Drawing together case studies from Asia and Europe, the reader can see the differences in cultural importance given to the night, and how the challenges and opportunities of modernity have been played out in the East and the West.

Pentland's study has 3 aims: to place the uprising in a wider context by exploring the modes of extra-parliamentary politics between 1815 and1820 as well as the situation outside Scotland; (ii) to provide the first full account of the rising itself; and (iii) to examine the legacies of both the politics of 1815-20 and the Radical War.