Scotland: The Interrupted Story

A long thread in 4 parts: from prehistory to the present, from land to language, from memory to law.

This is about how a civilisation built on networks of kin and knowledge was first conquered, then managed, then told to forget itself, and how that memory is returning.

Part I traces an arc from resilience to annexation to clearance to half-life.

Part II follows the recovery from cultural memory to decolonial understanding to renewed agency.

Together they form 1 continuous story of how one of the oldest cultural continuities in Northern Europe was broken by empire, survived in song, and is now learning to speak again.

Part I: The Long Arc of Loss and Survival (Deep Time)

Scotland's story begins in deep time, in networks of kin, land, and memory that endured for thousands of years.

These early societies were decentralised, oral, and resilient.

From the first hillforts to the Pictish stones, a pattern repeats: local autonomy, mutual obligation, law carried by memory.

Power flowed outward, not downward.

Knowledge was portable, song, proverb, oath, all designed to survive dislocation.

It was a civilisation made to outlast conquest.

When the imperial world reached the North, it met a system that refused to fit.

Rome built walls to contain it, set it apart.

Anglo-Saxon and Norman models brought hierarchy and charter, but the North still spoke its own law.

The map was redrawn, the rhythm and pattern remained.

The struggle between distributed resilience and centralised visibility defines the whole Scottish story.
When direct conquest failed, subtler means followed: charters, taxation, translation, and finally law itself.

Every invader learned the same lesson, that you can't destroy a network, only centralise it.

By the seventeenth century that balance broke.

The Union of Crowns brought shared monarchy but not shared sovereignty.

The seventeenth century ended with the Alien Act, the Act of Security, and the Treaty of Union; all instruments of control disguised as cooperation.

1707 was the hinge point between freedom and management.

What the armies of Edward I and Cromwell couldn't achieve, treaty achieved quietly.

A sovereign nation became an administrative region.

Its Parliament was dissolved, its legal traditions absorbed, its history rewritten as inevitability.
The language of conquest became the language of progress.

Resistance didn't vanish though; it just changed form.

The Jacobite wars were the last armed expression of pre-Union sovereignty.

As Murray Pittock shows, these were regular armies with international allies, fighting for a multi-kingdom settlement, a different modernity.

Their defeat was recoded as "modernisation."

Culloden was the decisive act of translation. The Jacobite army died as soldiers; they were remembered as primitives.

The British state needed that distortion to found its own myth of reconciliation.

From then on, "British Ness" required Scotland's difference to be both preserved and denatured.

After the guns came surveyors.
The Forfeited Estates Commission, the Disarming Acts, and the new roads and forts completed the annexation.

The Highlands became a landscape to be mapped, drained, taxed, and 'improved'.

And where resistance survived, clearance began.

Clearance wasn't an accident of landlord greed, or modernisation.

It was the administrative logic of a state built on visibility and extraction.

Communal land had to become private property; kin had to become labour.

The "improvements" that made sheep profitable made people surplus.

But violence wasn't only physical.
Once the land was emptied, the mind had to be pacified.

Schools punished Gaelic; sermons preached submission; history reclassified rebellion as misfortune.

By the nineteenth century, the Highlands were the empire's first internal colony, a training ground for global empire.

Part I continued below 👇 Part I continued:

Then came the moral laundering.

Romanticism turned catastrophe into scenery; victims became symbols of noble suffering.
Museums, tartans, and heritage softened the story into something marketable.

A living culture was embalmed and sold back to its descendants.

But memory survived.

It hid in songs and in stories, in the idioms of Gaelic that still carry older laws and values.

It survived as what Sorley MacLean called the "difference between the history I read in books and the oral accounts I heard around me."

MacLean saw that words like "famine" and "improvement" were moral cover for profit and empire.
He heard another language beneath them: clearance, exploitation, loss — a lexicon of truth where the official one demanded amnesia.

"Our Gaelic language is threatened with extinction...our way of life besieged by the forces of international big business."

His words stand as memorial and diagnosis: a society living in the half-light between memory and official truth.

