In this fresh and challenging look at the origins of the United Kingdom, Michael Fry focuses on the years which led up to the Union of 1707, setting the political history of Scotland and England against the backdrop of war in Europe and the emergence of imperialism. He rejects the long-held assumption that the economy was of overwhelming importance in the Scots' acceptance of the terms of the Treaty, showing how they were able to exploit English ignorance of and indifference to Scotland to steer the settlement in their own favour. The implications of this have influenced the dynamics of the Union ever since, and are only being fully worked out in our own time.

Michael Fry was educated at Oxford and Hamburg Universities. He has held academic positions in Scotland at Strathclyde and Edinburgh Universities, in the US at Brown University, and in Germany at Leipzig University and the Max Franck Institute, Frankfurt. He is the author of ten books on modern Scottish history, including The Dundas Despotism (1993), The Scottish Empire (2001), Wild Scots, Four Hundred Years of Highland History (2005) and Edinburgh, a History of the City (2009). He has contributed to most major Scottish and British newspapers, and has been a regular columnist for The Scotsman, the Herald and The Sunday Times.