Open research questions in Scottish History and National Identity
26 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 1,521 Scottish History and National Identity papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.
What the literature leaves open
vis-à-vis the military population. Even more significantly, there was a notable shift in the Kirk’s legal ground for disciplining soldiers: when persisting local grievances prompted the Assembly again to seek redress in 1724, it merely asked the commanding officers to suppress vices ‘by a due Execution of the Articles of War against Immoralitys’, without any reference to its own discipline or the royal proclamations.75 This was a clear admission that the army had become an extra-judicial space in Scotland: it was subject first and foremost to military, rather than ecclesiastical, laws. IV. The 1710s and 1720s, therefore, saw the Kirk retreating from its former claim of authority over the army. Nonetheless, this did not mark the end of its military influence entirely. Once the Kirk accepted that the military authorities had ultimate say in religious matters pertaining to the army and stopped contesting this head-on, a new phase of Kirk-army cooperation in supplying preaching to soldiers began. In particular, the Kirk’s political situation somewhat improved after the failed Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The majority of nonjuring Episcopalians were Jacobites and many had joined the rising, leading to new legislation and state reprisals against nonjuring meetinghouses.76 In Glasgow, English army chaplains became the only qualified Episcopalian preachers and continued to encounter local hostility despite their legal status.77 Meanwhile, the Whig ministry of Robert Walpole and Charles Townshend, second viscount Townshend, in London recognized the ‘Highland problem’ – a perceived lawlessness that had kept Highlanders in a state of rebellion – and appointed George Wade as commander-in-chief in 1725 to pacify the region. For this purpose, Wade raised new Independent Companies as a policing force and started an ambitious barrack and road-building 74 Stirling, Stirling Council Archives, SBC11/5, Stirling Burgh Council Minutes (1703– 1721), 26 May 1711. 75 NRS, CH1/1/30, Register of General Assembly (1720–1725), 500–1. 76 See, for example, TNA, SP 54/37/10B; SP 54/37/42A, B; SP 54/37/48B. 77 Wodrow, Analecta, 3: 256; 4: 19, 26.
The Kirk in Retreat: The Multi-Confessional British Army and Presbyterian Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland · 2026 · DOIPatrick Gordon’s Ukrainian period is poorly researched, and most of the records representing the Scotsman’s stay in Ukrainian lands in 1667–1677 and 1678–1684 have been lost.
The Activities of the Scotsman Patrick Gordon in Kyiv (Based on the Materials of the Diary of 1684–1685) · 2024 · DOIThis final analysis of history and memory does much also to explain why the topic of occupation has not been fully explored before, and it helps situate the book not only within the larger historiography of the American Revolution but also within the growing trend of reexamining how and why we remember the past as we do, including investigations into the use of history for nation-building and myth creation.
Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution by Donald F. Johnson · 2022 · DOIAlthough several historians have seen a connection between this rebellion and a slightly earlier one, which reportedly occurred in the north and was also led by someone known as Robin of Redesdale, it remains unclear what relationship if any there was between the two Robin of Redesdale rebellions and other northern uprisings in the spring and summer of 1469.
It is argued that explanations which invoke Scottish male chauvinism and misogyny alone are insufficient, and that the marginalization of women in Scotland is produced both by male domination within Scotland, and by English cultural and political hegemony within the UK.
Beyond the shadowy conspiracies that have long fascinated researchers, little is known of the role of Jacobite sentiment in the political life of England between 1688 and 1702.
Although there is some truth in the comment made by Canon Barnett, rector of St Jude's, Whitechapel, and founder of Toynbee Hall, that the issue in 1909 of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws “may mark the beginning of a new epoch in our social life”, the precise reasons for the appointment of the Commission on December 4th, 1905, are not yet known.
The revival of the Foxite opposition from the demoralizing effects of its rupture of 1792-1794 and the subsequent secession of 1797 is an important and not fully understood episode in Great Britain's political history.
It remains to be said that the members of the Synod were liberals on the question of civil rights. Since the field was sparsely settled and often recently inhabited, the Presbyterian form of the ‘call’ was often a hindrance to the rapid and effective settlement of a minister.
Looking back on his tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1771 to 1782, Lord Sandwich considered that one of his most important accomplishments was the introduction into the royal dockyards of task work for shipwrights — “a matter very little known in the world, but the only material improvement … which will enable us to build and repair a much larger number of ships.
Similarly, historians of the earlier period, although precluded by lack of evidence from asking all of Van der Poel's questions and although not inclined to link the Raid and uprising into a single master plan, did, with few exceptions, address themselves to the question of Chamberlain's responsibility as an accomplice of the Raid and uprising.
The difficulty in judging the value of the book - which lies entirely in this section and in the last chapter where he collects what little is known about the subsequent history of the survivors of the Third Reich and its satellites - is the impossibility of assessing the author's reliability without corroboration, which is often unobtainable.
