The Aftermath of the Auld Alliance: Franco-Scottish attitudes from the Union of the Crowns to the age of romanticism

The ‘special relationship’ between Scotland and France goes as far back as the 13th century and even, according to myth, to the reign of Charlemagne. The formal alliance of 1295, however, brought together two very different countries—geographically, linguistically and culturally—against a common enemy: England. This community of interests gave rise to military and political cooperation, and a constant flow of travellers, students, soldiers, merchants, and diplomats. But Marie Stuart’s defeat by the Protestant nobles was followed by the ascent to the throne of her much less Francophile son James VI, who went on to succeed Elizabeth I on the throne of England. Thus, while the Stuarts retained their close links to France, to the French they had now become the English. Why, then, does the Auld Alliance continue to resonate so much, so long after it lost its original purpose? This talk explores French and Scottish reciprocal perceptions after the 1603 Union of the Crowns. It shows first how the formal political alliance continued as an informal dynastic alliance between Bourbon and Stuart monarchs, before going on to show its legacy in the years of Jacobitism and the Anglo-French wars of the 18th century. It then traces the emergence of a new cultural affinity in the Romantic period. How, it concludes by asking, do we still remain heirs to this longstanding pattern of mutual appreciation and exchange and what is its promise for the future?

Clarisse Godard Desmarest is Professor of British Cultural Studies at the University of Picardie Jules Verne, in Amiens.