Scotland and the British Army, 1700–1750: Defending the Union by Victoria Henshaw (review)

The political and social interest generated by the failed 2014 referendum on Scottish independence from the United Kingdom continues to support a major redefinition of the relationship between the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, including an ongoing discussion of the break-up of the three-hundred-year-old union between Scotland and England. Ms. Henshaw has subtitled her work "Defending the Union," ensuring a comparison between events involving the beginning and possible end of the Act of Union and in so doing has guaranteed an interest beyond that normally accorded to a volume derived from an academic thesis. Her doctoral research was centered on the evolution of the British army in Scotland as it strove to defend the Williamite Settlement and the Act of Union of 1707 against persistent Scottish opposition of Jacobites, and therein lies the strength of this book. Aware of the work of previous historians, she extends the scope of her study to include commentary on political issues concerning the union past and present. Her restricted political commentary and strong pro-union sentiment unfortunately distract from her valuable contribution to Scottish history.

Ms. Henshaw's focus here "is on the British Army at the start of the eighteenth century, both as an institutional body and its soldiers" and "this book addresses the emerging theme of nationality among the Scots of the British Army." The themes outlined are explored in chapters headed "Scotland's Professional Soldiers," "The Scottish Soldier's Experience," "The Scottish Soldier and the British State," "Scotland's Auxiliary Forces," and "Scotland's Military Installations." The first chapter provides useful background material, but the second chapter's original research valuably details the soldiers' everyday lives. In chapter 3, Ms. Henshaw contentiously categorizes the Scottish elements of the British Army as stalwarts, pragmatists, or trimmers. The derivative and partial material simplistically addresses a complex subject with an already extensive historiography.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine two much neglected fields of study—Scotland's auxiliary forces and its military installations. Handling the establishment of militias and related auxiliary forces in Scotland separately from England, the book identifies the reluctance of the British parliament to countenance a standing army as the driver for raising irregular and temporary army units. In Scotland, by contrast, lairds and clan chiefs could call their clansmen into military service without reference to central authority. The preservation of the Scottish legal system in the Act of Union further confused the issue of with whom lay authority to raise militias, which led to Scots resisting the acceptance of English protocols. These differences help explain the variable loyalty displayed by Scottish auxiliaries and the continuing lack of trust shown in them by the central British authority. The author laments the "lack of systematically recorded or preserved state documentation . . . [which] hampers any study of the British Army of the time and the situation is much worse for auxiliary forces." Nevertheless, the account given of the functioning of the militias does much to explain their relative ineffectiveness in Scotland.

Ms. Henshaw uses military records to show how red tape delayed decision-making and that action was taken only in response to Jacobite threats and never with enough funding to carry out the work. During the Jacobite insurrections, government tardiness and parsimony were the reasons that the new forts were overrun or did little to deter the enemy. Ironically, the most secure garrisons of the British Army were those housed in the medieval castles of Edinburgh and Stirling, which the Jacobite army of the 1745 Rising bypassed. It is an additional irony that Fort George in Inverness, which had been taken and destroyed by Charles Edward's Highland army in 1745, was replaced with the finest and most costly example of military architecture at the time in Europe, but only after the Jacobite threat had disappeared.

The book clearly establishes that the assimilation of Lowland and Highland Scots into the British Army was a salient feature of its...