1320, 1776 and All That: A Tale of Two ‘Declarations’

Abstract

Founding documents are parsed, revered and preserved but they can also be misread, mythologised and overlooked. This article examines the entangled fates of the Scots Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the US Declaration of Independence (1776) at a moment between the seven-hundredth anniversary of the one in 2020 and the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the other in 2026. It shows that the two ‘declarations’ were both diplomatic texts, rhetorically shaped, and part of sequences of similar documents that have otherwise been largely overlooked. Some recent commentators have suggested that Arbroath influenced the US Declaration; on the contrary, the article argues that the Declaration influenced Arbroath, at least in its reception and its construction as an alleged charter or ‘declaration’ of Scottish ‘independence’. I conclude by presenting fresh evidence for the presence of Arbroath in Philadelphia in 1776, to reflect on the sometimes surprising ways in which documents become, or do not become, foundational.