Abstract: Migration was part of the human condition throughout history, but in Britain and Ireland it became caught up, as it still is today, in the political project of constructing a British kingdom, a British empire and a British state. That ambition took on new meaning with the accession of James VI of Scotland as King of England and Wales and Ireland in 1603. Although James failed in his attempt to create a union of his Scottish kingdom with England, his accession led to the recruitment of Scottish emigrants into northern Ireland in particular that created a crucible of British identity and purpose that still gives off heat today, and set off the development of a political and commercial empire that changed world history. James of Scotland came to the throne of an England which already exerted imperial authority over Wales and Ireland because a century earlier Henry VII of England married his daughter Margaret to James IV of Scotland, predicting (it has been claimed) that if the match proved to have dynastic implications, the larger and more powerful kingdom would inevitably absorb the lesser. To a certain extent this is just what happened to the man who became James I in 1603, determined to become a King of Great Britain but over the years forced to concede more and more to the importance of his English subjects and the power of their institutions and economy.1
Publication Year: 2004
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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