The wholesale assimilation of Scots into the British Army is largely associated with the recruitment of Highlanders during and after the Seven Years War. This important new study demonstrates that the assimilation of Lowland and Highland Scots into the British Army was a salient feature of its history in the first half of the 18th century and was already well advanced by the outbreak of the Seven Years War. Scotland and the British Army, 1700-1750 analyses the wider policing functions of the British Army, the role of Scotland's militia and the development of Scotland's military roads and institutions to provide a fuller understanding of the purpose and complexity of Scotland's military organisation and presence in Scotland in the turbulent decades between the Glorious Revolution and the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie, which has been too often simplified as an army of occupation for the suppression of Jacobitism. Instead, Victoria Henshaw reveals the complexities and difficulties experienced by Scottish soldiers of all ranks in the British Army as nationality, loyalty and prejudice clouded Scottish desires to use military service to defend the Glorious Revolution and the Union of 1707.

This volume emerged from an international research colloquium jointly organised by National Museums Scotland and the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies, University of Edinburgh, funded by the Scottish Government and administered by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Historians and museum curators from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were invited to join with their Scottish counterparts to consider the functioning, and the meaning, of 'military Scottishness' in different Commonwealth countries and in Britain from the late Victorian period to the present day, with a particular focus on the impact of the First World War. Another key objective was to throw light on the 'hidden' culture of social networking which potentially operated behind local regiments and military units amongst Scotland's global diaspora. This edited collection provides a comparative overview of the nineteenth century emergence of military Scottishness and explores how the construction and performance of Scottish military identity has evolved in different Commonwealth countries over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it looks at the ways in which Scottish volunteer regiments in Commonwealth countries variously sought to draw upon, align themselves with or, at certain key moments, redefine the assertions of martial identity which Highland regiments represented.

Making the Union Work: Scotland, 1651–1763, explores and analyses existing narratives of Jacobitism and Unionism in late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century Scotland. Using in-depth archival research, the book questions the extent to which the currency of kinship patronage politics persisted in Scotland as the competing ideologies of Scottish Jacobitism and British Whiggism grew. It discusses the connection between the manifest corruption of patronage politics and the efflorescence of the Scottish Enlightenment. It also examines the stance taken by David Hume and Adam Smith in defining themselves as philosophers first, Whigs second, but Scots above all else, and analyses whether they achieved international success because of or despite the parliamentary union with England in 1707. Organised chronologically and concluding with an assessment of the newly formed United Kingdom in the decades following the 1707 union, Making the Union Work: Scotland, 1651–1763 will be of great interest to researchers and academics of early modern Scotland.

George Washington Prize Finalist Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati Prize “Fascinating... Hinderaker’s meticulous research shows that the Boston Massacre was contested from the beginning... [Its] meanings have plenty to tell us about America’s identity, past and present.” —Wall Street Journal On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd gathered in front of Boston’s Custom House, killing five people. Denounced as an act of unprovoked violence and villainy, the event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre is one of the most famous and least understood incidents in American history. Eric Hinderaker revisits this dramatic confrontation, examining in forensic detail the facts of that fateful night, the competing narratives that molded public perceptions at the time, and the long campaign to transform the tragedy into a touchstone of American identity. “Hinderaker brilliantly unpacks the creation of competing narratives around a traumatic and confusing episode of violence. With deft insight, careful research, and lucid writing, he shows how the bloodshed in one Boston street became pivotal to making and remembering a revolution that created a nation.” —Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions “Seldom does a book appear that compels its readers to rethink a signal event in American history. It’s even rarer...to accomplish so formidable a feat in prose of sparkling clarity and grace. Boston’s Massacre is a gem.” —Fred Anderson, author of Crucible of War

Vols. 1-4 include material to June 1, 1929.