The Myth of the Jacobite Clans

First published in 1995, The Myth of the Jacobite Clans was a revolutionary book, arguing that British history had long caricatured Jacobitism rather than understand it and that the Jacobite Risings in fact enjoyed extensive Lowland support and had a national quality within Scotland. The Times Higher Education Supplement hailed the author's "formidable talents" and the book fuelled discussions in The Economist and Scotland on Sunday. Though Murray Pittock's argument has been widely accepted, it is still ignored in the media and in heritage representations which hope to depoliticize the Rising of 1745.

Now rewritten with extensive new primary research, this expanded second edition addresses the questions of the first in more detail, examining the systematic misrepresentation of Jacobitism, the impressive size of the Jacobite armies, their training and organization, and the Jacobite goal of dissolving the Union. It fleshes out the lives of the ordinary Scots who formed the core of Jacobite support in the ill-fated Rising of 1745. Now, more than ever, The Myth of the Jacobite Clans is essential to putting an end to two hundred years of misinformation and pointless romanticization.

Murray Pittock is Bradley Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow and has formerly held chairs at the universities of Manchester (in Scottish literature) and Strathclyde.