Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ANDY-J3
So how relevant do you think it might be to compare a post imperial African state with a mediaeval feudal society-I think it would be a case of comparing chalk and cheese.In a feudal society the dominant social class provides the dominant value system,the dominant culture and the dominant language and this filters down through the various social classes.Thereby the values of the social elite are absorbed by the burghers and townspeople and subsequently by the poorer classes.That is what happened in lowland Scotland during the middle ages.If you accept therefore that that process was underway by the time of the wars of independence then it can hardly be questioned that a century later Inglis must have been firmly established in all of the burghs and townships of Fife,Lothians,the Borders and Tayside and into Grampian and Moray.Therefore you are really putting forward an argument that is impossible to support in stating that Gaelic speakers predominated in Scotland after the early modern period.Wikipedia states that Gaelic was supplanted by English by 1200-I would accept that is difficult to support however it wasn't too long after that date when Gaelic speakers ceased to be in the majority in Scotland.
|
I don't accept that the social elites' attempts to anglicise Scotland were successful in allowing English immigrants and English speakers to outnumber Scots in the country of Scotland until at least the 15/16th centuries, which you previously argued for Andy.
I do believe however, that the history of Gaelic in Scotland was re-written from the late 18th century onwards, after the battle of Culloden and once English control had been cemented following the continuous expulsions/emmigration since that fateful day.
Robert Chambers below is an example of the re-writing of history
RObert Chambers (in 1840) wrote about the year 1745 in "History of the Rebellion 1745-6" : " In numbers the Highlanders did not now exceed 100,000, or a twelfth of the whole population of Scotland."
However, according to Charles Withers, "Gaelic in Scotland 1698-1981", in 1808 John Walker calculated from Alexander Webster who used figures available in 1755 that 23% of the Scottish population were Gaelic speakers and to me, that was likely to be an under-estimate, since 1755 was after the new Government had stepped up official oppression.
They had decided that, in and around 1745/6, out of a population of
1, 200 000 around 300 000 had Gaelic as their first language, about a quarter of the total population of Scotland.
Now, if we accept that Gaelic speakers were around a quarter of the population in 1746, and I personally believe the numbers would have been higher, as these figures are based[ on figures supplied AFTER the hostile and victorious English government of the time had consolidated it's control, then it is certainly obvious that Gaelic speakers in Scotland were NOT in a minority around the 13th century or anytime soon after that.
What is very likely, is that they were in a majority until at least 1700, and that the English/British government only started to make real successes in reducing their number around the time that Cromwell was on his bloodletting in the 17th century.
I am grateful to Ronald Black of The Scotsman Newspaper for the above information regarding numbers and of course I am responsible for my own personal opinions.