Stuart McHardy put the same truth in plain prose.

Since the Union, he wrote, British history has been a political project — written to justify creating "North" and "South Britain."

The state needed a cohesive past more than a true one, and Scottish difference had to be explained away.

Dismissed as folklore because he refused to separate culture, language, and politics, McHardy proved his point: the academy still inherits the same centralising logic that once governed the land.

Murray Pittock, by contrast, works inside that academy.

His closing chapter of Culloden never says "anti-colonial," but the implication is clear: the Jacobites were not reactionaries but the last organised resistance to annexation.

He writes it in academic code because that is what survival inside the system demands.

Together, McHardy, Pittock, and MacLean form a triptych of witness:
McHardy names the machine from without; Pittock bends its language from within; MacLean lives its consequences.

Mind, polity, and soul — three aspects of the same suppressed continuity.

The same pattern appears across the colonised world: double consciousness, the colonised mind, the coloniality of power. A culture surviving inside the categories that once subdued it.

That is where Scotland lives now: in a half-life of memory versus management.

We remember our connections to land and community, but the state and market convert those instincts into heritage and commodity.

We feel continuity, yet we are taught to treat it as nostalgia.

Our institutions still speak the language of improvement even as they fund its critique.

Universities study decolonisation while reproducing colonial hierarchies of knowledge.

Culture is validated only when it can be monetise; empire as self-image.

And yet the same distributed resilience that once resisted Rome and Hanover stirs again.

It survives in community research, oral history, and the reclamation of language and law.

The old networks are returning; no longer secret, no longer ashamed.

What joins these voices is knowledge: the realisation that memory itself is evidence, that the suppression of a people's story is a historical process, and that recovery begins the moment those truths meet.

From the cairns of Clava to Culloden, from the glens to the archives, the struggle continues; distributed resilience against centralised visibility.

The old system still stands, but the language that sustained it is losing power.

The story ends where it began: in memory:

When that memory ceases to apologise for itself, the half-life ends.

What was heritage becomes history again.

And what was a colony becomes a nation again.

Part II continued below 👇

Let's go futher, and examine line-by-line what the most informed modern historiography is actually saying about the Jacobites, Scotland, and Culloden.

This is the final, concluding paragraph, of Murray Pittock's "Culloden" (2016):

"The politics of Jacobitism has been strongly framed as primitive because of the threat it posed, and the function the defeat of that threat has in a national narrative of foundational reconciliation. However regular were the Jacobite armies, however well armed and decently led, however welcome their officers in the courts of Europe, the framing power for both British state teleology and Scottish patriot nostalgia relies on an image, ultimately Morier’s image and that of the cartoonists of his era. This is the framing story of dirty badly armed primitives sacrificing themselves with pointless nobility to the orders of an Italian princeling, but in the end not contemptibly as they were in reality defending an ancient way of life. Arguably no battle out of living memory is remembered so powerfully and so falsely. On Culloden Moor on 16 April 1746, what was in some ways the last Scottish army—constructed so, paid so, and drilled so—with its Franco-Irish and Scoto-French allies, sought to restore Charles Edward’s father to a multi-kingdom monarchy more aligned to European politics than colonial struggle. They were in many essentials a regular army; if they had not been, they would not have had to fight, nor would the Prince willingly have led them. Outnumbered but not outgunned, cavalry proved their downfall. Ironically, it can be argued that it was not British ball that brought down kilted swordsmen as much as British dragoon blades that cut down Jacobite musketeers. The effect of flanking cavalry on an overextended infantry formation with little effective reserve was a constant in warfare for centuries, and it is the key to . The traditional qualities of the battle are as much British as Jacobite. Culloden as it happened is in fact much more interest- ing than Culloden as it is remembered. It was neither a sacrificial hecatomb of Highland history nor a catalyst for the triumph of British modernity. It was the last battle fought on British soil and ended the last armed conflict in which the nature of Britain-and indeed its existence were at stake. But it no more ended Scotland and Scottish identity than it encapsulated it."

