A Historian Reacts - History Summarized: Scotland by Overly Sarcastic Productions

welcome back everyone to another reaction video where we are going to head on back to overly sarcastic productions today and we're going to take a look at their history summarized scotland well you guys know if you've been around the channel very long i talk a lot about my scottish roots according to ancestry dna i am one third scottish so it's somewhere that i'm very proud that part of my family is from and i'm always excited to learn a little bit more about one of my ancestral homeland so let's go ahead and dive right into this one in researching this video i very quickly learned a valuable lesson about how little the scots mess around okay i thought the scots in the english hate each other sure but it can't be that bad honestly so i took a little peruse to see how many times the two actually fought each other and sweet scotland who hurt you english england so be warned the scots throughout history are every bit as bonkers as they come across on twitter and i know you know listen i don't pretend to know all of the ins and outs of the politics of everything with brexit and what's going on in the united kingdom but i know there's a big scottish independence movement uh and i know that some of you who live in scotland who are followers of this channel probably have very strong opinions one way or the other about that i don't obviously uh but at the same time it'll be interesting to see what we can learn in this video to find out why let's do some history this video is brought to you by audible which is a wee bit ironic seen as the scottish language is damn near inaudible around 2000 years ago scotland was inhabited by various tribes of pictish celts living up north herding and minding their own business so when the roman empire swaggered up to try and conquer them they gave those romans a walloping so bad that emperor hadrian built a wall just to make sure that nobody ever tried to conquer them again and you know really cool uh that to this day you can see bits of hadrian's wall all the way along and it wasn't just a wall there were forts along the wall too and a lot of the remains of those forts still exist you know it's always interesting growing up when i thought of celts celts to me were scottish but you know if you learn your history you know that the celts were a big part of mainland europe as well and so it's kind of interesting that you had these pictures celts all the way up here where you had a lot of other celts that were down you know in france and and some of those areas essentially i just don't think you can do this one i've been an assassin for a while now what makes you think oh get that out of here you're right so even though these original celts weren't anything like modern scots it is refreshing to see the national character demonstrated so well at such an early stage rome eventually collapsed but europe reintroduced itself to scotland via christianity and anglo-saxon migrations which coalesced through the seventh century into a few main groups for our purposes the most relevant two are the picts and the scottie where we get the name scotia aka scotland in 843 kenneth mcgowan and yeah so um you know canada has nova scotia which is new scotland when united wisconsin picked in order to create the kingdom of alba the early kingdom had to deal with the vikings and the english in the eight and nine hundreds as land from every corner was getting joined but beyond outside threats there were also constant internal fisticuffs over the crown the quintessential example of the early scottish king is macbeth whom hereafter shall be referred to exclusively as mcboy because that play is haunted and i'm not looking for trouble but when you're talking about the person this is my understanding with having a daughter that's really into theater it's okay to talk about wait it's okay to talk about the guy you don't talk about the play even though they have the same name so if you're referring to the guy macbeth it's okay we just don't talk about the play i think that's how it works speaking of which apple tvs got a new version of macbeth coming out with denzel washington playing macbeth so i'm pretty excited about that he's one of those actors i will watch anything he's in trouble is nearly everything you might know about him from shakespeare is wrong here's why see the scottish crown didn't follow for that matter anything you learn about anybody from shakespeare is probably wrong a strict succession but claimants came to debate who was best fit to rule and this caused constant disputes that escalated into wars so mcboy actually killed king duncan in a battle in the year 1040 and ruled for the next 17 years peacefully generously and successfully in 1057 he died in another battle against duncan's son malcolm kanmore who then assumed the throne all that stuff about murder conspiracies got added by scottish historians centuries later but civil wars over the throne were already a matter of protocol since the kingdom had gotten started mcboy's real life path was actually quite standard but speaking of wonky royal succession crises the next decade brought the norman conquest of england and william the conqueror's second son henry married king malcolm's daughter the family relations are confusing now and they stay that way for the next thousand years so and that's true in any royal family there's so much inbreeding and crossing over and um i mean nobody beats the um the ptolemies in egypt on that but i mean all these royal families intermarried to each other i'm gonna try to avoid specifics where i can for the sake of my sanity but the bottom line is that the king of scotland exchanged notes with his sister the queen of england about culture and statecraft so in the following two centuries scotland picked up some norman tricks like a central bureaucracy a church hierarchy and a curious new language derived from the norman french called scots the native gaelic was still the dominant language in the highlands especially but the lowlands trend the scottish dialect is their revenge against the english language for being so absurd i like that slowly towards the customs of their anglicized southern neighbors the 11 and 1200 saw steady back and forth between scotland