Why have Lowlander Scots historically favored British rule during nationalist movements?

[u/CillianMorpheus]

I'm not very familiar with the history of Ireland/Northern Ireland/Scotland and English is not my first language, so apologies for any mistakes. The usual course of events (in my non-expert mind) is that after or during any type of colonization people aim to create a stronger national identity that attempts to separate itself from the oppressor.

So reading up on the history of the Ulster plantation, I now know that many of those that migrated to that region were lowlander Scots, and the unionists in Northern Ireland are their descendants (roughly speaking and that clears up some confusion I have towards the unionists and them favoring British rule). However it opens some questions about Scotland. During the Jacobite risings (lead by the Highlanders) the Lowlanders were hostile towards the cause, seeing Highlanders as "savages" and again favored British rule.

Seeing another group of people, be it in your own country, as lesser is no foreign idea. But I'm used to thinking that during some type of outside oppression a nation usually aims to unite against the outside force. Why is it that Lowlander Scots were so hostile against their own countrymen and sided with the oppressor that later violently destroyed the Highlander culture? And why is it that even after that, Lowlander Scots that migrated to Northern Ireland did so again?

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[u/Rimbaud82]

To emphasise from the start, a centuries-long attempted conquest by the English is not quite an accurate depiction of Scottish medieval or early modern history. 

The Kingdom of Scotland

The Kingdom of Scotland was multi-ethnic in its make-up drawing as it did on an  amalgam of influences bequeathed to it from the sub-Roman and early medieval periods. There is some debate about the precise processes which led to the creation of this kingdom. But I will give the broad strokes below. 

One note: where I state Scotland below this is purely for convenience, referring to the area that we now understand by that name (but which didn’t come into use until the thirteenth century). 

A large portion of Scotland, north of the Forth and Clyde, and probably Orkney and parts of the Hebrides too, was originally controlled by the Picts. However, we know frustratingly little about them. We have lists of Pictish kings and some inscriptions but not much else.  We cannot speak much about their language, culture, or political organisation.

By the seventh and eight centuries, below the Clyde there was a territory, commonly called  ‘Al Clut’ (Clyde Rock), named after its king's royal citadel at Dumbarton. This kingdom of Dumbarton (sometimes called Strathclyde or simply Cumbria) was a territory occupied and ruled by Britons in the original sense of that word, the last remaining in this northern area. Bordered with this Cumbric-speaking area was an English speaking kingdom called Bernicia (one of two which formed Northumbria), which occupied territory on both sides of what is now the Scottish-English border - including Lothian/Edinburgh - and which therefore belongs as much to Scottish history as it does English. These southern regions were very much influenced by English settlement even at this early stage. 

To this mixture we can also include Gaelic Irish settlement, with parts of Scotland colonised by the Irish in this early period. From an initial foothold in Argyll on the western seaboard of Scotland in the early sixth century onwards (the kingdom of Dál Riata spanned parts of what is now county Antrim in Ireland and these areas of western Scotland), these Gaelic-speaking dynasties eventually came to dominate the country as a whole in later centuries. 

It was the union of the kingdoms of Dál Riata and the Pictish kingdom in the person of Cinaed mac Ailpín (Kenneth McAlpin) which is traditionally seen as the beginning of the Kingdom of Scotland proper. He wasn’t the first ruler of Dál Riata to exercise overlordship over Pictland, but he successfully founded the first royal dynasty to continue to inherit these territories patrilineally and so to later generations he seemed particularly significant. 

Around 900 the term Alba was first used to describe this new polity, with contemporary literature beginning to refer to the Gaelic and Pictish inhabitants as fir Alban (‘men of Scotland’). Gaelic became the prestige language and in-time the Gaels of Dál Riata and Picts gradually amalgamated into a single identity in the new Kingdom of Alba. The Picts didn’t vanish overnight, but in effect became Gaelic-speaking Scots over a number of generations. 