Here's what Pittock is really doing there, line by line, and why it's so politically radical beneath the academic restraint:

1. "The politics of Jacobitism has been strongly framed as primitive because of the threat it posed…"

He's naming what we'd call today a colonial epistemology: the systematic depiction of a colonised or suppressed political movement as backward or irrational precisely because it challenges metropolitan legitimacy.

The "primitive Highlander" trope is an ideological defence mechanism, a form of narrative containment that converts a sovereigntist challenge into a folkloric aberration.

2. "However regular were the Jacobite armies… however welcome their officers in the courts of Europe…"

This is a factual corrective: Jacobitism was modern, professional, and European.

The movement operated within international law, diplomacy, and Enlightenment statecraft.

It was, in other words, a sovereign state restoration effort, not an insurrection.

3. "The framing power for both British state teleology and Scottish patriot nostalgia relies on an image… of dirty badly armed primitives…"

This is crucial: Pittock exposes the fact that both British imperial historiography and romantic Scottish nationalism depend on the same false iconography.

The British state used the myth to legitimise conquest ("they were backward; we brought progress").

Later romantic nationalism recycled it for pathos ("they died nobly, but hopelessly").

In both versions, the real political and constitutional content, the fight to reverse annexation, is erased.

1/👇

https://x.com/SymbolStones/status/1995842041922683005

4. "Arguably no battle out of living memory is remembered so powerfully and so falsely."

That is an extraordinary statement for a senior academic. He is saying flatly: Culloden is the most falsified battle in modern European historiography.

5. "What was in some ways the last Scottish army—constructed so, paid so, and drilled so…"

This line restores the Jacobite army's institutional legitimacy: it was the army of a state, not a band of rebels.

It had payrolls, training, and European allies; it wasn't feudal, it was modern and bureaucratic — what Sir James Steuart would call a modern state instrument.

6. "They were… a regular army… Outnumbered but not outgunned…"

This overturns the Victorian myth of swords versus muskets.

Pittock reminds us the Jacobites were competently armed and tactically sophisticated, defeated by cavalry manoeuvre rather than primitive inferiority.

7. "It was neither a sacrificial hecatomb of Highland history nor a catalyst for the triumph of British modernity."

That line kills the entire Anglo-British Whig narrative.

Culloden wasn't the moment the UK was "forged." It was the moment an alternative Britain, multi-national, plural, constitutional, was forcibly closed down, and finally brutally suppressed.

8. "It was the last battle… in which the nature of Britain—and indeed its existence—were at stake."

That sentence quietly reframes the entire event: Culloden wasn't a civil war, but the last war for the definition of Britain itself.

Had the Jacobites won, the resulting polity would have been a confederal Britain of sovereign kingdoms, not an English-dominated empire.

9. "But it no more ended Scotland and Scottish identity than it encapsulated it."

This is the key to his conclusion: the suppression of sovereignty didn't erase the nation, but it did distort its memory.

Culloden wasn't the "end" of Scotland, it was the beginning of a long period of colonial misrepresentation.

Summary

Pittock's final paragraphs transform Culloden from a tragic Highland episode into what it really was:

A modern anti-colonial war for the political and economic sovereignty of Scotland within a European framework, later rewritten as a primitive failure to justify imperial consolidation.

That's why his final statement "Culloden as it happened is much more interesting than Culloden as it is remembered" is an understated but total inversion of 300 years of British state mythology.

2/👇

Airson trì cheud bliadhna chaidh ar teagasg gu ceàrr mun Aonadh.

For three centuries Scots have been taught the wrong story of Union.

The official story of 1707 only works if you delete one week in which Scotland’s consent should have been sought;

and wasn’t.

1/ For 300 years we’ve been taught the Union begins with the Act and ends with the UK.

It’s as if nothing lay between those points that could matter.

But something did.

2/

Whatʼs the relevance now of all this history we keep talking about?

History not only restores our national story — it has vital contemporary legal significance.

