<i>1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion Kieran German 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion. By Daniel Szechi. Pp. xvi, 351. ISBN: 0 300 11100 2. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2006. £25.00. Jacobitism does not sit easily in the broad context of ‘orthodox’ early modern British history. The Jacobite risings have been regarded as something of an anomaly within a period characterised by social change, economic advancement and industrial development, an atavistic phenomenon at odds with the general sense of progress in the British Isles. If it is a worrying aspect of British historiography that Jacobitism has been given such short thrift, nevertheless, the past two and a half decades have witnessed a resurgent interest in Jacobite studies, although the field has been treated somewhat unevenly. While histories of the movement in general have elucidated its demographic, religious and ideological aspects, and shown that there is more to Jacobitism than a collection of unsuccessful rebellions, the drama of 1745 has continually captured the imagination and interest of scholars to a much greater extent than the 1715 rising. Thus, Daniel Szechi’s timely book, 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion [End Page 159] satisfies a genuine demand. It reconsiders the rising and its implications within the modern, ‘four nations’ academic context and revisits major sources as well as unearthing new material. This volume is a detailed, well-structured and finely presented reappraisal of the 1715 rising; it is, in fact, essential reading for anyone interested in Jacobitism. Szechi is an open historian. One not need go further than the Table of Contents to understand that Szechi views the 1715 Rising as significantly attached to Scottish ‘proto-nationalism’ and, in particular, to Scots disenchantment with the 1707 Anglo-Scottish parliamentary union. Not only does he print the whole ballad, Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation, even the chapters are named after lines from this auld song. Szechi considers Scotland to be the ‘cockpit’ of the rising, and he surely justifies this position. But, as we would expect from the author of The Jacobites: Britain and Europe 1688–1788 (Manchester, 1994), Szechi succinctly and clearly places the rising in its European context. The Peace of Utrecht (1713–14) had ruled out explicit French involvement, while the death of Louis XV (1715) severely jeopardised implicit support, the other potentially sympathetic major European powers, Sweden and Russia, were meanwhile too embroiled in the Great Northern War (1700–21) to consider opening up a British front. In England, the Tories’ flirtation with Jacobitism was an exercise in self-preservation, preservation of the Church of England, and preservation of social status and influence of the landed elite. Only when it was clear that these could not be maintained under Hanover did they consider Jacobitism at any meaningful level. By then, however, George I’s mistrust of them was profound, and Tory-cum-Jacobite conspiracy had been effectively infiltrated and neutralised. Only the Catholics of the North proved ready and willing to rise, but their agendas were not compatible with the settlement envisaged by the Tories; and in any case, they did not amount to a serious military threat without Scottish reinforcement. The absence of either a continental invading force or an indigenous English rising therefore shifted the centre of conflict from the south to the distant and difficult terrain of Scotland. By and large, it was anti-unionism in Scotland which pushed Scottish Jacobites into active rebellion. Having thus narrowed his focus, Szechi considers the mechanics of an emerging Scottish civil war and analyses the society from this perspective, drawing conclusions about the nature of Scottish society and the impact of the Rising on both the country itself and the Jacobite movement. The war in Scotland was relatively non-violent and militarily unexciting, but, as wars tend to do, it was profoundly revealing of the society it affected. Szechi’s conclusions here are not all that surprising, but his insight is detailed and his understanding is instructive and compelling. He argues that Scotland was a close-knit society, still dominated by an elite. While the elite was divided among itself along religious and political lines, at the same time, interrelated civil, kith and...