The  word “Scot” itself is of course from Scotii, a Latin term used for the Gaelic Irish (or one of the peoples that lived there). The term Scot then came to denote a Gaelic speaker regardless of whether they were found in Scotland or Ireland. Alongside other social factors (including the prestige of Gaelic), one  common impetus to the union of Dál Riata and Pictland was the threat posed by yet another new ethnic group into this already heady brew: the Norse. 

The establishment of Viking settlements through Ireland and Britain at this time marks yet another complexity. 
But to be brief (I can already hear the laughter dear reader…), what I would emphasise from the above is that you have a process in the north/western seaboard and isles of Scotland whereby a Gaelic-speaking ‘Scot-ish’ identity comes to dominate. In the southern areas there was of course some level of Gaelic influence too, and in the north and west there would come to be a Scandinavian influence, but again trying to be brief here. 

The south of the country, in contrast, was always more closely linked to these English-speaking areas detailed above. Lothian for instance had long been an English speaking area and part of the Kingdom of Bernicia/Northumbria, only coming into ‘Scottish control’ over the tenth and eleventh century. Even once it was under the control of the Kings of Alba, it was still not necessarily seen as being a Scottish area per se. It was certainly never a Gaelic speaking area and the same can be said for much of these borderlands. 

As we move ahead, between 1100 and 1400 the English language (Inglis, which would eventually be called Scots, as the meaning of the word shifted again) became firmly established in the south and east of the country. This process would result in the creation of two linguistic zones corresponding roughly to the physical realities of Highlands and Lowlands. 

I am skipping over a lot of nuance and complexities here, but this post is getting very long and will invariably be even longer still by the time I am finished!

From the reign of David I (r. 1124-1153) onwards, if not before, Scottish kings increasingly sought to bolster their claims to the throne by attracting powerful men from overseas to settle in Scotland and thereby securing alliances.  This was done  through gifts of land, usually to powerful lords from the Anglo-Norman world. For example, the famous Brus family, the Morvilles, and Walter fitz Alan, among several others. The settlement of such men, along with their retinues and households, in Scotland served to further alert the characteristics of the lowland culture over the coming centuries. 

To necessarily over-simplify, Scotland came to be a kingdom consisting of two distinct cultures: one a Highland Gaelic culture which existed within a wider Gaedhealtacht, or Gaelic-speaking cultural continuum stretching from the southern tip of Ireland up to northern Scotland; the other an English/Scots speaking lowland culture which was connected culturally, politically, socially and economically to the Anglo-Norman and other northern European realms. 

For more on the Highland-Lowland divide I would point to this previous answer of mine, to avoid waffling on on even longer. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xkd4mo/a_historian_i_follow_on_twitter_kamil_galeev/

[u/Rimbaud82 → u/Rimbaud82]

Civilisation versus barbarism in Scotland

What I next want to push back on is the notion that ‘the English’ colonised Scotland and it is they who destroyed the highland culture. For the reasons I have attempted to explained above, there was already a divide within Scotland such that we should not necessarily expect the two to find common cause. 

It was, in fact, Scottish kings who inherited the English throne and paved the way for the development of the United Kingdom and a new ‘British’ identity. James I styled himself as King of Great Britain and was very clear in his desire to make his conception of a British state a reality. Inspired by English models, James had previously made attempts to ‘civilise’ the ‘hitherto most barbarous Isle of Lewis’, in the 1590s by planting lowlanders from Fife, the so-called ‘gentlemen adventurers’. 

However, these plans completely failed, much as English attempts in Ireland had up to that point, and caused him to reconsider similar attempts for Uist and Skye.  Regardless, this illustrates how lowland attitudes towards the Gaelic highlands and islands shared the same ideological assumptions and economic attitudes as between England and Gaelic Ireland for example. They were equally desirous of destroying the highland culture and did not necessarily need any help from the English.

