Category=JPF
Category=NHD
Declaration of Arbroath
Declaration of Independence
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Medieval Scotland
Monarchy
Nationhood
Poltiical ideologies
Scottish History
Sovereignty
Product details
- ISBN 9781399512619
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Dec 2022
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Can anything new be said about the Declaration of Arbroath? This volume says there can.In 1977 Grant Simpson published a seminal article in the Scottish Historical Review: which asked if 'anything conceivably new can be said about a document so well known in Scotland as the Declaration of Arbroath?' The contributors to this volume demonstrate that there can. The text of the Declaration, written in 1320, followed closely an Irish prototype and was structured in the fashion that was expected at the papal court, where the letter was sent. It drew heavily on political ideologies and legal concepts with which English and continental intellectuals were familiar. And it was brought to papal attention through diplomatic means and practices which were commonly understood across Europe. Although the Declaration disappeared from political discourse in the centuries which immediately followed its dispatch, its rediscovery from the later seventeenth century is traced in hitherto unprecedented depth. Its relevance was not just to Scotland. The question of whether it influenced the American Declaration of Independence has oft been mooted but is here closely investigated. Today the Declaration remains a controversial document, inspirational to many, misappropriated by others, and even feared by some.Sharper focus on context; new textual analysis; unsurpassed investigation of the afterlife of the declaration in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
David Ditchburn is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at Trinity College Dublin.
