Norman rivalries

Professor Tom Gallagher's claim that by raising the profile of the Battle of Bannockburn Alex Salmond was "moving from a civic nationalism to an uglier ethnic variety" (as quoted in Peter Jones's Opinion, 31 March) strikes me as historically nonsensical.

The leaders of both sides at that crucial battle – namely Robert de Brus and Edward Plantagenet – were of at least partly Norman descent, as were most of the signatories of the subsequent Declaration of Arbroath, medieval Scotland's declaration of independence.

Hence the Anglo-Scottish conflict was not essentially an ethnic conflict but a political conflict between two nations, one of which (England) was attempting to impose its allegedly civilising imperium on the other (Scotland).

Moreover, as the historian William Ferguson has pointed out in his study of Scotland's Relations with England (prior to 1707), "by the middle of the 13th century 'Scots' was the accepted generic term for all the subjects of the kingdom of Scotland", which consequently was already a multi-ethnic nation whose subjects were of mixed ethnic backgrounds including Celtic, Viking, Flemish and even Anglo-Norman.

As an undergraduate at St Andrews University some decades ago, Alex Salmond actually studied medieval Scottish history, and probably knows all this. It is just a pity the same cannot be said for the good professor.

IAN O BAYNE

Clarence Drive

Glasgow