A Union For Empire

This volume of essays explores for the first time the intellectual context of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. Challenging the received view of the Union as a simple political job, it argues instead that the Union was a landmark in the history of political thought. The opening contributions investigate the ideas of union, universal monarchy and empire current in Europe and Britain before 1707. There follow chapters devoted to intellectual and religious developments in Scotland between the Restoration and the Union, before attention is focused on the issues of sovereignty at the centre of the Union debate itself. The volume concludes by studying the aftermath of the debate in eighteenth-century discussions of Britain's relations to Ireland and the North American colonies. Underlining the vitality of Scottish intellectual life before the Enlightenment, the volume also gives unprecedented attention to the English view of the Union, to its European setting and to its consequences for the subsequent understanding of the British Empire. The result is a major contribution to the history of British (including Anglo-Irish and American) political thought, and more generally to the history of ideas of union and empire, which will be of wide interest.

This volume of scholarly essays explores the ideas of union and empire current at the time of the Union between Scotland and England in 1707. It demonstrates for the first time the wider significance of the Union in Europe and throughout the English-speaking world. It is a major contribution to the growing interest in "British" history, but should also be of considerable interest to all students of political and economic unions, a subject of increasing importance and obvious relevance in contemporary Britain, Europe and North America.