1707 Quotes

“Scotland was not imune to these developments, but since their role in France, Germany, Itay and Poland was to provide the ideological amunition to further political (and sometimes military) advance, there was no obvious use for them in Scotland, given that its polity and economy had already been defined in 1707. As a cosequence, the characteristic tropes of romantic nationalism were, in the Scottish context, diverted into non-political and non-military (in the sense of nationalist struggle) channels. This produced a particularly demented, introverted and sentimental romanticism which, since it could not focus on the future, oriented itself obsessively to the past. To the extent that this introverted nationalism found a contemporary role, it was in the service of British imperialism within which Scottish administrators and soldiers were disproportionately prominent.”
― Colin McArthur, Cinema, Culture, Scotland: Selected Essays