This book is a frontal attack on an entrenched orthodoxy. Our official, public vision of the early eighteenth century demonises Louis XIV and France and marginalises the Scots Jacobites. Louis is seen as an incorrigibly imperialistic monster and the enemy of liberty and all that is good and progressive. The Jacobite Scots are presented as so foolishly reactionary and dumbly loyal that they were (sadly) incapable of recognising their manifest destiny as the cannon fodder of the first British empire. But what if Louis acted in defence of a nation's liberties and (for whatever reason) sought to right a historic injustice? What if the Scots Jacobites turn out to be the most radical, revolutionary party in early eighteenth-century British politics? Using newly discovered sources from the French and Scottish archives this exciting new book challenges our fundamental assumptions regarding the emergence of the fully British state in the early eighteenth century.
- ISBN10 1847799884
- ISBN13 9781847799883
- Publish Date 16 May 2016 (first published 31 January 2015)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Manchester University Press
- Imprint Manchester University Press Melland Schill Studies
- Format eBook
- Pages 232
- Language English