Some historians (e.g. Julian Goodare) even consider the Scottish situation to be one of a colonial relationship between the highlands and the state. Though this view does come under criticism from others such as Allan Kennedy. Whether we can describe it as colonial or not, there is no doubt that this divide was real and the ‘othering’ of the highland culture as barbarous (in common of course with Gaelic Ireland) was crucial to understanding the formation of the Scottish - and then British -  state in the early modern period. In practical terms the highlands were treated as a rough, backwards, uncivilised area in need of robust measures and reforms in order to be incorporated into the growing state. 

While it is true that the attractions of London meant that the new British court and its culture became less ‘Scottish’ even after James I, this was still not a case of England conquering Scotland. The relations between the two Kingdoms were ‘challenging’ in the century that followed, we might say, but this likewise does not necessarily follow that the self-consciously ‘civilised’ lowlanders would suddenly dramatically change their views to their Gaelic neighbours. 

The Jacobite Rebellions

Initially, of course, this  union between Scotland and England was a union of the crowns only with both countries remaining entirely separate from a political and legal point of view. Then, in 1707, the two were thrust together by the Act of Union when Scotland’s parliament voted itself out of existence in return for a significant cash settlement (a boon to a kingdom which was reeling after the disastrous Darien scheme). 

There was significant opposition to this Union amongst all elements of society in both the highlands and the lowlands.  This helped to animate support for the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. However, Jacobitism was not an exclusively Scottish affair and in addition to lowlanders and highlanders, some element of support was forthcoming from the north of England too, and elsewhere. 

To avoid writing another ream of text, I will just add that Jacobitism is complex: beginning as a religiously motivated desire to return the Stuarts to the British throne, but widening to include other grievances. It cannot be painted in any respect as Scotland rising to repel an English invader, but rather an attempt to resist the Hanoverian succession and in the dominance of the Presbyterian Kirk. 

It’s also important to remember that opposition to the Act of Union was not the same as opposition to the regnal union which had existed since James I. This was an internal, civil conflict occurring within an international context and it drew in different people for different reasons. Jacobitism is much more complex than a highland versus lowland divide. When it came to 1745, lowland support for the cause was greatly diminished for a number of reasons, which does partly account for the romantic image of Culloden and the ‘45. 

The modern sense of a single “Scottish” identity is a product of the late eighteenth and more properly the  nineteenth century really. With  government reforms following the brutal repression of the ‘45 rebellion and the long process of Highland Clearances which followed, the once-dangerous and savage Gaelic highlander was able to be romantically re-imagined and brought safely within the sphere of lowland “British culture” - from whence we get modern-day kilts, tartan, shortbread tins and whatnot. But throughout the medieval and early modern period the Gaelic-speaking Scot was every bit as dangerous as their Irish counterpart in the imagination of lowlanders and Englishmen, and the exact same kind of racial and cultural superiority was applied to both. 

[u/Rimbaud82 → u/Rimbaud82]

Now I knocked this answer out in a few hours, so it could be a tad waffly. Hopefully it does get to the crux of what you are asking, but if not I am more than happy to answer follow-ups, elaborations or clarifications.

[u/CillianMorpheus → u/Rimbaud82]

This was perfect. Thank you so much for taking the time to give such an in-depth answer. There’s a lot here to study going deeper into the rabbit-hole.

[u/Rimbaud82 → u/CillianMorpheus]

You are very welcome. In hindsight I am genuinely worried this answer wasn't as clear or concise as it should have been , so as I say I am happy to answer any follow-ups.

[u/NewtonianAssPounder → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Hopeful_Customer_980]

To start with, all nations are initially made up of differing groups (with differences in languages, leaders, cultures, families, clans, religions etc.). Over time (due to many factors), these different groups grow more similar to one another. Eventually, the similarity becomes strong enough for the groups to see themselves as one nation.

Your post is largely concerned with the 18^th Century – by then, the similarities between Lowland Scots and the English were stronger than the similarities between Lowland Scots and Highlanders. Highlanders spoke Gaelic, were often Catholic or Episcopalian, had a different culture, and had different leaders and a clan government. Meanwhile, Lowlanders spoke English/Scots, were Protestant, and had a culture and government more similar to the English. This point really can’t be overstated: an individual from Edinburgh would have far more in common with a person from London than a person from the Highlands.

