History Lesson - It's about time!!

Bread and Roses comes from a slogan used by (young?) women textile workers during the Lawrence, Masachusetts strike of 1912. Faced with crushing work hours, inadequate pay and unsafe conditions, the facotry women made history by winning important concessions for themselves and for over 250,000 other textile workers. Bread and Roses symbolizes the universal need for sustenance and the beautiful things that life has to offer.

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[Croghan27]

If any one watches The History Channel there is an interesting program partially hosted by Stephen Hawking from the BBC on British scientists. Beginning with the advent of the Industrial Revolution (itself damn near a British invention) all the major names in science are from Britain/Scotland.
 
Then the scientific focus moves westward to the new world.
 
Now, it seems it is moving back east and even farther west - so far west it is in the east. 
 

The US is no longer a "colossus of science" according to a new report looking into the country’s scientific output. Written by information-services provider Thomson Reuters, it says that although the US still holds a "commanding" lead in terms of its research impact, its forerunner status is being eroded. The report blames this on a rapid rise in scientific publishing from countries in Asia and Europe.

Judging on the number of scientific papers published, America is still very impressive .... but places like China/Japan and even Europe with CERN as challenging the supremacy.

[Croghan27]

Okay - I sucked big time speaking of Culloden. So this time I am going to let someone else do it.
 
I am not a big fan of Daily Kos. Today they have a substantial essay on Culloden, Scotland, England and what is called the British Isles.
 
As with all things, class played a commanding part in the history.
 
 

In 1746, Cumberland, the Scottish Whigs, and the Hanoverian nobility engaged on a campaign of rape, murder and forced assimilation to destroy the culture of Highland Scotland, even as Lowland Scotland was being made acceptably British [I intentionally did not use the word Anglicize, because the people of England opposed the British Union as much as the Scots did. The loss of self determination was not something done by England to Scotland, it was something done by perfidious Englishmen, Welshmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen to England, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, and Wales in the service of a German King. It was a crime comitted by Unionists upon five unique Cultures, at cost to all of them a large part of their cultural distinctiveness.]

[skdadl]

Too tired to read whole thing tonight. Obviously written by an enthusiast, and I probably agree with some of the analysis, except it is just plain wrong to call the Hanoverians Germans. James the First of one and half a dozen of the other (James I of England was James VI of Scotland) and every single British monarch since have been direct descendants of Mary Stuart -- unless you're a sexist, and don't believe James's daughter counts in the succession.

I'm also flummoxed by the claims about all those Scottish "Episcopalians." I'll have to check that out, but that is news to me -- sounds like an American spinning things his way. The Highlander Jacobites weren't all Catholics still by the time of Culloden -- many had become Church of Scotland -- but that guy is using Merkin language to describe them, and I don't think he's right.

Interestingly, it is often the Catholic Highland areas that survived the Clearances, mainly b/c their lands weren't fit for industrial sheep farming. Lochaber, eg, which is a jumping-off point to Skye, is dramatically divided between flat marshlands and fierce mountains, and one of the things you notice when you first drive into it is how many RC churches there are. A number of the islands remain RC; a few others are "wee Frees," meaning extreme prohibitionist CofS -- ie, the Catholics let you drink and the wee Frees don't.

[Croghan27]

I too noticed the 'Episcopalians' and thought how American - but I know nothing about the derivation of the word, knowing it meant High Church members and definitely not Church of Scotland members, I skimmed over it.
 
He emphasis's that class nature of the conflict - pointing out that the English troops (Welsh, Scot, Irish, and from Cornwall) were every bit as 'used' as were those of 'Charlie'.
 
Usually I do not pay a lot of attention to included videos but the one in this article is about modern Scottish nationalism, and done in a style that is engaging.

[skdadl]

Just looking at the roots, Episcopalian and Presbyterian refer to different kinds of structures -- "episcopy" means government by bishops, and "presbyteries" (at least in CoS trad) are little more than district administrative organizations that come together in national conferences, which have a "moderator," but that's as close to leadership as they get. They're definitely almost opposite structures.

As far as I know, though, "Episcopalian" is commonly used to describe the church only in the US (here they're "Anglicans"); "Presbyterian" is generally NA, except there are so many different branches, some evangelical, who've taken the word elsewhere, espec Latin America. In the UK they are CoE and CoS, one an "established" church (in England), the other not b/c dissenting religions reject hierarchical structure, including links with the state.

[Croghan27]

Last year I tried to make my way through an 18th century Scottish novel about Presbyterianism. The central tenant of the belief was the limited number of places in Heaven and the competition to acquire one of these places was cruel, heartless and unforgiving.
 
It has changed into one of the most progressive bodies of thought in the religious (or any other) sphere. My father began as a Presbyterian in Canada, a church that (mostly) morphed into the United Church of Canada.
 
Another church that does some very good things both in Canada and outside.
 
(The book was so dense and unreadable I left it at an neighbourhood cafe's Take-a-book: Leave-a-book shelf.)

[skdadl]

The CoScotland and the Presbyterians in the US have done more splits through their history than your average gymnast. It is bewildering. They've always been anti-hierarchical, but there has also often been a fearsomely judgemental, Calvinist side to them, sometimes having to do with theories of the "elect" and how you tell who those are, but that's only some, not all.

The Canadian church was and remains pretty mild -- as far as I know, their only restructuring came at the time of the union. Don't know why some stayed out. My dad's sisters remained Presbyterian, but nobody ever talked to me about being "elect."