and england along the borders in northumbria but not a whole lot of drama until however the king of scotland died in 1286 without a clear air and rather than have all 13 possible cousins duke it out the old-fashioned way they called in the english king i don't think he died without a clear air he died with a very young female heir who then turned around and died pretty young and that's when you go into this crisis where you have the bailiols and the bruces and all these other folks and this is where the braveheart story comes in with william wallace the fictionalized virgin is in braveheart but this is where william wallace comes in and fights and uh then ends up getting executed and then um this really famous scene where you have robert the bruce killing uh john cummin in chur in a church in a place that was supposed to be safe and you know this is the kind of stuff that will come to symbolize scotland the stewards in particular when we get to them i mean just one steward king after another dies some horrible death to mediate the dispute which i don't know seems like kind of a short-sighted and terrible idea unsurprisingly king edward installed the weakest most pliable puppet who would let him treat scotland like a vassal state and that's the thing it's not like scotland really had much of a choice on the whole having edward come in and mediate edward kind of forced himself on them and they really weren't in a position to do anything this is before scotland forms what they call the old alliance auld alliance uh with scotland and france because france kind of becomes the protector of scotland which keeps them from being conquered by england for the next 300 years and when even that pushover got fed up with forfeiting scottish land paying tribute and kneeling to english superiority king edward invaded scotland's dethrones the king and joined the scottish coronation stone back to westminster strong went firmly under the english heel this was frankly terrible so the scots duly rebelled against england under the command of the famous william wallace so that stone this it's spelled s-c-o-n-e but i think it's pronounced like skoon or something like that i'm not very good with my accents i apologize to everyone in scotland for screwing that up um but there's actually under the coronation chair in london uh that they use in westminster abbey there's a slot where they put that stone and up until the last century or so it was still there in in london and they finally just sent it back to scotland but i think they still would bring it down for future coronations who won a victory the battle of sterling bridge in 1297 but lost horrendously at fall kirk the next year and was later executed by england and paraded around scotland in pieces quick fun fact of the many many reasons that the movie braveheart sucks the blue war paint that everybody's wearing is about a thousand years out of style for the scots i wouldn't say braveheart sucks it's a really good movie it's a great movie it's just not historically accurate movie but it's really good uh here's the thing and here's how i kind of view these movies um yeah it bothers me when stuff is blatantly inaccurate for no reason like i get that some things have to be changed to tell a story in a two-hour movie i accept that uh what i don't accept are things that are done that don't have to be done and sometimes that happens with braveheart but braveheart led me to spend weeks studying the will the real william wallace and so it inspired in me the desire to learn more about the real history uh so for that i i'm grateful for it and it is an entertaining movie so you know incredible characters some great acting some uh really cool scenes but no it's not history i mean come on that kind of anachronism is like dressing the cast of the godfather in togas it was after wallace died that robert the bruce took up the mantle of guardian of scotland he had to kill a rival claimants to earn his title but he also earned an excommunication from the pope because apparently murdering somebody in a church is impossible and a mortal sin whatever he was defeated yeah and if you want to see a really good version of that uh that whole story of what happens with robert the bruce in the aftermath of all that uh chris pine playing robert the bruce in i think it's on netflix uh outlaw king fantastic and that's much more sticks to the real history early by edward in 1306 and went into hiding for a year before returning to win the battle of loudoun hill from there he stomped out local rivalries and united scotland fully against the english of the decisive battle of bannockburn in 1314. though the treaties weren't and bannockburn which we've talked about on this channel in fact i'll put a link in the description to my video talking about that uh brilliant brilliant victory by the scottish uh over the english forces and nothing like what it's portrayed in um in the movie braveheart signed for another 15 years robert the bruce won scotland three centuries of independence in that battle quick os pro tip skip braveheart but watch the outlaw king it's better and way more accurate so now outlaw king does still have some flaws like the final battle and outlaw king showing edward ii being there and captured none of that happened but by and large it's a much more accurate film fulfilled his dreams for his kingdom robert died the next year but this was exceptionally poor timing and really unfortunate in the long run because the throne passed to a series of useless kings from the house of stuart for the next several decades through the 13th and 1400s scotland had no real leadership so the local lords started throwing hands or more accurately glamors in this case the warring states were actually the dozens of clans scattered across the low lanes and highlands mercifully england had just gotten sucked into the hundred years war with france so scotland was free to be its own antagonist the way god intended scotland was free to be its own antagonist the way god intended he's got a great point though it's excellent timing for scotland that you know because that infighting that was going on would have been the perfect opportunity for england to march in and take over the country but because england had its issues to deal with with france in the