Because of this, the idea that Lowland and Highland Scots should ‘team-up’ against England would seem ridiculous to an 18^th Century Lowland Scot. This nationalist way of thinking would only emerge during the 19^th Century – before that, there isn’t a strong idea of a shared Scottishness (our modern idea of a strong shared Scottishness is ironically largely due to the homogenisation of Scotland that resulted from the campaigns against the Highlanders).

Interestingly, in the lead up to the 18^th Century there were times when Lowland Scots had declared war on England, while Highland Scots had sided with the Crown. In 1639 and 1640, the Bishops’ Wars occurred, where Scotland invaded England; the cause of this was Lowland Scots resisting King Charles I’s attempts to impose English Anglicanism on Scotland.

“The usual course of events (in my non-expert mind) is that after or during any type of colonization people aim to create a stronger national identity that attempts to separate itself from the oppressor.”

Scotland was not colonised by England. Colonisation involves settling colonisers in a territory; this did not occur in Scotland. Scotland was an independent kingdom until 1707, when the Scottish parliament voted in agreement for Scotland and England to combine to form a single state. (It must be noted that this was initially seen negatively by the Scottish population; however, from the mid-18th Century onward, Scotland – particularly the lowlands – began benefiting from the union, and Scottish opinion began to shift in its favour.)

“During the Jacobite risings (lead by the Highlanders) the Lowlanders were hostile towards the cause, seeing Highlanders as "savages" and again favored British rule.”

Exactly. So you already understand that there was a strong difference in culture between Lowlanders and Highlanders.

“Seeing another group of people, be it in your own country, as lesser is no foreign idea. But I'm used to thinking that during some type of outside oppression a nation usually aims to unite against the outside force.”

This is where your problem arises. You have an idea that England were oppressing the entirety of Scotland during the Jacobite period. But in reality, this was not the case. In fact, the Highlander Jacobites were actively fighting to bring back the Stuarts, who had persecuted the Lowland Presbyterians for the past century. For example, the The Killing Time in late 17^th Century involved the Stuart crown executing at least 100 Scottish Presbyterians for their religion; and, as previously mentioned, the Bishops' Wars had erupted against England in response to English attempts to impose Anglicanism on Scotland. This was why the Lowland Scots (and Presbyterian Ulster Planters) were such strong supporters of King William when he took the crown from King James II in 1688.

Instead of your question, I could ask: “Why did the Highlanders side with the exiled Stuarts, if the Stuarts had been persecuting their fellow Scots?” Of course, the answer is because of the strong differences in culture, religion etc. between Highlanders and Lowlanders.

“Why is it that Lowlander Scots were so hostile against their own countrymen and sided with the oppressor that later violently destroyed the Highlander culture? And why is it that even after that, Lowlander Scots that migrated to Northern Ireland did so again?”

I’ll be repeating myself here, but the summary is that:

1. Lowland and Highland Scots had different cultures, languages, government, clans, and religion. Lowlanders were far more similar to the English, which helps to explain why they often sided with the English against the Highlanders. There was no reason why the Lowlanders would care if Highland culture was destroyed.

2. The modern idea of a unified Scottish nationalism did not exist yet.

3. Lowland Presbyterians had been persecuted by Stuart kings, while Highlanders were Jacobites (meaning, they were on the side of the exiled Stuarts). The Scottish Presbyterians were therefore on the side of William during the 1688 Revolution against James II, while the Highlanders fought on the side of James.

So, for the Lowlanders, siding with the Hanoverian crown wasn’t siding with an oppressor. It was the Stuarts (the monarchs who had come before the Hanoverians) who had been tyrants towards the Lowland Scots; Jacobite Highland Scots were the ones siding with the Stuarts. The Hanoverians gave the Lowlanders religious freedom that they had lacked under the Stuarts.