Yol. XXZZI, N o. 6‘ rose, but so did the imports. The latter, moreover, increased a t a rate even faster than they had before the war, and tlie gulf between goods exported and goods imported yawned still more capaciously. ‘l’liis gave rise to the fear that Great Britain could no longer pay her way. What has been the situation for Britain’s great prewar export, coal? Tliis industry, like its three compeers, textiles, iron and steel, and ship-building has been under severe and continuous attack for wasteful, inefficient, and old-fashioned methods of production. T h e coal industry has had almost constant trouble with tlie miners, lias gone through two disastrous strikes, has had to be rescued and subsidized by the government, and is said to suffer from excessive and hopeless competition. Tlie export track is believed to have suffered grievously from both foreign competition and a lessened foreign demand for coal. German coal exported to Continental countries on reparations account and sold also under the advantages of a depreciated currency undoubtedly affected the British coal trade adversely. The latest competitor of the industry is Poland, which, opcrating with clieap labor in the mines of Upper Silc5in may affect the sale of British coal in tlie Scandinavian market. There is also said to be a lesqened demand for coal. This is due in part to tlie substitution of petroleum and electricity. Such substitution is bound to come in certain regions and for certain purposes. I n Italy and Scandinavia, for example there are great possibilities for liydroclectric development. On the west coast of South America oil lias displaced coal entirely, and other oil-bearing regions like the Persian Gulf may in the future affect tlie consumption of coal. On the other hand, it is very easy to exaggerate the importance of substitution, and certainly statistics do not so far permit any sweeping generalization on the subject. Italy and Scandinavia are still very large consumers of importcd coal. Oil has by no means come to be an important rival of coal as a fuel for ships. Even in the Indian Ocean. favorably situated in relation to the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, and where a great mass of shipping is normally bound in the East-West traffic, oil is not uscd to any degree as fuel for vessels. There are other vital factors involved in this question of substitution. Oil reserves are more easily exhausted than coal beds. T h e physical cost of production of coal is more stable than that of oil.
Birks's title (though such supplementary infor- b y mation is scarcely called for) by stating that it is his g object to give a full and complete solution, in a form u quite intelligible to plain English readers, of the Elohistic e s question, or the objection raised against the unity and t o genuineness of the Book of Genesis from the use of the n two Divine Names.
British imperial interest in North Africa during and immediately post the Napoleonic era remains under-studied and misunderstood within both British diplomatic and imperial history.
This is understandable: personal papers for him are scarce; his was not a particularly attractive personality; and historians have placed their focus elsewhere on the grounds that his involvement with the movement was more limited in time and, they think, in significance than that of other leaders.
Abstract Julia Griffiths' significance during the early 1850s is widely acknowledged, but little is known about her before or after her extended visit to Rochester.
From the closing decades of the 17th century, however, a different set of circumstances had already led to a comparable revolution in Scotland which, although little known, is one of the decisive turning points for the transition in Western Europe.
During the twentieth century the number of ecclesiastical officers in the legislature dwindled, until today only the lord bishop survives, and his position remains controversial.
For a country whose church was known for being socially influential, Scotland's ecclesiastical history remains a rich and yet relatively underresearched field.
BOOK REVIEW: Lesley A. Orr Macdonald.<b>A UNIQUE AND GLORIOUS MISSION: WOMEN AND PRESBYTERIANISM IN SCOTLAND, 1830-1930</b>. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2000. · 2003 · DOIOne underexplored variable that affected the shape and diversity of the Protestant and Reformist critique of Anglican Toryism was ethnic identity, which often found its primary expression through religion.
Covenanter Democracy: Scottish Popular Religion, Ethnicity, and the Varieties of Politico-religious Dissent in Upper Canada, 1815-1841 · 2003However, detailed academic studies of anti-Methodist protests remain scarce, and the strong correlation between these and other examples of popular hostility towards other deviant religious groups, such as Catholics, Nonconformists and Jews, remains understated.
No comprehensive history of British political thought in this period has to our knowledge been written, and it is an open question of what it should consist and what its organizing themes should be.
In some degree, this is now widely conceded, but the significance of this moderation is not as clear as it ought to be, because its nature is not understood.
Although some of the political implications of the standing army controversy have been suggested, historians have not investigated the part played by William.
Most-cited papers in Scottish History and National Identity
- I. History and Ideology in the English Revolution · The Historical Journal · 1965 · 66 citations
- POLITENESS AND WHIGGISM, 1688–1732 · The Historical Journal · 2005 · 16 citations
- ‘In a pure soil’: Colonial anxieties in the work of Francis Bacon · History of European Ideas · 2006 · 16 citations
- Scotland: Birthplace of passive revolution? · Capital & Class · 2010 · 15 citations
- Understanding Women in Scotland · Feminist Review · 1998 · 12 citations
- The Introduction of Task Work into the Royal Dockyards, 1775 · Journal of British Studies · 1969 · 10 citations
- Jacobitism and Country Principles in the Reign of William III · The Historical Journal · 1987 · 9 citations
- Hampton Court Re-visited James I and the Puritans · The Journal of Ecclesiastical History · 1982 · 9 citations
- The History of British Political Thought: The Creation of a Center · Journal of British Studies · 1985 · 7 citations
- A Dominant SNP in a Unionist Scotland? The 2019 UK General Election in Scotland · The Political Quarterly · 2020 · 7 citations
Most recent work
- Soldiers, military settlements, and ideas of progress in the British empire, <i>c.</i> 1750–1840 · Journal of Global History · 2026
- Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and his Hospital: Military Identity, Veterans and the Elizabethan Church, 1571–1603 · Studies in Church History · 2026
- The Kirk in Retreat: The Multi-Confessional British Army and Presbyterian Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland · Studies in Church History · 2026
- Scotland, Union, and the French Revolution : an intellectual history of the debates concerning social order and commercial society in Scotland, with a final chapter concerning Ireland, c. 1771–1805 · Open MIND · 2026
- Colonel Romsey: the life in full · Historical Research · 2026
- Migrations of Manuscripts 2025 · The Journal of Legal History · 2026
- Trustees, Deacons, and Deaconesses: The Temporal Role of the Shaker Sisters, 1820-1890 · Communal Societies · 2026
- ‘Globalization’ and the dream of progress · Modern British history. · 2026
- A Short History of the English Revolution and the Civil Wars · Midland History · 2026
- ‘A Very Considerable Innovation’: The Introduction of Ancillary Workers to the Probation Service in England and Wales, 1968–1979 · The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice · 2026
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