The restoration of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 after an absence of almost three hundred years represented one of the biggest constitutional upheavals in British history. Yet, remarkably, it was accomplished purely by means of the ballot box, without resort to bullets or bloodshed. The stateless nation acquired a devolved assembly with powers somewhat analogous to those of an American state legislature. Scotland had contrived, against the odds, to keep alive a sense of nationhood after the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I, and after 1707, when the Scots surrendered their parliament in return for free trade to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Separated from England by a border of mountains and rivers, Scotland has always been a small country, poor in resources and population but rich in history and self-mythologization, which, through time, has forged a strong sense of national identity.