[on the first use of the term Great Britain]Nah, you're confusing this with James VI's promotion of the concept.
Come on, I'm not going to accept that without a reliable reference. Where's your evidence? I can only assume you are pretending that Great Britain is the same term as Britannia. Obviously, one is derived from the other, but they are by definition not the same term. Assuming this is what you were trying to say, Britannia was not simply the Roman term for England. It is derived from a term which referred to the entire British Isles. The Romans used it especially to refer to the island which is now composed of England, Scotland and Wales. When they colonized the island of Britannia, they naturally called their new province Britannia (which is why I assume you feel free to pretend that it only refers to England). But they also continued to use the term Britannia to refer to the island as well.
Doesn't matter; I'm talking about the names of the countries. You think England wasn't diverse either? Ever heard of the British or Norman French languages?
The history of a country is more significant than its name. The British language was very quickly replaced by Old English after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. It's not at all comparable to Scots. As for Norman French, that was the language of a small minority which fused to form the new language of Middle English, which completely replaced both Old English and Norman French. Again, it's not comparable with the co-existent continuous threads of Scotland's linguistic history.
"Scots language" was a creation of 18th century Teutonist supremacists and Lowland nationalists. The language you call "Scots" was virtually always called English, and until the 16th century "Scots" was just the Scottish English word for Gaelic. I think that tells its own story.
Whoever coined the term, Scots seems to be the most widely-used term today. In fact I've never heard anyone use a different term before now. Since I live today and not in the 16th century, I'll use today's term. The fact that some groups wanted to put a particular spin on the Scots language for one reason or another doesn't alter the fact that it has been a major part of Scottish history for a very long time. To call it English would certainly be confusing because it has a similar relation to English as the Scandinavian languages do to each other. It is more than simply a 'dialect' of English. It shares an ancestor with modern English, rather than being a derivation of it.
Well, surely, if the Act of Union is a "legal fiction", so was the formation of England. What you really mean is that Wessex has been in existence since the early middle ages. "England", as it is called, is simply a term made up by Northerners so that the don't have to admit that they were annexed by Wessex. No other explanation can possibly be true.
Haha, very true.
This to me is just nationalistic delusion. It was an annexation - annexation means exactly what Union meant in the early 18th century - joining to a larger more important Kingdom. You were conquered.
Err, that is certainly not the definition of the word 'conquered'!! Conquest requires that something be taken by
force of arms. Much as you want to believe it for some reason, Scotland was not conquered.
The Scots acted like any conquered population - those who cooperated and took advantage of their new opportunities flourished (e.g. merchants, Campbells, etc) those who didn't were crushed (like Jacobite clansmen, nationalists, malt tax evaders, etc).
Actually every population with an authoritarian government acts like that. This is what happened to the English of the period too.
The idea of some lovely joining together where the English agreed to sacrifice their old identity and state for brotherly love would make any non-Scottish historian choke with laughter.
Yeah, cos that's what anybody on this forum has said... talk about creating a straw man
Nonsense. If it was like that, then why did no-one notice? Why did people at the time (not just Jacobites) want to "restore" Scotland? Why did Burns write his little "Parcel o' Rogues" song? Why did/do the Scots regard it as such a "triumph" to "keep" their own law, church and education system?
Because Scotland is much smaller than English, so even with disproportionate influence, power over Scotland would mostly be held by non-Scots. That's one of the reasons that so many people are anti-EU, and why there is a UK Independence Party. Even though the UK has influence in proportion to its size (well, if you ignore things like Luxembourg's ridiculously inflated votes) its still just a minority within Europe, and so the more power that goes to the European Union, the more the UK is controlled by non-British. Of course in the British Union, it is not a community of similarly sized nations, which is why the EU tends to be more palatable to Scottish nationalists than the UK, even though it still means more power going to non-Scots. So Scottish discontent with the union with England is perfectly understandable, but it is not evidence that that union was a conquest, or made Scotland worse off, or was illegitimate or was a legal fiction.
The Union was the triumph of one of the central goals of English "foreign policy" since the reign of Henry II, the acquisition of Scotland.
Yes, that is why the first attempt at full union, with a single kingdom of 'Great Britain', proposed by a Scot, was stopped in its tracks by the
English House of Commons
.
Caljacus, you accuse everyone who disagrees with you of being delusional and having a rose-tined vision. One could just as easily accuse you of having a thoroughly tinted vision, focussed on portraying the union as negatively as possible from a Scottish perspectives and on portraying unionist Scots (or Scots who simply have a more nuanced view of the event and consequences of the union!) as self-deluded dupes, in order to further reinforce and propagate your own views. Nobody made any claims of a glorious 'brotherly' union. Everybody is perfectly aware of the various conflicting perspectives and dissent in history. To me the biggest delusion here is your bizarre insistence that union means conquest. I can only assume you believe that the dictionary is an English invention used to legitimize conquest of Scotland.
On the calgacus being Albanian question: 'Albania', as well as being a country in Eastern Europe, is also an old name for Scotland. He doesn't seem to want to clear that up himself so I thought I'd do it for him.
I do think though that if the "Union" survives, these identities would be better off going. Whether you want them to be compatible or not, in an international community which increasingly defines people in terms of the arbitrary lines of a sovereign state, the concepts of Scottishness, Welshness and Irishness (though not so much English, being the core) contradict Britishness and UKness, since they are perceived as national identities. Just my opinion since you pushed the topic at me... and btw its way off-topic. 
