By equal measure state-builder and political unifier and ruthless opportunist and bloody-handed aggressor, Alexander II has been praised or vilified by past historians but has rarely been viewed in the round. This book explores the king's successes and failures, offering a fresh assessment of his contribution to the making of Scotland as a nation. It lifts the focus from an introspective national history to look at the man and his kingdom in wider British and European history, examining his international relationships and offering the first detailed analysis of the efforts to work out a lasting diplomatic solution to Anglo-Scottish conflict over his inherited claims to the northern counties of England. More than just a political narrative, the book also seeks to illuminate aspects of the king's character and his relationships with those around him, especially his mother, his first wife Joan Plantagenet, and the great magnates, clerics and officials who served in his household and administration. The book illustrates the processes by which the mosaic of petty principalities and rival power-bases that covered the map of late 12th-century Scotland had become by the mid-13th century a unified state, hybrid in culture(s) and multilingual but acknowledging a common identity as Scots.

This volume centres upon the era conventionally labelled the 'Making of the kingdom', or the 'Anglo-Norman' era in Scottish history. It seeks a balance between traditional historiographical concentration on the 'feudalisation' of Scottish society as part of the wholesale importation of alien cultural traditions by a 'modernising' monarchy and more recent emphasis on the continuing vitality and centrality of Gaelic culture and traditions within the twelfth- and early thirteenth-century kingdom. Part I explores the transition from the Gaelic kingship of Alba into the hybridised medieval state and traces Scotland's role as both dominated and dominator. It examines the redefinition of relationships with England, Gaelic magnates within Scotland's traditional territorial heartland and with autonomous/independent mainland and insular powers. These interrelationships form the central theme of an exploration of the struggle for political domination of the northern mainland of Britain and the adjacent islands, the mechanisms through which that domination was projected and expressed, and the manner of its expression.Part II is a thematic exploration of central aspects of the society and culture of late eleventh- to early thirteenth-century Scotland which gave character and substance to the emerging kingdom. It considers the evolutionary growth of Scottish economic structures, changes in the management of land-based resources, and the manner in which secular power and authority were acquired and exercised. These themes are developed in discussions of the emergence of urban communities and in the creation of a new noble class in the twelfth century. Religion is examined both in terms of the development of the Church as an institution and through the religious experience of the lay population.

The first in a set of four volumes that make up the most complete and comprehensive catalog of every comet observed throughout history.

The Scottish soldier has been at war for over 2000 years. Until now, no reference work has attempted to examine this vast heritage of warfare.A Military History of Scotland offers readers an unparalleled insight into the evolution of the Scottish military tradition. This wide-ranging and extensively illustrated volume traces the military history of Scotland from pre-history to the recent conflict in Afghanistan. Edited by three leading military historians, and featuring contributions from thirty scholars, it explores the role of warfare in the emergence of a Scottish kingdom, the forging of a Scottish-British military identity, and the participation of Scots in Britain's imperial and world wars. Eschewing a narrow definition of military history, it investigates the cultural and physical dimensions of Scotland's military past such as Scottish military dress and music, the role of the Scottish soldier in art and literature, Scotland's fortifications and battlefield archaeology, and Scotland's military memorials and museum collections.