What Scotlands true history reveals is a sequence typical of colonised nations, and that's vital:

1/🧵👇 1. Armed restorationist resistance (1715 / 1745 / post-Culloden insurgency)

2. Suppressed but not extinguished opposition under occupation (cantonments, disarmament acts)

2/

When a retired Rear Admiral calls Scots “parasites,” he’s not debating — he’s performing the last reflex of empire:
turning colonial collapse into moral superiority.

Pathology, not politics —
the British establishment mourning its lost power.

1/

https://twitter.com/DrChrisParry/status/1978537069048668519

The contempt for the colonised was always there,
but it was cloaked in confidence.

Now the mask has slipped —
the anxiety and incoherent anger of imperial collapse are written large.

They project it outward
because they can’t face the core collapsing.

2/

How history gets rewritten — the myth of the 1650 Treaty of Breda.

Fabrication isn’t always crude.
Sometimes it’s subtle — repeated until it replaces memory.

Unionists claim the Treaty of Breda let Scotland invade England.
It didn’t. Let’s trace what really happened 👇🧵 1/ What Unionists claim

“At Breda (1650) Scotland agreed to install Charles II as King of England by force and impose a Presbyterian church.”

That line spreads through online debates and lazy histories — all from English papers, not Scottish ones.

2/

Cromwell’s Tower — The Forgotten Annexation

In Inverness stands a small red-sandstone tower.

Most drive past without a thought.

But it’s the last fragment of Cromwell’s invasion of Scotland —
the first English annexation, 1650–60.

1/ 🧵👇 After Dunbar (1650), Cromwell’s New Model Army crushed Scotland,
built forts at Leith, Ayr, Inverlochy, and Inverness,
and ruled by garrison.

This was occupation, not alliance.

2/

Bho ar-a-mach an-aghaidh coloinidh gu toirt air falbh èignichte.

From anti-colonial insurgency to forced expulsion

The Highland Clearances weren’t about progress.

They were the continuation of conquest — Crown-backed, militarised, and colonial.

1/🧵👇 After Culloden (1746), Scotland was not “pacified.”
It was occupied.

Cantonment Registers show garrisons across the whole country — but the Highlands bore the heaviest burden, where insurgents fought on in the mountains.

2/

Scotland’s case was presented at the UN in Geneva today — not as a “domestic issue,” but as a matter of decolonisation under international law.

Speakers included UN experts, lawyers, and campaigners from Scotland, Africa, Asia, and beyond.
#LiberationGeneva25

1/ Key points raised:

- Union = hostile takeover by England

- Sovereignty lies with the people, not Parliament

- Erasure of Scots & Gaelic = colonial suppression

- Scotland is a dependency

2/

Ìmpireachd air a togail air breugan.

The Myths That Built an Empire

Force took the land.
Myth took the mind.

Here are the biggest lies about Scotland and the Union — and the truths behind them.
🧵👇 1/ 1. The Union Was Voluntary

Myth: Scotland freely joined.

Truth: England threatened blockade & invasion. Elites were bribed. The Scottish Parliament was unconstitutionally dissolved.

2/

Fuadaichean nan Gàidheal. Air an cur às an tìr, fo chumhachd a’ Chrùin!

The Highland Clearances weren’t “internal reform” or accident.

Imposed in annexed Scotland under British rule—enforced by law, army & landlords—a colonial project for imperial profit.

👇🧵 1/ Here’s how clearance worked & why the British State was at their heart.

Annexed Nation,Imperial Logic

After 1707, Scotland was folded into a“British”state on English terms. Sovereignty lay with Crown-in-Parliament. The so-called Union of equals was a sham—it was annexation.

2/

Scotland’s “deficit”, as shown in GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland), isn’t proof we’re too poor.

It’s mostly about how the UK counts money. 🧵
👇🧵 1/ GERS is an estimate, not Scotland’s own accounts.
It builds Scotland’s numbers from UK data, then assigns an estimated share of UK taxes and UK bills to Scotland.

2/

How England’s Early Imperial Development Shaped the Fall of Scotland

Flodden wasn’t just a battle.
It was the start of a disaster cascade that ended with the death of Scottish sovereignty & the eventual rise of a British Empire.

