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Parliamentary union was an established motif in the politics of both 17th-century Ireland and 17th-century Scotland. Moreover, ‘incorporating’ union was not merely an airy ideal (or, equally, a threat): for both the Irish and the Scots it had been a Cromwellian reality, however bloody and transient, and however different the resonances in the two nations. Later, the Scots and the Irish Acts of Union were launched against a shared background of European war, political and religious threat, and economic dislocation. Though each union was sanctioned by parliamentarians who were subsequently damned as corrupt in their respective national demonologies, the ‘parcel’ of Scottish and Irish ‘rogues’ in 1707 and 1801 had each exercised a much greater measure of legislative independence in the eighteen years preceding union than any earlier generation of representative. For the English, Scots, and Irish, union was tied up with history, religion, war, political stability, and economic opportunity. But the relative strength and truculence of the national parliaments before 1707 and 1801, particularly in the context of bloody and threatening European conflicts, meant that union was more desirable, indeed necessary, than hitherto for the English government: this strength also meant that the Scots and (to a lesser extent) the Irish now had forms of bargaining position where once there had only been the unanswerable eloquence of English economic and military dominion. This chapter compares this array of contexts, with a view to assessing their impact upon the forms of union inaugurated in 1707 and 1801.

This chapter outlines the historiography of the parliamentary or incorporating union of 1707. It explains what the key issues and points of debate there are for historians, and sets out the arguments that will be developed in The Scots and the Union.

This chapter explores the case for a more formalized United Nations parliamentary assembly, including the potential oversight, accountability, and (ultimately) co-decision roles that such a body could play alongside the UN General Assembly. Given difficulties in expecting national parliamentarians to perform such functions continuously, a UN assembly is found to hold greater potential for promoting key UN system aims in the areas of security, justice, and democratic accountability, even as the existing Inter-Parliamentary Union continued to play some important complementary roles. Learning from relevant global and regional parliamentary bodies, the chapter outlines concrete steps toward developing a parliamentary assembly over time, including the creation of a more informal UN network of UN-focused national parliamentarians in the near term.

The concluding chapter analyses the dramatic events that led to closer, parliamentary union between Poland and Lithuania, and Poland and Royal Prussia in 1569. It shows how, following the death of Radziwiłł Czarny, his cousin Radziwiłł Rudy miscalculated, leading the Lithuanians out of Lublin in protest at Polish intransigence. It recounts how Sigismund August targeted the Lithuanians’ weakest point by incorporating Podlasie, where support for closer union was strong, and the Ruthenian lands, where the Orthodox had been regarded as second-class citizens. Initially reluctant, the Ruthenians accepted incorporation, forcing the Lithuanians to agree what terms they could. It argues that, although Lithuania lost the southern Ruthenian palatinates—half its territory—in one sense they emerged victorious, securing recognition of a union of peoples and of two realms of equal status

In 1930 Barkley attended the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in London and then joined colleagues in visiting the Soviet Union. They were intrigued by the Soviet Five-Year Plan of industrialization in the midst of depression. Barkley returned to the United States furious that President Hoover refused grants to farmers suffering from a terrible drought. He also argued with the administration about the Hawley-Smoot Tariff that pummeled US foreign trade and ended German reparations and hence European payments on war loans. A terrible car accident temporarily removed him from political activity in 1931. He criticized the 1932 Reconstruction Finance Corporation because it funded businesses with no direct help to the thirteen million with no wages. Meanwhile, Hoovervilles--where unemployed lived in shacks--spread across the United States including a large one in Washington, DC. Forceful elimination of the Bonus Army and the capital’s Hooverville reduced Hoover’s chance to gain reelection in 1932. Barkley served as keynote speaker and temporary chairman of the Democratic national convention that selected Franklin D. Roosevelt as the party’s presidential nominee. FDR promised a “new deal for the American people.”

Barkley attended the 1920 Democratic national convention and became acquainted with and campaigned for the party’s vice presidential candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Warren G. Harding and the GOP won the White House, and thus began the era of “normalcy.” The Great War helped turn Barkley into a moderate internationalist who belonged to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and supported the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference. Barkley continued to be a progressive politician, but congenial programs were rare except for the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act. Barkley was a sometime member of the farm bloc but fought the GOP higher tariff, which promised high rates against foreign agricultural imports. He lost his only election when he ran unsuccessfully against J. Campbell Cantrill in the 1923 Democratic primary for the Kentucky governor’s post. In the process, however, he built a statewide organization that enabled him to win the Senate seat from Richard P. Ernst in 1926.