Five moments in Scotland's story

The BBC, says The Islingtonian, has decided to have a poll to find the most significant events in Scotland's history. To kick it off The Islingtonian commissioned a number of Scots 'celebrities' to name their top five. It's depressing reading.

I see the Margo McDonald and Ian Rankin both thought modern football successes were significant historical events. Perhaps this was supposed to be 'clever' or 'post modern'. Intellectual pigmies, ignorant of their own past. I see nobody mentioned the failure of the Compagnie of Scotland, without which there would have been no Act of Union. Only Andy Marr mentions Flodden Field. I see that Wendy Alexander thinks St Columba brought Christianity to Scotland... only three hundred years after St Ninian did. Although, of course, Scotland didn't exist as a political entity at the time.

It's not a good record. Scotland's elite, at least, seem woefully ignorant of Scotland's history. So, for what it's worth, here's my list:

1. OK, the Wars of Independence are critical, not because they separated 'Scotland' from 'England', but because they forged 'Scotland' as a single identity. Malcolm the Fourth addressed his charters to '...omnibus hominibus tocius terre sue Francis et Anglicis Scotis et Galweiensibus...'. Only a minority of people in his realm considered themselves Scots. During the Wars of Independence our heroes were William the Welshman and Robert de Brus, a Norman. But after them we had changed the way we thought of ourselves. The people of Galloway and Strathclyde no longer saw themselves as Welsh (even if they still spoke Welsh); the people of Lothian no longer Anglians. 'Scot' ceased to be the identity of a particular ethnic group and became the identity of the whole mongrel amalgam; the separate ethnic and regional identities were welded together into something new.

2. The second critical moment for me is the failure of the Compagnie of Scotland. Had it been well judged and well planned it would have been a desperate gamble; because it was ill-planned it was essentially hopeless. But it was the last great throw of Scotland as an independent nation, and if Scotland could have gained control of the Panama isthmus then Scotland could have become a colonial and mercantile power on the world stage in much the same way as Holland - a country with no greater natural strength - was able to do. It wouldn't have been completely impossible. Spain was in decline and no longer as able to project force at distance as she had been two hundred years before. If the colonists had been better prepared for the environment they were going into, if the site of the colony had been a little better planned, then it's possible that a secure and defensible colony could have been built. The isthmus is a very difficult environment, and disease would inevitably have been an issue - but the potential prize, control of trade between the Pacific and the Atlantic, was enormous.

   And the consequences of failure were devastating both for the nation's wealth and for its self confidence. The country was essentially bankrupted; the national debt was unmanageable and the currency was in free fall. It was in this hiatus that the Act of Union was passed.

3. After that... there's something in the coming of Calvinism. I can't put my finger on a single event; possibly Knox preaching in St Giles and the consequent iconoclasm. But Calvinism had a major impact both on the Scots psyche and on Scots education. At a time when one person in ten in England - or in Europe - could read and write, nine people in ten could in Scotland, and that's part of what started Scotland's great outflow of educated, talented people that continues to this day. It's also left us with a legacy of complacency about our education system, which may have been outstanding once but isn't now, as this poll amply demonstrates.

   In the Scotsman article Andy Marr, Tom Devine and Wendy Alexander all point to the Enlightenment as one of their 'most significant events'; and, of course, it was. But I think it needs to be seen against this background: Scotland had greater intellectual ferment than anywhere else in Europe, because Scotland had a critical mass of educated people, not just from mercantile and aristocratic classes. The Enlightenment was just one of the benefits of that critical mass.

4. Scotland has over the centuries punched far above her weight in the development of technology. This is reflected in several of the Scotsman's celebrity lists: Margo MacDonald talks about Fleming and Penicillin; Ian Rankin talks about the Forth Bridge. Great events no doubt. But to represent all Scotland's inventors and technologists I'd like to praise John Napier, the inventor of logarithms and of 'Napier's bones', the precursor of the slide rule and as such one of the most significant steps in the development of automated computation.

5. During the Enlightenment Scotland's intellectual elite rejected the notion of Scotland. They took elocution lessons to learn English, despising the Scots language; they called themselves North British. They were offended the George, Prince Regent (later George IV) wore a kilt in Edinburgh, thinking it 'primitive' and 'savage'. At the end of the eighteenth century that began slowly to turn round. People ceased to be ashamed to call themselves Scots. People started to develop a new pride in the identity of Scotland. The project of an independent Scottish nation began to get back on its feet. What was the turning point? Lots of little things, of course; but, to take one, let's point to Rabbie Burns and Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn.