And when you are done looking at this site for the Scots input on football world-wide, here are two more.
For those who literally want to trace on the ground the local development of Scots and Scottish football in our own and other countries there is the newly available and ever-expanding site of:
The Scots Football Historians' Group
And on Scottish sports history in general but inevitably including fitba', see Andy Mitchell's inestimable:
So here is the first of the questions. Have you ever wondered how William Gladstone managed to finance a political career that took him from being an arch-Conservative to a Liberal and as such four times Prime-Minister of the United Kingdom? It is the hard-nosed version of the Alan or Sir Kenneth Clark
equivalent question in politics and academia respectively, the doppelganger to Rio-Tinto's. The answer to the Rio-Tinto
one is drugs' money; not nice but true. In the case of the Clarks it was cotton-thread; somewhat more acceptable. And in Gladstone's case it was slaves; not acceptable at all.
And the second question is, who was Scotland's first full-back? The answer is William Gladstone and between this question and the one above there are two connections. The first is that William Henry Gladstone, full-back and also later politician, was the eldest son of William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister. Admittedly by the time William Henry entered Parliament in 1865 the family fortune had conveniently been cleansed, invested elsewhere, no doubt in railway shares, but its source remains. The same cleansing cannot be said of his father. He had first become an MP in late 1832, taking his seat in January 1833, coincidentally the same year as the Abolition of Slavery Act. In fact his maiden speech was on that very subject, when he did not oppose but argued for "fair" compensation for slave-owners for their loss. It so happened that members of his own family were slave owners, indeed his own father was one of the largest of them all, in Jamaica and Guyana. He alone would receive £93,526 pounds in "recompense", the equivalent today according to the Bank of England of about £10.5 million. Nice if you can get it. And by the way John Gladstone then filled the slave-gap by importing indentured labourers from India on a series of lies with regard to wages and prospects. However, William Gladstone did at least oppose the 1836 Opium War, the one instigated by Jardine and Matheson, Matheson being the uncle of the main investor in the original Rio-Tinto.
So what about William Henry and Scottish football? He had been born in 1840 on what is generally known as the Gladstones estate of Hawarden in Flintshire. He had been born in Wales. His father had been born in 1809 but that had been in Liverpool, so "English" and his mother also at Harwarden and therefore also Welsh, for the estate had been her family's for at least two centuries. But clearly the grandparents' rule had been in operation in 1870, as it wouldn't be for next 120 years, because the Scottish connection came with William Henry's paternal grandparents. His grandfather, the slave owner, was John Gladstones, born in Leith, also a parliamentarian, a Tory, who changed his name to Gladstone and died on the Scottish estate his fortune had bought in Kincardineshire. His grandmother was Anne Mackenzie Robertson. She had been born in Dingwall, where her father was a Robertson of Kindeace by Invergordon and town provost.
It was on the basis of grandparents that William Henry was asked to play for Scotland. He did so in what were the first and third of unofficial international matches played in 1870 and 1871, all in London and all mostly featuring London-based players with, like Gladstone, Scottish family connections. In fact, of all the players involved in all five games just one was born north of the border.
Both games were 1-1 draws. Scotland took the lead in both. England equalised in the penultimate minute in the first. In the third both goals were in the first half. And that might have been it. The first official Scotland-England international was played in Glasgow in 1872. Except that a decade later there was a curious twist. In 1881 a new full-back took the field for Scotland. Some sources even say he was captain that day. The game took place in London and Scotland won 1-6. Dr. John Smith scored a brace, as did George Ker. England also scored a brace, of own goals.
The name of the new left-back was Andrew Watson. He was the son of Peter Miller Watson, who had been born by Evanton in Ross-shire. His father, born in The Borders, had been the factor on Orkney to Lord Dundas but Miller, as often said, was not born there. His mother was the daughter of the local, Kiltearn Episcopalian minister. Her name was Christian Robertson. Her father was also a Robertson of Kindeace. In fact Christian Robertson and Anne Robertson, William Henry Gladstone's grandmother, were cousins, if a few times removed. It means that William Henry and Andrew Watson were also distant cousins, both with footballing claims to fame. William Henry's we know, the first Scottish full-back when there was only one. Yet Andrew Watson's is far more significant. He was the first Black international footballer and as such Scotland's first Black player and its only ever Black captain and the first Black football administrator, at Maxwell, his first club, and Queen's Park, his second. And the background too may have further twists. The first is the Kiltearn Robertsons had for several generations also been slave owners, mainly in Demerara in Guyana. Peter Miller Watson had had two children in Guyana by Hannah Rose, a free-woman, probably the daughter of another slave-owner from Banff and a slave of African origin, who had been manutated, freed by him. It is probable that she had been one of his slaves but the possibility remains she was owned by another, even John Gladstone. The second was that Andrew Watson was a man of "independent means" not least because his father had also received slavery compensation money, which he quite probably re-invested in railway shares, not doing badly at all. The money had been recycled. The grandson of a slave was educated, lived and supported Scottish football with and from slave money.