hundred years war it did not have time and by the time england comes out of the hundred years war it goes right into the wars of the roses so now it's got its own clan wars so to speak uh its own basically civil war which with rival factions from the same family uh duking it out and and people on either side deciding which side they're going to be on so in a lot of ways it resembles the clan wars in in scotland clans still held the crown other families like the douglas clan were regularly challenging them for land and power some progress came with king james the first in 1406 who sent 12 000 scotsman to fight with france against england in the hundred years war winning big and returning home in a strong position to consolidate many of the clans under his crown and reform the kingdom unfortunately he got assassinated and it was right back to the season balance of power between kings regions lords and clans and this is what will happen with all of the james's in the stewart line you've got it goes you know james the first second third fourth and sixth then james vi becomes king james the first of england uh and i've done a lot of studying on the stewards because i'm a descendant of james iv through an illegitimate child that he had um so let me show you what i mean about these stewards okay so as we mentioned james the first is assassinated he's chased down through a tunnel which was blocked off on the other end because they were trying to keep tennis balls from getting out and uh so he gets cornered and killed uh but his young son james ii survives uh so let's take a look here that's james the second king of scots he dies at the age of 29. i don't remember how he died oh he was the artillery accident that's right so um so they're firing these cannon on august 3rd he is standing near one of the cannons known as the lion when it exploded and killed him his thigh bone was dug in two with a piece of the misframed gun that break in shooting by which he was stricken to the ground and died hastily so at that point then his son james iii comes to the throne uh james is the third james iii is 36 37 years old uh when he dies he is killed in battle and he's there at campus kenneth abbey i believe he's the only one of the stuart kings in scotland whose grave can still be seen today because all the other ones were in abby's that were later destroyed things like that well james iv i think is his body somewhere in london under maybe like a a tube station or something i don't remember exactly where they think it was but james iv then has killed uh the battle flawden field uh fighting against uh forces of henry viii his brother-in-law uh though henry wasn't there i believe uh his wife catherine of aragon was present for that battle or was the regent at the time because henry was i think over in france uh james the fifth uh then is he the one that uh yeah he dies at the age of 30. so you can see not a long life expectancy um he dies uh following the scottish defeat at the battle of solway moss and then his daughter is mary queen of scots who was executed uh and then her son is james the sixth who is one of the rare ones that dies in natural death uh but then his son is executed so you get the point not good times for the stuart kings even after james the highlander still largely spoke gaelic and paid little heed to the culture or politics of the anglicized royal court in lowlands the king could say whatever he wants down in edinburgh but unless he personally marches up to inverness to tell clan frazier in person to pay their taxes it's not gonna happen and one king even tried that but still nothing happened it's just all very game of thrones for a couple centuries and i mean heck it's at this time that the war of the roses is raging on just down the street and you know what since it's just a big mess anyway i'm gonna speed round through the next 300 years so bear with me and let's get ready for a game of monarchy is volatile let's meet our players one king was really cool and helped reform the government to work for more of scotland james throw into a renaissance capital of learning and culture one queen got the short end of the stick when scotland's parliament voted to convert to protestantism while she was on vacation in france and then she got the shorter end of the stick when england imprisoned her for two decades and then executed her so she wasn't on vacation in france she married the uh the future king of france uh and then he dies really young and then she eventually comes back uh to england where they have her to scotland where they have no interest whatsoever in a catholic queen in newly protestant scotland but she is the heir to the throne in the event that queen elizabeth the first dies and so that's why she's a threat to elizabeth for people who especially catholic people who want to overthrow elizabeth and restore england to catholicism mary is the person they want and so she's imprisoned and then eventually executed there's a whole long story that goes with that that we won't get into right now her son played his cards just right and inherited the throne of england from his cousin the childless elizabeth and then became king of england and scotland his son was so inconceivably bad at being king that his abuses of power brought england and scotland into open rebellion for entirely separate reasons and his reign ended with the british isles locked in 12 years of civil war before everybody called a do-over and gave the crown back to his son one king became king because parliament literally invited him from the netherlands to replace their current monarch it's called the glorious revolution and uh william of orange and his wife mary were actually both grandchildren of the same king um but and first cousins so they jointly rule uh and then of course anne becomes the last stewart uh queen of scotland in england and then he proceeded to strangle scottish trading rights and the last queen on our list tried to be a pal by offering scotland a national union with england to open up trade avenues in exchange for the bargain price of nearly all of their sovereignty i had originally gone way in depth about how all of this stuff went down in my first draft but then i realized you know what royal politics is dumb and confusing and i kind of hate it more