This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

I’ve lost count of the number of historians and educators I’ve interviewed for The Herald who are dismayed at just how poorly Scotland understands its own past when it comes to empire.

Collectively, the brightest minds in our best universities agree that Scotland was not a victim of empire, but quite simply an enthusiastic ‘junior partner’ – that’s the phrase repeated most often. England was the big boy, but we were there happily tagging along.

And it wasn’t just rich and powerful Scots, it was ordinary Scots too. Middle-class Scottish men were often the backbone of the empire, as the high level of their education – when Scottish education was still something to boast about – made them perfect engineers and administrators.

They also made up the bourgeois class back home trading in the colonial goods which made cities like Glasgow boom.

Working-class Scots did the grunt work of empire – but it was better than labouring in factories or fields. Empire offered working-class Scots the chance to make their fortune.

Frankly, we were up to our armpits in empire, and inevitably all the unpleasant stuff that went along with colonisation: namely, killing and exploitation.

That’s just a matter of fact. Like it or loathe it, support it or revile it, Scotland and empire go together like peas........

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