For many Irish readers, I suspect Scotland disappears from the radar screen sometime in the 17th century when, with the Plantation of Ulster, our closest Celtic neighbour made its last, and most enduring, impact on Ireland. Thereafter, two nations that had once occupied a common cultural space parted ways, separated by political and religious affiliation. Tom Devine's enthralling account of the development of the Scottish nation takes up the story at the time of its Union with England. It chronicles the country's rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, coupled with, by Irish standards, a habit of apparent political quiescence. His analysis prompts inevitable comparisons with Ireland, which the author uses frequently as an external reference point.
If history is shaped by forces that cross national boundaries, where is Scotland's 1798 rebellion, its romantic revolt of 1848, its Fenian movement, its land war, its cultural revival and struggle for freedom? And yet, despite the absence of a coherent independence-movement struggle, Scotland retains badges of identity - the kilt, bagpipe music, Highland culture, football's Tartan Army - every bit as distinctive as our own.
The Scottish Nation reveals that Scotland was affected by many of the pressures that shaped Irish history, but reacted differently to them. There was a radical decade in the 1790s, but the set of circumstances that pushed the United Irishmen into open revolt did not materialise in a country already being shaped by the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the late 18th century. There was sympathy for the Irish cause and an organisation of United Scotsmen, but the main impact was made by Scottish regiments in suppressing the Irish rebellion.
Devine argues that romantic nationalism created a Scottish identity sharply distinguished from England, but without inspiring pressure for self-government. In the hands of 19th-century romantics, the hitherto despised Highland Gael, who had been derided and dispossessed following Bonnie Prince Charlie's defeat at Culloden in 1746, was turned into a Scottish icon. The Scottish Highlands had their 19th-century famine and land war, but these never matched their Irish counterparts.
For most of the period under review, the Union of 1707 suited Scots, who took full economic advantage of the commercial opportunities available, helped run a burgeoning Empire and distinguished themselves in the British Army. Contrasting religious and economic forces shaped Scotland and Ireland's destiny. Presbyterianism became an accepted pillar of Scottish identity, but posed no threat to the Union. The industrial revolution transformed a relatively backward rural society into "the workshop of the world" and gave Scotland an economic stake in the Union.
The analysis of Scotland's early transition to an industrial society holds a special interest from an Irish perspective. The author sees it as a product of the combined availability of markets, capital, labour, technology and enterprise. Perhaps its strongest asset, however, was its land border with England, which underpins much that distinguishes Scotland's experience from Ireland's.
Irish-Scottish links were renewed in the nineteenth century as emigrants flocked to the expanding industrial centres, where they competed for jobs with the Highland Gaels displaced from their own homelands by parallel economic pressures. Sectarian tensions hindered the social integration of Catholics and, as late as the 1920s, there were serious demands for an end to Irish immigration, by then already reduced to a trickle compared with its late-nineteenth-century peak when more than 200,000 Irish-born people lived in Scotland. A visit to Celtic Park, where fans wave the tricolour and sing The Soldiers' Song, demonstrates how a form of Irish identity has been zealously preserved in today's Scotland. Scots also departed in large numbers, at times matching the scale of Irish emigration.
For Irish readers, The Scottish Nation offers a stimulating road map towards an understanding of modern Scotland. It allows Scottish history to be viewed in its own right, and as a valuable comparison with Ireland. In the past, we have, understandably, been preoccupied with "Anglo-Irish" issues. The changed circumstances ushered in by Scottish devolution, of which this book is a reflection, offer scope for a welcome diversification of relations between ourselves and our neighbouring island founded on a fuller appreciation of the complexities of our respective pasts.
Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Consul General in Scotland. His book, A New Day Dawning: a Portrait of Ireland in 1900, has just been published