Conclusion: Memory, Biography and Scottish Highland History before Culloden

One of the notable features of the Highlands and Scotland that the book has sought to highlight is how the civil wars of 1638-60, the 1688-90 period, the beginnings of Jacobitism and the Treaty of Union of 1707, made rigidity and complacency extremely poor survival strategies. This placed Fraser towards the social, political or religious edge at several points in his life. If we consider his seventy-five years as a whole, the ‘curious cleric’ was a subversive as much as he was a conformist. Key to understanding this, as regards Fraser, has been to position his life-writing within the dynamic, distinct social and cultural context of the Highlands of his time. Fraser’s part of Scotland was being deeply affected by metropoles further south in his lifetime, certainly, but not exclusively by them. It took influences from peoples to its east, north and west too. This conclusion shows that, due to this, its people were making striking, distinctive contributions to the world of their own, and, to some extent, continuing to determine their trajectory while within the Scottish state and Stuart multiple kingdom, a situation in which clanship remained dynamic and the Gaelic language vital.