Scotland and the French Revolutionary War, 1792-1802

This book is a study of Scotland’s role in the French Revolutionary War. It charts the Scottish contribution to the war effort, as well as to 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 War came to an end in 1802. A main argument presented in the book is that Scottish support for the British government was marked by a consistent focus on the challenges presented by the ‘French Principles’ promoted by the revolutionaries in France. Whether this meant defeating the influence of French revolutionary ideas in Scotland, or defeating the military might of the French republic, the Scottish ‘loyalists’ were determined to stand firm in their support of the British state. Over the period 1792 to 1802, the Scots made their very distinctive 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 come across as a time when the Scots found little difficulty in seeing themselves as both British and Scottish.