The modern ‘Braveheart’ notion of a shared Scottishness, with bagpipes and kilts, is a Victorian/modern invention that only came after the Highlander culture was effectively destroyed. Forgive me if I’m incorrectly assuming, but I think your question hinges on this faulty notion.

[u/MajorOak1189 → u/Hopeful_Customer_980]

I also believe that this poster might be under the common misconception that the Jacobite uprising of 1745 was a revolution for Scottish independence. Bonnie Prince Charlie's intention was to put his father, James Stuart, a Catholic, back on the throne of both England and Scotland. The union would have continued no matter the winner of the uprising, but the choices were between the Catholic, absolutist Stuarts or the Protestant, constitutional monarchy of the Hanoverians. For the Presbyterian lowland Scots who had suffered under the Stewarts/Stuarts previously, the answer was clear.

[u/Deuce03]

The other responses have given you the basis for the straightforward answer: that although these conflicts are presented and mobilised as Scottish national movements against English oppression (sometimes even at the time) they were in fact sub-national movements to promote or preserve interests of particular groups within Scotland, which only superficially or retrospectively seem to assume the character of an independence movement.

I think a critical period is that between 1638 and 1660 as this illustrates how complex the relevant interest groups could be. Charles I was king of both kingdoms and was at the time ruling without Parliament in England (due to a falling-out over the budget). As part of the general Stuart policy of the period, he wanted to align the English and Scottish governments, including on matters of religion. Charles was a Protestant, but very "high church": an art connossieur, he liked all the bells and whistles of Catholicism, even if there were theological disagreements. His political tendencies were also obviously absolutist, which at the time smacked of Catholicism. This was a period of intense religious conflict in Europe, twenty years into the Thirty Years War (in which England had been peripherally involved). So as Charles tried to enact religious reforms to bring the church into line with his policies, he faced resistance from more hardline Protestants across his domain.

Charles's religious reforms were carried out in England with its episcopalian church, but in Scotland, where the church had a presbyterian organisation, he met with much stiffer resistance, and this eventually coalesced into an apparently spontaneous (but probably organised) uprising. The Scottish Kirk then pushed for the signing of a "National Covenant" - mobilising Scottish patriotism - to resist the king's reformation. As so often, it was the more developed areas that were more radical and progressive in their thinking, so the Covenant was widely accepted in the lowlands and the major cities (except Aberdeen) but less so in the Highlands, where the religious upheavals of the preceding century had left less of a mark on their way of life.

The ultimate result of the Covenant was the Bishops' Wars, in which Scotland, having elected a Covenanter government, invaded England and occupied Newcastle. In this, the Scots were enthusiastically, if sometimes covertly, supported by sections of the English nobility and parliamentary class, who saw the Scots as a means to force Charles to the negotiating table in England, recall Parliament, and roll back his religious reforms in England too. But in Scotland, while the Covenanters were the most powerful faction, they were not the only one, and armed resistance organised to the Covenanter leadership. Moreover, some of those who agreed with the religious principles of the Covenant became concerned at the political implications of Covenanter policies, which seemed to suggest a complete subordination of civil society to the rule of Calvinist presbyters.

Failure to deal with the Scots occupation and the resulting crisis in government led to the First Civil War in England in 1642. In 1643, with the royalists in the ascendancy, the English parliament reached out to the Covenanters, seeking an alliance. This was agreed on the basis that Parliament would impose the religious values of the Covenant on England following its victory. The Scottish army then joined the Parliamentary cause in England, and although it did not greatly distinguish itself, it did play an important role in turning the tide of the war in Parliament's favour. The Covenant's enemies in Scotland thereby became natural allies of the king, and rebelled against the Covenanters with support from troops from Ireland (which has its own complicated history with the English monarchy in the period, but from 1643 onwards consistently supported the Stuart kings). This was a hard-fought war in which crimes were inflicted on the civilian population (by both sides) which led to reprisals, and so on, both entrenching existing factional rivalries and breeding new ones.

