Britain’s Undoing

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By Jason Michael

GREAT BRITAIN, the political incorporation of England (and England’s Wales) and Scotland under England’s suzerainty, was a move on the part of the Kingdom of England of quite some considerable genius. Making way for a brief period in European history known as l’hégémonie anglaise (1716-35), the eighteenth century architects of the British state – many of whom were truly gifted men – had the foresight to understand that the incorporation of Scotland into England qua Great Britain not only removed a potential colonial competitor, but also ended the possibility of England’s complete encirclement by hostile continental powers in the context of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-11) – a time of real danger for the English state and the future of its apotheosised Protestant succession. Effectively swallowing Scotland, which at the time was in a regnal union with its southern neighbour, closed the backdoor to…