Scotland and the French Revolutionary War, 1792-1802

For the British government’s supporters in Scotland in the 1790s, one thing was paramount: they were fighting French principles in any shape or form they might take. Whether this meant defeating the influence of French revolutionary ideas in Scotland, or defeating the military menace of the French republic, they were determined to stand firm in their support of the British state. This book charts the Scottish contribution to, both the war effort of the 1790s, and the British government’s struggles to defeat political radicalism at home; lasting from the first outbreak of political disturbances in Scotland in 1792, until the French revolutionary war came to an end in 1802. In this, the Scots made their very distinct mark in terms of recruitment for armed service, demonstrations of loyalty, and prosecutions against political radicals in the law courts but, perhaps less so, in terms of their financial contributions . The government of Scotland was further integrated into the British state in a structural sense over the course of the decade, yet retained many distinctly Scottish features none the less and – on the whole – the 1790s comes across as a time when the Scots found little difficulty in seeing themselves as both British and Scottish.

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