Thesis Correspondence XI: How the Scots Invented the Modern World

 Shipping on the Clyde

Dr. _____,

I thought I ought to get through a popular history on Scotland by Arthur Herman, a John Hopkins/George Mason scholar. I'm sure you've heard of How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It. After skimming through it, I found it a little too exuberant and celebratory in the modern world for my conservative taste, and its conclusions were rather sloppy. With regards to Jacobitism, he sights good scholarship (Monod and Pittock), but is far too sparse and casual with the research. One particular conclusion seems to fall at the root of my thesis:

"This is another persistent myth: that Highlanders supported Bonnie Prince Charlie out of some ancient mystical loyalty to the Stuarts. The truth was that the alliance between the Crown and the clan chieftains was one of mutual self interest. The Crown recognized the chieftain's life-and-death power over his tenants, reinforced the privileged status of his family members and supporters, and protected his children's rights to his land by formal law. In exchange, the chiefs gave the king a rough version of law and order in a remote and largely inaccessible part of his kingdom. It also allowed him to play one clan against another, when it suited his own political purposes."

This is completely a false dilemma. First, I take issue with his premise that myth and economic/political motives stand apart. The entire premise of my thesis will be that cultural traditions informed political opinion. Herman skims over the vital significance of the Scottish nobles. Mystical loyalty and the traditional law over land went hand-in-hand. The vast majority of correspondence between king and country during the exile focused on unifying the kingdom along "ancient" lines of noble pedigree and monarchical inheritance, while Scottish epic poetry in Classical form reinforced the same emphasis on hereditary right. Only rarely might the dynasty successfully pit clan against clan without suffering divisive results which might contradict his pageantry for the kingdom of Scotland as a whole.

I am still in the middle of the Brus, but I am going to put the main emphasis on perfecting my prospectus. I'll send you a copy by the end of the week, and hopefully schedule a time next week to discuss it in person.

Wesley

Thesis Correspondence IV

Charles Edward Stuart (1775)

Dear Dr. _____,

Frank McLynn authored a very good book Charles Edward Stuart: A Tragedy in Many Acts, in which he described the disposition of Prince Charles, his emotional fluctuations, and his perception of the Jacobite cause. In my opinion, it is a 557 page masterpiece because he does not force a thesis onto Jacobitism as a whole, but remains true to his task as a biographer. I do not mean to say that his book holds conceptions out of step with scholarship, but rather that he is somewhat beyond the standard Jacobite historiography, always looking at Prince Charles as a human being. The below article is completely opposite. It is also fairly old. In it, McLynn challenges concepts of international French absolutism in five pages; an undertaking which really requires a heavier source base and more analysis. Still, he does demonstrate that the French at least hypothetically entertained the idea of a Scottish republic after 1745, and dangled Prince Charles as the bait for the catch.

Wesley

Notes on An Eighteenth-Century Scots Republic? An Unlikely Project from Absolutist France by F. McLynn in The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 59, No. 168, Part 2 (Oct., 1980).

In the Maurepas Papers, McLynn discovered a very interesting plot to use Prince Charles as a Trojan horse to implement a Scots republic. The principle proponent of this strategy was none other than the French dispatch and investigator of the Jacobite 1745 campaign, Alexander de Boyer, Marquis d'Eguilles. He traveled with the army, was captured, and released six months later. He addressed Maurepas in a letter after his escape, and provided him with four possible policies: initiate a diversionary campaign until the English treaty was signed, begin an all out war to re-establish Stuart kingship across Britain, restore Stuart kingship to only Scotland, or build a Scottish republic. D'Eguilles feared that any pro-French concessions won through a diversion campaign might just as easily be secured by more economic means elsewhere. A complete Stuart restoration might risk a Stuart-Dutch alliance against France, and restoring the Stuarts to only Scotland might embroil Scotland in a war over dynastic succession in the British Isles that would concern France little, as the Stuarts would never willingly give up a claim to the English thrown. Accordingly, d'Eguilles favored a Scottish republic which would by definition erase the Stuart claim, and secure a Franco-Scottish alliance at no cost to French interests. However, such a plan was unlikely to succeed, as a French commander-in-chief would be needed to replace Irish commanders who would not fight for Scottish independence, and a French army secured to ensure no Irish/Scottish friction. Only Presbyterian Scotland would fight for republic, but they hated the French. The Highlanders, episcopalians, non-jurors, and Catholics would never give up the Stuart claim. Hence, D'Eguilles advised a gradual turn towards a republic over a period of three decades, and for the movement entertaining Prince Charles' hopes would be indispensable. McLynn concludes that these proposals were probably too radical for serious consideration in 1747. Yet, d'Eguilles' proposal is surprising, considering his Catholic pro-royalist family.