The Scottish People and the French Revolution
Bob Harris
The Enlightenment World
978 1 85196 884 8: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
This is the first modern scholarly study of the political culture of Scotland during the 1790s.
Harris compares the emergence of ‘the people’ as a political force in Scotland with popular political movements in England and Ireland. He is the first to analyze Scottish responses to the French Revolution across the political spectrum; explaining Loyalist as well as Radical opinions and organisations. He also takes regional difference into account, moving scholarly attention beyond Edinburgh and Glasgow.
This book adds significantly to the growing wealth of studies into the popular politics of the 1790s. It also sets the context for current scholarly debates about Robert Burns’s engagement with the French Revolution.
Sample pages
- The Scottish People and the French Revolution: Introduction
- The Scottish People and the French Revolution: Index
Readership
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Political History, Scottish Studies
Contents
Introduction
This examines the crystalization of an orthodoxy since the 1970s that the striking feature of Scotland in this period is the underlying stability of its politics and society, an orthodoxy which has only been further entrenched by the evidence which has emerged of the combustibility of Irish politics in the 1790s, and a tendency to compare Scottish and Irish experience. This introduction will suggest that a more relevant comparator is England and using this as an interpretative framework will begin to suggest some of the significant limitations of the orthodox view.
Chapter 1: A Servile Politics?
This chapter explores the nature of political life in eighteenth-century Scotland as a means of understanding the values and beliefs, habits and dispositions which helped shape reactions to the French Revolution. The underlying thrust is to move beyond a view of politics which emphasizes solely political management and 'corruption' and points to several countervailing tendencies which together suggest a political world of greater depth and vitality than is often allowed. Another key theme is the contribution of religious controversy to broadening understandings of 'liberty' in Scotland in the eighteenth century.
Chapter 2: Newspapers, Revolution and War
Newspapers became crucial vehicles in the political battles of the period. This chapter examines the role of newspapers in political debates and political life during the 1790s. It is also uses the contents of newspapers to begin to reconstruct the currents and course of debates about the French Revolution and French revolutionary wars. The chapter is based on a comprehensive survey of Scottish newspapers in this period. New evidence is provided about the organization and financing of both radical and loyalist newspapers. The chapter also provides a clear chronological framework which is taken up in subsequent chapters.
Chapter 3: Radicalism; the Open Phase (1792-4)
This chapter examines the rise, social composition and nature of organized radicalism during its open phase before repression drove it underground in the mid 1790s. Two aspects are given particular attention: the local and regional dimensions; and the nature and scope of connections with radicalism elsewhere in Britain and Ireland. The latter became of increasing importance from late 1792 and culminated in the British Convention of Radicals which met in Edinburgh in late 1793. The full story of the connections has not hitherto been told, and has vital importance for how we perceive Scottish radicalism in this period.
Chapter 4: Combating Treason: Loyalists and the State (1792-4)
In recent years, historians have emphasized the scope and strength of the loyalist counter-reaction to the growth of radicalism and the French Revolution. No systematic survey has been undertaken, however, of loyalism in Scotland in this period. This chapter provides such a survey, again emphasizing, as in chapter 4 the local and regional picture. It also looks closely at the advent of volunteering in 1794. Interwoven in this treatment is consideration of the role of state as a force for political repression, and the relationship between the state, or its representatives, and loyalism.
Chapter 5: Radicalism in the Later 1790s
This chapter explores how radicals and radicalism survived the repression of the early 1790s and its re-emergence in organized form in the guise of the United Irishmen in 1797. New evidence is presented about the continuity, in terms of personnel and ideals, of radicalism between the earlier and later 1790s. An attempt is also made to assess the nature and inspiration behind the United Irishmen, although limited evidence survives to illuminate their activities. The chapter also looks at the survival of a reformist politics short of insurrection, a politics identified with the Scottish opposition Whigs, and, as elsewhere in Britain, focused on protest against the war and infringement of civil liberties.
Chapter 7: Anti-militia Riots and Invasion Scares (1797-8)
Throughout Britain, 1797 was a year of crisis and strain. In Scotland, an added element was widespread rioting in protest against the extension of the militia to Scotland in that year. This chapter examines the protests from the perspective of the light which they shed on the stability of elite rule in Scotland in this period, but also from the perspective of reactions to the renewal of the invasion threat from France in the same period. A key theme is the sharp fluctuations in popular opinion and mood in this period. The chapter also looks at the further extension of volunteering in Scotland in 1797-8, using new evidence from several muster rolls to examine the social composition of the volunteers.
Chapter 8: Bread and Politics (1799-1801)
This chapter focuses on the period 1799-1801, which saw a combination of trade depression and very steep rises in prices for essential foodstuffs. These placed unexampled pressures on paternalistic regulation of the food market. The chapter explores these pressures and the level of protest and discontent caused by widespread social and economic stresses. A key perspective is the development of the market and money economy during the eighteenth century, which in the longer term were undermining paternalism and bringing a new instability to the lives of the poor. To date, there has been no in depth study of this conjuncture in Scotland. This chapter draws on new evidence from local and regional archives across Scotland.
Conclusion
By way of conclusion, the final chapter examines the broader significance of developments in politics in Scotland in this period, looking ahead in this context to the better known radical politics of the post-Napoleonic war period and political reform and change in the 1830s.
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