Back to the future: Walter Scott on the politics of radical reform in Ireland and Scotland

Abstract

During the months after Peterloo, in the midst of widespread political agitation and fears concerning a populist rising in the west of Scotland, Walter Scott seems to have been experiencing a bout of historical deja vu. Reflecting on both the ill‐fated “Friends of Reform” movement in Scotland in 1793 and 1794 (in which the United Irishmen played a key role) and the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Scott saw history repeating itself, as cracks began to appear in the foundation of the stadial progress model that explicitly informed his attempts to give voice to the past elsewhere. The classical liberal position Scott held was of course but another version of the same story told by the radicals: in either case we get a narrative of historical advancement, a cosmopolitan vision whereby interpersonal relationships might increasingly reflect the “natural” human disposition for harmony and sympathetic interconnectedness. The means to attain this goal differed dramatically for Scott and the radical reformers in Scotland and Ireland of course. But in either case, in the interest of achieving greater unity in a time which is ever and always “yet to be,” Scott, like his radical opposition, justifies war and other forms of violence as legitimate means for achieving peace.