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This book examines the organisation of power and society in north-east England over two crucial centuries in the emergence of the English ‘state’. England is usually regarded as medieval Europe's most centralised kingdom, yet the North East was dominated by liberties — largely self-governing jurisdictions — that greatly restricted the English crown's direct authority in the region. These local polities receive here a comprehensive discussion; and their histories are crucial for understanding questions of state formation in frontier zones, regional distinctiveness, and local and national loyalties. The analysis focuses on liberties as both governmental entities and sources of socio-political and cultural identification. It also connects their development and their communities with a rich variety of forces, including the influence of the kings of Scots as lords of Tynedale, and the impact of protracted Anglo-Scottish warfare from 1296. Why did liberties enjoy such long-term relevance as governance structures? How far, and why, did the English monarchy respect their autonomous rights and status? By what means, and how successfully, were liberty identities created, sharpened and sustained? In addressing such issues, this study extends beyond regional history to make significant contributions to the ongoing mainstream debates about ‘state’, ‘society’, ‘identity’ and ‘community’.

For Britain, the Second World War exists in popular memory as a time of heroic sacrifice, survival, and ultimate victory over Fascism. In the Irish state, the years 1939–1945 are still remembered simply as ‘the Emergency’. Éire was one of many small states that in 1939 chose not to stay out of the war, but one of the few able to maintain its non-belligerency as a policy. How much this owed to Britain's military resolve or to the political skills of Éamon de Valera is a key question that this book explores. It also examines the tensions Éire's policy created in its relations with Winston Churchill and with the United States, and furthermore explores propaganda, censorship, and Irish state security, and the degree to which it involves secret co-operation with Britain. Issues such as the IRA's relationship to Nazi Germany and ambivalent Irish attitudes to the Holocaust are also raised. Drawing upon both published and unpublished sources, the book illustrates the war's impact on people on both sides of the border, and shows how it failed to resolve sectarian problems in Northern Ireland while raising higher the barriers of misunderstanding between it and the Irish state.

Storm clouds regularly gather over the story of the Highland Clearances and show no sign of dispersing. After more than a century the historical dispute about the eviction of the Highlanders from the glens continues unabated and unresolved. Debating the Highland Clearances introduces the Clearances as a classic historical problem: it focuses on the ways historians and others have approached the question and it concentrates on the methods and sources employed by the combatants. Half the book is devoted to a selection of documents which represent their main types of source material. Most of the book is about the perceptions, mentalities, politics and interpretations that dominate the noisy and continuing public debate about the Highland Clearances.

Although much has been written about Scottish involvement in slavery, the contribution of Scots to the abolition of black slaves has not yet been sufficiently recognised. This book starts with a Virginian slave seeking his freedom in Scotland in 1756 and end with the abolition of the Apprenticeship Scheme in the West Indian colonies in 1838. Contemporary documents and periodicals reveal a groundswell of revulsion to what was described as ‘the horrible traffic in humans.’ Petitions to Parliament came from remote islands as well as from large public meetings in cities. In a land steeped in religion, ministers and church leaders took the lead in giving theological support to the cause of abolition. The contributions of five London Scots who were pivotal to the campaign throughout Britain are set against opposition to abolition from many Scots with commercial interests in the slave trade and the sugar plantations.Missionaries and miners, trades guilds and lawyers all played their parts in challenging slavery. Many of their struggles and frustrations are detailed for the first time in an assessment of the unique contribution made by Scotland and the Scots to the destruction of an institution whose effects are still with us today.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the past, present and future prospects of the Anglo-Scottish Union. Its contributors do not shy away from the controversies surrounding the Union. Their research serves as an introduction to some key aspects of the Anglo-Scottish relationship between 1707 and 2007. The book covers: why the Union took place; the growing acceptance of the Union in the eighteenth century; the impact of Scots' central role in the British Empire; the politics of unionism; the challenge of nationalism; Thatcherism and the Union; and devolution and prospects for the future. It considers the entire 300-year experience of union — from its origins in the early eighteenth century to the historic parliamentary victory of the SNP in May 2007.