingly by either side in the referendum debate. Nineteenth-century Scots constructed a national mythology in which the ecclesiastical trumped the political, and where unionism and nationalism were complacently conjoined.' Colin Kidd, University of St Andrews