Description
Book SynopsisThe Anglo-Scottish union crisis is used to demonstrate the growing influence of popular opinion in this period. The common perception of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 as a "political job", stitched up by a corrupt Scottish elite behind closed doors, is robustly challenged in this study, which shows how public debate and the mobilisationof popular opinion shaped the union crisis from beginning to end. It considers how the Country party sought to influence political outcomes by aggressively encouraging the public expression of oppositional opinion in pamphlets, petitions and crowds, from the Darien crisis of 1699-1701 to the parliamentary debates on incorporation in 1706-7. It also examines the government's changing response to these adversarial activities and its growing acceptance of theneed to court Scottish public opinion. This book explores the meaning, legitimacy and power of public opinion in early modern politics and revises our understanding of how an incorporating British union came to be made in 1707. It is a significant contribution to the political, social and cultural history of a period and an event that remains contentious to this day. Dr KARIN BOWIE lectures in History at the University of Glasgow.
Trade Review[A] first rate dissection of Scottish public opinion during the discussions over Anglo-Scottish union. * ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE - EIGHTEENTH CENTURY *
Takes an innovative approach on a relatively unexplored topic [...] that has often been sidelined or marginalized. * . *
With the publication of this book, public opinion and its impact must be incorporated into the historiography, and in that sense we now have a greater understanding of the union issue outside the elites. [...] A very good book. * AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *
A model of its kind. * HISTORY SCOTLAND *
In the middle of a radical reappraisal of the road to 1707...Karin Bowie's monograph is among the latest and most original contributions to an improved understanding of that process. [...] * . *
[A] dazzling examination of the mass, extra-parliamentary agitations against incorporating union. [...] A highly original and rigorous examination of the new adversarial opinion politics the Scottish opposition invented in 1699-1707. [...] Only very rarely has a work of history spoken so directly to a nation's present dilemmas and discontents as Bowie's does to ours. * PERSPECTIVES *
Offers a fresh analysis of the relationship between public opinion and the making of the union. [...] It is now the standard text on the politics ofpublic opinion and the Union of 1707. * EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SCOTLAND, Spring 2008 *
Of the many books on the Union of 1707 that were released in the year of its three hundredth anniversary, Karin Bowie's study of Scottish Public Opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union stands out as unique. [...] Makes a brave and highly original contribution to two important debates, and it will be of interest to anyone working on either the early modern public sphere or the 1707 Union itself. * JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES, July 2008, vol 47, no3 *
