39. Great Britain

It's time for a new country. Time to shake off the old bickering small nations around the island of Britain. It's time for Great Britain to emerge as a powerful new player on the world stage, bringing together Scotland on the one hand and England-and-Wales on the other. Though the fact that Wales is already just an adjunct of England shows what's likely to lie in store for Scotland down this road.

How did Scotland get bought, browbeaten and bribed into joining a union with England? Well, by being bought, browbeaten and bribed. This episode investigates the steps that took it there. And how Queen Anne's assertion of deep-rooted Englishness was a reliable indication of what was to come in the future, when Scotland gave up even the pretence of independence.

Illustration: The King’s Colours, merging English and Scottish flags into one, before the Irish cross was added to make the modern Union JackMusic: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License