We show you how it began & how it ends.

👇🧵 1/ The Treaty of Perpetual Peace (1502) was England’s dynastic trap.

It married Margaret Tudor — sister of Henry VIII — to James IV of Scotland in return for peace between the two kingdoms.

2/

AFTER CULLODEN

The Jacobite defeat was not the end. It was the beginning of something far darker.

The violence of Culloden expanded outward — into the Highlands, across Scotland, and then the colonies.

This is what happened next...

1/ After Culloden in 1746, Scotland didn’t just lose a battle.

It lost a government.
A language.
A culture.
A path.

What followed wasn’t reconciliation — but occupation, dispossession, and forced assimilation into the British Empire.

2/

AFTER CULLODEN
The Jacobite defeat was not the end. It was the beginning of something far darker.

The violence of Culloden expanded outward — into the Highlands, across Scotland, & then the British Empire.

This is what happened next.
#Culloden #Scotland #Decolonise
👇🧵1/ “On their way into Inverness, Kingston’s—reinforced by the picquet of Cobham’s on the British right—killed everyone in their path, irrespective of age, gender or arms...” Pittock.

Wolfe & others reported that Bland’s men gave no quarter.

/2

Scotland Was Free: The Forgotten Months of Jacobite Sovereignty

🧵👇1/ You’ve been told the Jacobite Rising of 1745 was a doomed Highland rising that ended in disaster at Culloden.

But what if I told you:
For months, Scotland was free.
Administered. Taxed. Governed.
Outside Westminster control.

Let’s recover the suppressed truth:
2/

Richard Murphy Just Demolished the Unionist Argument— Again

He said it plainly:
You can't support Scottish independence without upsetting Unionists &you shouldn't worry about it.

This is for every left of centre voter still clinging to the UK.

👇1/archive.is/pl08M "You won’t change the minds of those in their heartland. All you have to do is work out how to accommodate them in an independent Scotland."

This isn't about convincing diehard Unionists.

It’s about freeing everyone else from a nightmare hard-right UK.

2/

Unionist Tactics & Rules of Engagement

Unionist accounts rarely seek truth.

They seek control: of the narrative, of your attention, of your time.

This thread outlines the most common bad-faith Unionist tactics & the rules of engagement I apply in my threads.

👇🧵 1/ This is about information warfare – if you’ve ever thought Unionists were coordinating – they are.
I’ve analysed the patterns.

If you’re wondering why some replies vanish, why certain people get muted or blocked, or why I won’t “debate” historical facts - read on.

2/

The Proclamations of Charles Edward Stuart: Scotland, Sovereignty, and Suppressed Law

1745. Prince Charles Edward Stuart lands in Scotland. One of his first acts on reaching Edinburgh?

👇🧵 1/ Charles Edward Stuart issued two proclamations from Holyroodhouse.

His purpose? Not merely to rally support — but to reassert sovereignty and end the Union.
Let’s examine what he actually said — and what it meant.

2/

The Suppressed Side of the Scottish Enlightenment

They tell you the Scottish Enlightenment was a product of Union.

They don't tell you what was lost - or what was silenced.

This is the story of the Enlightenment that could have been & how Empire shaped the one we got.

🧵👇1/ The official version celebrates Hume, Smith, Robertson, Reid.

But why is Sir James Steuart — author of the first full treatise on political economy in English — barely mentioned?

Because Steuart was a Jacobite.

And that tells you everything.

2/

Jacobitism: The Suppressed Root of Anti-Colonial Socialism?

You’ve been told the Jacobites were doomed romantics.

But what if some were the first anti-colonial republicans of the modern age?

A suppressed revolution that shaped the modern world - & even Karl Marx.

🧵👇1/ Sir James Steuart Denham - Jacobite exile, political economist, and key influence on Marx.

Expelled from Scotland after the ’45, he wrote from the margins of Empire.

His Principles of Political Economy (1767) predates Smith — but was erased.

2/