Abstract
Reviews:
"All too many collections of essays are disjointed and of variable quality. It is therefore a particular pleasure to note that this volume offers high-quality work organized around the coherent theme outlined in the title. The editors between them have already made a major contribution to early-modern Scottish history and this collection should be seen as building on their works."
Jeremy Black in H-Albion, April 2004.
The lively research into Scotland’s military past and its influences on the European
Continent has now produced yet two more publications from the University of
Aberdeen and it’s Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. Both the previously reviewed volume as well as the two new volumes consist of edited collections where British and other researchers contributed studies illuminating the largely Scottish military involvement in foreign territories, as well as the wider meaning of this involvement for Scotland and the countries these Scots were active in. It should be noted that these are not essays idealising the Scots or over-emphasising the role of Scots; on the contrary, the reader is met by solid scientific studies of good value, whose authors have analysed their research and produced important and weighty additions to the older European history, albeit with the Scots as the point of initiation
Lars Ericson, Militärhistorisk Tidsskrift (2003)
"In the governed localities and regions: was there a special relation to the local people and their aspirations? How much of the individual Governors' own background influenced their choices and decisions as well as what role did their ‘Scottishness’ play in the methods of governing and in their achievements? The reader will find all these issues addressed in this book.
Atina Nihtinen, Studia Celtica Fennica
"All too many collections of essays are disjointed and of variable quality. It is therefore a particular pleasure to note that this volume offers high-quality work organized around the coherent theme outlined in the title. The editors between them have already made a major contribution to early-modern Scottish history and this collection should be seen as building on their works. Steve Murdoch, Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, has published Britain, Denmark-Norway and the House of Stuart, 1603-1660: A Diplomatic and Military Analysis (2000), edited Scotland and the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 (2001), and co-edited with Mackillop Fighting for Identity: Scottish Military Experience, c. 1550-1900 (2002). A. Mackillop, lecturer in history at Aberdeen, has also written "More fruitful than the Soil": Army, Empire and the Scottish Highlands, 1715-1815 (2001). This collection bridges their geographical and chronological interests by looking for continuities between the politico-military experience of Scots as governors in Europe--for the crowns of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia--with their role as servants of the British crown. From this perspective, the Union of the English and Scottish crowns and, later, Parliaments, and, even more, the eighteenth-century expansion of the British empire, emerge anew in a familiar light, as a source of great opportunity for able Scots. As emerges clearly, however, Scots within the British empire were not a monolithic ethnic block endowed with exactly the same attitudes towards any given issue. Instead, they frequently clashed with each other over policy. These clashes reflected not only different backgrounds and related attitudes, not least on religious topics, but also the dynamic role of the peripheries in the formulation of imperial rule.
The extent to which governors tended to be military men and supportive of the army's role as the institution best suited for regulating the empire's growing diversity ensured that one dimension of the Scottish input into British imperial rule was a suspicion of assemblies and civilian authority. The patronage structures and networking, especially among fellow-Scots, that repeatedly emerge as important in the individual chapters were in large part military in character. This was particularly true of Highlanders. Lowlanders, in contrast, tended to achieve positions of prominence in the civil machinery of the empire. Mackillop's essay on Sir Archibald Campbell of Inverneil, Governor of the Madras Presidency from 1785 until 1789, underlines the paternalistic ethos stemming from landownership and military background, and sees this as a distinctive Scottish contribution to the character of British Empire."
Jeremy Black, Department of History, University of Exeter.
Published by: H-Albion (April, 2004)
"All too many collections of essays are disjointed and of variable quality. It is therefore a particular pleasure to note that this volume offers high-quality work organized around the coherent theme outlined in the title. The editors between them have already made a major contribution to early-modern Scottish history and this collection should be seen as building on their works."
Jeremy Black in H-Albion, April 2004.
The lively research into Scotland’s military past and its influences on the European
Continent has now produced yet two more publications from the University of
Aberdeen and it’s Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. Both the previously reviewed volume as well as the two new volumes consist of edited collections where British and other researchers contributed studies illuminating the largely Scottish military involvement in foreign territories, as well as the wider meaning of this involvement for Scotland and the countries these Scots were active in. It should be noted that these are not essays idealising the Scots or over-emphasising the role of Scots; on the contrary, the reader is met by solid scientific studies of good value, whose authors have analysed their research and produced important and weighty additions to the older European history, albeit with the Scots as the point of initiation
Lars Ericson, Militärhistorisk Tidsskrift (2003)
"In the governed localities and regions: was there a special relation to the local people and their aspirations? How much of the individual Governors' own background influenced their choices and decisions as well as what role did their ‘Scottishness’ play in the methods of governing and in their achievements? The reader will find all these issues addressed in this book.
Atina Nihtinen, Studia Celtica Fennica
"All too many collections of essays are disjointed and of variable quality. It is therefore a particular pleasure to note that this volume offers high-quality work organized around the coherent theme outlined in the title. The editors between them have already made a major contribution to early-modern Scottish history and this collection should be seen as building on their works. Steve Murdoch, Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, has published Britain, Denmark-Norway and the House of Stuart, 1603-1660: A Diplomatic and Military Analysis (2000), edited Scotland and the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 (2001), and co-edited with Mackillop Fighting for Identity: Scottish Military Experience, c. 1550-1900 (2002). A. Mackillop, lecturer in history at Aberdeen, has also written "More fruitful than the Soil": Army, Empire and the Scottish Highlands, 1715-1815 (2001). This collection bridges their geographical and chronological interests by looking for continuities between the politico-military experience of Scots as governors in Europe--for the crowns of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia--with their role as servants of the British crown. From this perspective, the Union of the English and Scottish crowns and, later, Parliaments, and, even more, the eighteenth-century expansion of the British empire, emerge anew in a familiar light, as a source of great opportunity for able Scots. As emerges clearly, however, Scots within the British empire were not a monolithic ethnic block endowed with exactly the same attitudes towards any given issue. Instead, they frequently clashed with each other over policy. These clashes reflected not only different backgrounds and related attitudes, not least on religious topics, but also the dynamic role of the peripheries in the formulation of imperial rule.
The extent to which governors tended to be military men and supportive of the army's role as the institution best suited for regulating the empire's growing diversity ensured that one dimension of the Scottish input into British imperial rule was a suspicion of assemblies and civilian authority. The patronage structures and networking, especially among fellow-Scots, that repeatedly emerge as important in the individual chapters were in large part military in character. This was particularly true of Highlanders. Lowlanders, in contrast, tended to achieve positions of prominence in the civil machinery of the empire. Mackillop's essay on Sir Archibald Campbell of Inverneil, Governor of the Madras Presidency from 1785 until 1789, underlines the paternalistic ethos stemming from landownership and military background, and sees this as a distinctive Scottish contribution to the character of British Empire."
Jeremy Black, Department of History, University of Exeter.
Published by: H-Albion (April, 2004)
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Brill |
| Publication status | Published - 2003 |