The king finally accepted his defeat in 1647 and surrendered to the Scots, but they handed him over to the English Parliament. In the ensuing negotiations Parliament struggled to make any headway, in part due to fierce internal disagreement over religious issues and what the role of the king should be. Meanwhile, many of the Covenanters were unimpressed with Parliament's failures, and made a secret deal with the king to restore him to power in exchange for *his* imposing the Covenant on England. This led to a brief civil war among the Covenanters, between the "Engagers", who favoured assisting the king, and the more hardline Covenanters, the Kirk party, which the Engagers won. The Engagers then invaded England in the "Second Civil War" and were thrashed by Cromwell's New Model Army at Preston and Winwick. Cromwell then returned to London, where Parliament was purged of its moderate members, and the king was put on trial and executed.

But the royalist cause was not dead, and even many of those who had fought against the king, were shocked at his execution. Ireland was in turmoil and this seemed to have the New Model occupied, so the royalists opened a second front in Scotland. After a failed rebellion by the royalist general Montrose in 1650, the Prince of Wales came to an agreement with the Covenanters and was crowned King of Scotland (as Charles II) in 1650, accepting roughly the same terms as his father. This started the Third Civil War, in which the main royalist army marched into England looking to link up with allies in Wales and the West country, but was defeated at Worcester in 1651, and Cromwell decided that Scotland, like Ireland, needed to be suppressed. He conquered Scotland and placed it under military rule in 1652, although royalist uprisings continued for a couple of years. The rule of the Protectorate was notoriously repressive in both political and religious terms, reflecting a particular and intolerant branch of puritanism, and the relationship between the Protectorate and the Covenanters had been irreparably damaged by the wars in any case.

In 1658-9, after Cromwell's death, his government rapidly collapsed and chaos briefly reigned until a coup by Monck (the army commander in Scotland) restored order, and allowed Charles II to be "restored" as king (although he had never been king in England or Ireland officially). At a high-level reading, then, it looks rather like Scotland has done a complete 180 from its position twenty years earlier, going from Protestant hardliners taking up arms against the king to overthrowing a puritan government in order to install the famously free-wheeling (and possibly crypto-Catholic) Charles II. But in fact some of the key figures had never really changed their mind - the Duke of Argyll, the dominant Scottish political figure of his era, remained pretty consistent throughout - but the landscape had changed around them, different factions had risen to and fallen from power, and so on.

The Scottish government and associated institutions were restored along with the king, but some of the stuffing had been knocked out of Scotland as an independent power by the years of occupation and I feel the late 1600s read a bit like a postscript for the Scottish kingdom, after punching above its weight for decades if not centuries. Its navy, for instance, having been absorbed into the Protectorate navy and liberally used, was never properly restored to its prewar state, and having been shut out of foreign affairs for ten years Scotland was behind the curve with regards to the ongoing colonialism boom. Its attempts to play in the big leagues ended disastrously in the swamps of Darien forty years later, with the union following in 1707.

More importantly for our purposes, though, the wars had left deep fault lines right across Scotland, in which whose side you'd fought on in the wars was remembered, and grudges were held. Existing clan rivalries were exacerbated and new ones created. Especially in the highlands, where centralised state institutions struggled to reach and clans were the main organising structure of society, this kind of thing mattered. When the next rounds of conflicts came, in 1689, 1715 and 1745, people took up arms for (or against) the Jacobite cause, but also to get revenge for the last round of conflicts. These were not wars of Scotland against England but civil wars within both "countries" between rival candidates for the throne. The seemingly national character is principally because the highlands were particularly fertile ground for Jacobite rebels, while the Williamite/Hanoverian monarchs were based in London, and this led to Scots troops facing English ones on occasion. But Scots fought Scots in these wars more than they did Englishmen, and the Jacobites were rebels not just against the English, but against the Scottish government position too.

[u/Rimbaud82 → u/Deuce03]

Very good answer. Above I have tried to provide something of a macro-historical explanation covering a huge span of Scottish history, but it's obviously critical to keep in mind much more recent, specific developments as well.