than anything else in history i don't think it's dumb but it can be confusing so i'm gonna skip through it yeah yeah one standout event from the mid-1500s is when the king of england tried to drive a wedge between a long-standing alliance between scotland and france the old alliance scotland to their southern english neighbors they did this by pillaging the lowlands and burning edinburgh to the ground you may find that this is a bad way to make new friends the scots came to call the seven year campaign the rough wooing as they did not appreciate being bullied into love and this sentiment and that's in the aftermath of that whole battle of solway moss where you have uh king james dying for centuries way up until the active union in 1707. scotland was suspicious of the queen's offer of partnership and while they'd get one metric british empire out of the deal in the long run the immediate result was england deciding they now had a constitutional right to treat scotland like a colony as you can see this is kind of a recurring problem and it led to two revolts for scottish independence in 1715 and in 1745. and that's if you're a fan of um uh oh what's the name of the show i can't remember off the top of my head but uh they show uh the whole battle of koladen which is part of the jacobite rebellions all of that stuff i'm sure everybody's gonna think of it as soon as i stopped recording i remembered it was outlander okay both failed but the second one spooked england into being slightly less despicable about everything in the next century and a half following the rebellions things turned remarkably for the better as the enlightenment came north writers like walter scott and robert burns helped rekindle the scottish identity and thinkers like adam smith and david hume radically changed european perspectives on rational thought and economics hume claimed that reason was the core of human thought and smith described the benefits of letting people act in their own self-interest this all sounds very profound but don't be fooled the clear scottish subtext to these ideas are the english don't make a damn lick of sense and we'd be better off making our own decisions and so there's this thing a lot of these guys have statues in scotland which makes sense and apparently in glasgow which is one of the places that my family comes from though my family that lived in glasgow they weren't actually scottish they were english they had come from the west midlands gone up to glasgow for a couple of decades ran a pub the old toll and then they go to america from there but apparently a thing they do and i don't know if this is just glasgow or if this is everywhere in scotland they do this where they like to put the orange cones on the heads of the statues so it's just kind of a funny weird thing they do there you can't expect a scottish enlightenment thinker to not bury snide comments at england under two tons of heart academic theory though scotland had long been an educational powerhouse in the following two centuries they also became the industrial heart of the british empire producing such famous doodads as the steam engine the telephone radar mechanical television and also most of the ships in the imperial royal navy and a lot of the cannon as well a lot of these are made in glasgow right there on the river clyde a lot of steel industry there uh just a perfect place to build things nice other happy beneficiaries of the 18th and 19th centuries were the cities of glasgow and edinburgh which built up substantially in the georgia neoclassical style that's glasgow oh i recognize that because um or no that's uh edinburgh castle right right there um yeah i think so see my first thought was that that was glasgow because glasgow has this beautiful glasgow necropolis that is right behind the cathedral and overlooks the city and it's one of the places i'm looking forward to going to the most but i don't think glasgow has a castle like that that's got to be edinburgh castle right um you know somebody from scotland helped me out on that one look really damn pretty funny thing about the edinburgh castle is instead of firing off 12 cannon shots to mark the passing of noon like the english do they just wait one hour and save 11 rounds quickly approaching the modern day now scottish attitudes towards the union grew more suspicious as england seems to care less and less by the decade about what happened up north and the hard forged british identity bums out the window after years of campaigning scotland gained greater autonomy and the right to hold their own parliament in 1999 and the first words spoken there were quote the scottish parliament adjourned on the 25th of march 1707 is here that's awesome i love that and if that is not some big scotland energy right there love it rat me in a tartan plaid and throw me in loch ness because i done i know what it is now if you want to jump into the tumultuous world of medieval scottish murder kings then you've got to go for medieval scottish murder kings i love this guys just wet his approach to history because he's very factual but then he throws in just enough stuff that makes it really funny and so i really appreciate that a lot and i think that's it i think he's just going to be talking about like audible at the end here which by the way i'm working on uh getting my own sponsorship with audible i'm waiting to hear back from them but i think it's going forward very soon so excited about that because i love audible i use it all the time a lot of the research i do for my historical site visits comes from books that i get on audible so um let me know your thoughts i'd love to hear in particular from our scottish friends because i know there are a bunch of you out there so let me know what you think about this did he get it right did it get a good feel for how you feel as a scot use the comment section below and if you have suggestions for other things you'd like me me to react to particularly from overly sarcastic productions let me know i put a link in the description to the original video so you can check that out thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 37,545

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Id: rXpKZjt3eG0

Length: 23min 56sec (1436 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021