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Exploring Scotland's history
Exploring Scotland's history
Exploring Scotland's history
Exploring Scotland's history
This campaign is closed
Caledonia
Exploring Scotland's history
Exploring Scotland's history
Exploring Scotland's history
Exploring Scotland's history
Exploring Scotland's history
Most of us are familiar with a few snapshots from Scottish history. Characters like Mary Queen of Scots and William Wallace crop up time and again alongside key events such as the Glencoe Massacre or Culloden. However, the broad brush of Scotland's history gets a lot less exposure and many remarkable events and fascinating lifestyles go largely unexplored.
This project aims to make it straightforward and enjoyable to get a grasp on how the overall story fits together and explores highlights just waiting to be dragged out into the open. The content sets out to make more of Scotland's story highly accessible by presenting the past through lashings of colour artwork; very readable, relatively short accounts; and focusing on events which brought change. As a Scottish historian, experienced content developer and contract university lecturer, I'm trained for the work involved and a sizeable share of the heavy lifting has already been done in terms of preparing artwork and making detailed notes.
Contributors are being asked to support and take a bit of a journey into the past for themselves. At the same time they are contributing to a resource, which offers a series of stepping stones towards widening access to Scottish culture, protecting cultural diversity and building authentic accounts.
Funding goes towards taking the current pool of raw materials, expanding it further and turning the whole lot into as polished a presentation as possible. Having prepared e-books before I'm aware how much can be done to deliver good quality content under your own steam - and how much more can be achieved with greater flexibility in terms of time, materials and kit.
The titles arrive as PDFs with standard US Letter pages, UK English and full page, colour illustrations. The text is 18-20 pt. This makes the files readable on many devices and keeps the text in shorter titles readable when set alongside the images for use as a presentation. Rewards are cumulative.
Please note the images are made at much larger size than IndieGoGo displays - to see all the layer effects and textures I recommend viewing on a colour monitor at 24" or a projector.
The + signs added to the perks below indicate the minimum content. For example, cover and title pages don't count.
Ancient Scotland continues from and follows the same approach as Primeval Scotland. As our distant ancestors arrive from Europe they begin by forming societies adapted to survive. However, as permanent hearths and homes appeared a sophisticated Neolithic civilisation developed - from roughly 6500 years ago.
Much of what these early 'Scots' made and exported is quite familiar, at least in name, from sites such as Orkney's Ness of Brodgar and, later, Callanish.
The rebellion of De Moray and Wallace is covered in the first title; along with the years between Wallace's capture and the defining battle at Bannockburn.
I'll add a slice of sample text from Defence of the Realm here:
"Douglas was about to celebrate the completion of a new
hunting lodge at Lintalee in Jedburgh
forest.
Arundel thought it would be
a good idea to send a force of several thousand axe-wielding men-at-arms to
dismantle the new hunting lodge.
At the time James Douglas had barely fifty mounted men at his disposal, along with several companies of archers drawn from the nearby Douglas lands. An ambush was clearly in order and as Arundel's force approached Douglas ordered his men to lash together the trees and thickets on either side of a narrow point on the road.
The army of woodcutters advanced into the ambush, which Douglas triggered by leading his knights on a charge at the English vanguard. There may have been relatively few mounted Scottish knights, but funnelling them into a road and charging at full speed resulted in a pile driving effect.
The English vanguard couldn’t back up or escape to either side and the Scottish knights’ momentum placed a formidable bottleneck in the only available road. As a result, Douglas' archers simply set about pouring arrows into the largely immobilised English column.
Meanwhile, three hundred of the English troops had taken a different route and stumbled upon Douglas' generously provisioned but unoccupied lodge. Believing themselves safe in the knowledge that Douglas would either be defeated or at the very least delayed at length, the English soldiers settled down to enjoy a meal.
It wasn't a meal they had time to savour, as Douglas had identified Sir Thomas Richmond as the commander of the English forces on the ground during the Scots’ initial charge.
As the two forces clashed, Douglas leapt straight from his own horse on to Sir Thomas with a dagger at the ready.
Having stabbed the unfortunate Sir Thomas to death with the dagger, Douglas then claimed the English knight's fur hat as a trophy - which probably helped to further demoralise the already struggling English force.
Consequently, the battle was over almost as soon as it had started and Douglas went straight back to his lodge. Few, if any, of the band of feasting English soldiers survived his return."
The feedback on the trial text was consistently good. which comes across as an encouragement to add key features and characters skipped at the first attempt. In particular, the one text revised to two texts uses more intense images, adds quotes from original documents, covers the early rebellion more fully and includes more personal stories. Sample feedback at the time.
What happens if the project doesn't meet its goal. On returning to
Scottish history after a long break I was pleasantly surprised by how
much more archeologists have uncovered and been made aware of how
misinformation thrives on the Internet. The work needs done from my
point of view and that's why I've selected the flexible funding option.
So,
if resources are short I'll just have to dig a bit deeper and curb my
habit of adding an extra this and that along the way. Basically, if you
support the project I deliver the agreed content I'm committed to
delivering to a high standard.
The work involved is all known territory. I've 20+ years of concurrent experience in Secondary/ Higher Education and as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy I'm trained to get the job done.
A solo project - apart from help with editing and proofing - relies on my availability. That is in place and other than unavoidable, exceptional circumstances I'll be sticking to agreed targets. I'm building a fair amount of leeway into the delivery date to begin with, but I fully intend to be sending out the first titles very soon after the 60 days of this crowdfund.
If you're unable to chip in on the cash front I'd appreciate a share or a mention to your mates. Nothing like a bit of passing round to generate a little extra interest.