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Hoping to stop the ratification of a treaty of incorporating union with England, late in 1706 the parish minister Robert Wylie quoted the Declaration of Arbroath in a draft manifesto for an armed uprising. Rather than seeing Wylie's manifesto as part of a perceived tradition of popular sovereignty rooted in the Declaration of Arbroath, this paper asks what his quotation reveals about this early modern moment. It confirms a growing awareness of the Declaration of Arbroath in Scottish political culture and its usefulness as patriotic rhetoric for Whigs and Jacobites alike, aided by the publication of English translations from 1689. It shows how Wylie used the Declaration to suggest that the pro-treaty majority in the Scottish parliament was a traitorous faction out of step with the mind of a nation bound by its covenant oaths and how this attack on the legitimacy of the estates went against more than a century of presbyterian efforts to bolster the authority of the parliament as a counter to Stewart power. Wylie's document thus confirms the rising relevance of public opinion in this era and its construction in terms of conscience and covenants; and underlines a key struggle in the making of the union between extra-parliamentary opinion, highlighted in petitions and weaponised through calls for recesses and special assemblies, and the stature of the Scottish parliament as the embodiment of the political nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founding documents are parsed, revered and preserved but they can also be misread, mythologised and overlooked. This article examines the entangled fates of the Scots Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the US Declaration of Independence (1776) at a moment between the seven-hundredth anniversary of the one in 2020 and the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the other in 2026. It shows that the two 'declarations' were both diplomatic texts, rhetorically shaped, and part of sequences of similar documents that have otherwise been largely overlooked. Some recent commentators have suggested that Arbroath influenced the US Declaration; on the contrary, the article argues that the Declaration influenced Arbroath, at least in its reception and its construction as an alleged charter or 'declaration' of Scottish 'independence'. I conclude by presenting fresh evidence for the presence of Arbroath in Philadelphia in 1776, to reflect on the sometimes surprising ways in which documents become, or do not become, foundational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journey to Scotland in August 1768 by Count Karl von Zinzendorf reveals the significance of Scottish socio-economic practices for the Austrian Habsburg lands in the mid-eighteenth century. Zinzendorf's travel came as the result of the Austrian-Habsburg desire to emulate foreign financial structures after defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756–63). His one-month stay in Scotland, supported by the Habsburg monarch Maria Theresa as part of several tours across Europe, was in effect an act of industrial espionage. It is also an illuminating example of eighteenth-century hospitality and sociability. Based on Zinzendorf's unpublished diary entries as well as his economic report on the British Isles compiled for superiors in Vienna, this article introduces Zinzendorf and his 'commercial tour' of Scotland to Scottish historians for the first time. It builds upon recent efforts to explore early modern Scottish connections with continental Europe and demonstrates how these connections projected beyond Zinzendorf's visit during his tenure as governor of Trieste and his later career within the Habsburg monarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henry Dundas, first viscount Melville (1742–1811), lord advocate in Scotland, MP for Edinburgh and Midlothian, first lord of the admiralty, home secretary and the first secretary of state for war, was one of the most powerful politicians in the eighteenth-century British parliament. His involvement in the gradual abolition of the slave trade after 1792 was amongst the most controversial episodes of his career. His role has attracted much interest in the last few years, although there are two irreconcilable schools of thought amongst historians. This article reassesses Dundas's role in the gradual abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. His contributions in the houses of parliament between 1791 and 1807 are examined and situated in the appropriate imperial context. Memoirs and published pamphlets reveal how contemporaries viewed Dundas's activities and motives at the time and since. His parliamentary activities are compared with new insights from his personal correspondence as well as public and private communications from West India societies, merchants and planters. By overlaying parliamentary events with commercial networks, Henry Dundas's collaboration with the West India interest is revealed, and how this operated and was perceived at the time. This article—the first detailed study of its type—thus illuminates Henry Dundas's role as a great delayer of the abolition of the slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1745–6, thousands of troops were raised in the Highlands and Islands in support of the house of Hanover. Often neglected due to the intense focus on Highland Jacobitism, these Gaels were instrumental in the defeat of the Jacobites. The study of pro-Hanoverian forces in the Gàidhealtachd tells us much not only about the military history of the 1745 rebellion but also about the nature of the whig regime in Scotland. In contrast to the ideological frameworks increasingly used to make sense of the Jacobite period, this article argues that pragmatic negotiations between the central government and the whig clans helped mobilise and empower regional responses to the rebellion. Exploiting the government's need for Gaelic allies in late 1745, Highland leaders, officers, and enlisted men used military service to shore up a nexus of political, financial and security imperatives. By examining the recruitment and service of anti-Jacobite Gaels, this article shows that—even in the epicentre of the rebellion—the Hanoverian state possessed important structural strengths that enabled it to confront the threat of armed insurrection. In so doing, the article reveals the political and fiscal-military networks that sustained whig control in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]