09: Dress, land, and the law in the post-Culloden Gàidhealtachd

by Dr. Matthew Dziennik

Synopsis

In the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, the British state enacted a series of restrictive legal measures designed to pacify the Scottish Highlands and crush the military power of the Gael. In analyzing the implementation and enforcement of the laws passed between 1746 and 1752, Dr. Dziennik argues that we have generally overestimated the power of the British state, its laws, and its willingness and ability to change the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Instead, he suggests that the real impact of the post-Culloden measures is to be found in the new powers that they offered to Highland elites and the legacies of these powers in communities throughout the Gàidhealtachd.

Image caption: Philip Yorke, 1st earl of Hardwicke, Lord High Chancellor under Henry Pelham’s government (1737-56). Painting by William Hoare of Bath.

About the speaker

Matthew Dziennik is an Associate Professor of History at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He is the author of The Fatal Land: War, Empire, and the Highland Solider in British America (Yale University Press, 2015) as well as numerous articles and chapters on the history of the Highlands and Islands and on warfare in the British Empire. He is currently writing a history of colonial recruitment in the British Empire in the Age of Revolutions.

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