The Polite Mask of Colonialism: Stephen Gethins’ Book Nation to Nation: Scotland’s Place in the World as a Manual of Submission for a Colonised Scotland
Stephen Gethins’ Nation to Nation: Scotland’s Place in the World, first published in 2021 and revised in 2022 (notably given the Ukraine war), emerges at a moment when Scotland’s struggle for sovereignty is intensifying both within domestic politics & in international consciousness, notably given Scotland's decolonization from the English coloniser started through
@UN mechanisms. The book presents itself as a sober reflection on Scotland’s global role under devolution. In practice, the text functions as a colonial instrument that teaches the colonised how to manage subordination with civility. The rhetoric of modesty, the celebration of culture as compensation, the nice words for the colonial Foreign Office of England which calls Scots/Scotland "English/England" around the world in foreign languages, the invocation of diaspora as "soft power" form part of a pedagogical structure through which obedience is normalised & ambition prohibited. Despite what the polite British MP Gethins from the SNP thinks or in fact doesn't think at all given his devolutionist unionism, Scotland is a colony of England.
Culture as compensation for sovereignty
The book displaces sovereignty with culture. Diaspora networks, Enlightenment prestige, higher education exports are presented as Scotland’s great contributions to the world. (No mention that Scottish universities are under English colonial occupation). This manoeuvre is consistent with colonial discourse, which habitually substitutes cultural pride for political independence. Colonised peoples are encouraged to celebrate their songs, festivals, polite intellectual achievements while sovereignty remains confiscated. Diaspora success is presented as national achievement even when rooted in exile. Anyway, the Foreign Office (FCDO) of England, the foreign policy arm of the English coloniser, has made sure Scotland's powerful diaspora focuses on London & is constantly lied to through England's fictional union, veiling Scotland's colonial condition. Enlightenment legacies are paraded while the fundamental fact of the colonial criminal 1707 Union is suppressed. Such substitution belongs to the structure of coloniality where prestige in culture is permitted to obscure captivity in politics.
Controlled visibility & the theatre of harmlessness
The book highlights Burns Suppers abroad & Scotland Houses in Europe. These are spectacles of controlled visibility, authorised because they are harmless. Burns can be celebrated, tartan can be displayed, & whisky & salmon can be promoted, as long as sovereignty is absent. To confuse this visibility with agency is to mistake spectacle for power. These are colonial practices where festivals & costumes are permitted to the colonised, provided they reinforce subordination rather than threatened it. Scotland has no foreign policy (strategy) since it's an English colony.
The displacement of guilt
The call to “acknowledge Scotland’s role in empire” exemplifies another colonial manoeuvre. The move appears as honesty but functions as displacement. Sovereignty was stolen by force & colonial treaty. Yet, the colonised are asked to confess complicity, transforming victims into accomplices & colonisers into absolved figures. Such rhetorical inversion is central to coloniality: it redistributes guilt away from empire while placing the burden upon the dominated. The gesture mirrors global examples where collaboration by elites was weaponised to deny the reality of colonisation, as in Algeria, South Africa or Goa.
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