SCOTLAND SUPPLEMENT II - A joint oppressor Left nationalists are in thrall to a bogus history, argues Jack Conrad. Scotland was not subject to an English takeover with the 1707 Act of Union. Nor does Scotland suffer from English cultural imperialism Europe’s first nations had an embryonic existence, which for the sake of neatness is usually dated back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Here we have fertilisation, eg, Geoffrey Chaucer and his use of Middle English in works such as Tales of Caunterbury (1400). At the time the prestigious languages in England were Norman-French and Latin. Chaucer’s Middle English reflected the growing importance of market relations: ie, circulation, and the rise of capitalism. He was the first author of standing to use many common English phrases and words: ‘add’, ‘agree’, ‘desk’, ‘dishonest’, etc. Because of the printing press, by the early 16th century, his writings gained a mass audience amongst the educated minority. All part of a wider process of establishing and disseminating a standard English.