Lowland Scotland

Lowland Scotland — the engine of Scottish nationhood. Anglian and Scots-speaking, shaped by the medieval burghs, the Calvinist Reformation kirk and the Enlightenment of Hume and Smith, it has always had more in common linguistically and religiously with northern England than with the Gaelic Highlands. Industrialised early around Glasgow's shipyards and engineering and Edinburgh's law and finance, the Central Belt holds most of Scotland's people. It produced the Scottish Enlightenment, the engineers of the Industrial Revolution, and figures from Adam Smith to Robert Burns — and it is here, home both to the 1707 Union and to the modern independence movement, that Scotland's constitutional future is decided.

• Existed: 1124 CE – present
• Type: Entity