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This thesis looks at some of the intellectual and educational relations between Scotland and the Netherlands in the period 1680-1730. Although the importance of such an exchange has been a long acknowledged fact, an overview has hitherto been lacking. By charting the extent and the nature of the Scottish student community at the four main universities in the United Provinces - Leiden, Franeker, Groningen and Utrecht - the thesis aims to provide as full a picture of the Scots' experience of Dutch education as the available resources will allow. At the same time, it re-examines the well-known idea that the United Provinces provided a model or example for Scotland and the notion that there such a thing as a specifically Dutch root to the Scottish Enlightenment. The thesis is divided in two parts. The first offers the most complete study of the Scottish student community in the Netherlands so far undertaken. Based on the hard figures provided by the matriculation lists of the Dutch universities and the private accounts of Scottish students, both the number of students and their personal experiences are described and analysed. The infrastructure and mechanics of the resultant community are subsequently established as being very specific to the Scots and prone to change over time. The exchange in ideas is analysed by looking at both the different curricula of the Dutch universities and the Scotto-Dutch book trade. These studies lead to a number of revelations, most notably that universities other than Leiden had a lasting influence on the Scots and that this influence was not always as 'modern'as has hitherto been thought. In the second part, two case studies of famous 'Dutch' Scots, William Carstares and Charles Mackie, are used to illustrate and test these claims.

This thesis examines anti-Catholicism in Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century, with a particular focus on how the Presbyterian Church of Scotland perceived and responded to popery. 'Popery' was a derogatory term for the Roman Catholic Church and the beliefs of its adherents. However, there was also a wider discourse surrounding popery, in which stereotypes and behaviours associated with Catholicism were adapted by Protestants to denote true and false religion. As such, what constituted popery was malleable and contested; Protestants identified popery among their co-religionists as much as they denounced Catholics for popery. Anti-Catholicism and anti-popery were related and overlapping, but also potentially discrete concepts. Both facets of this religious animus, however, remain underexplored in relation to eighteenth-century Scotland. By examining responses to Scotland's Catholic community, uses of popery in religious debate, and the extent to which these were interlinked, the thesis contributes a new and multi-faceted understanding of anti-Catholicism after the revolution of 1688-1690. It argues that the nature and trajectory of anti-Catholicism in Scotland was informed as much by divisions and controversies within Scottish Protestantism as it was by anxieties about Jacobitism. Anti-Catholicism, though pervasive, was by no means monolithic or uniform. The thesis begins by arguing that Presbyterians associated popery not only with political sedition, but equally with moral degeneracy and superstition. It is shown, however, that there was little consensus within the Church over the threat posed by popery in Scotland. Moreover, while Catholicism was a genuine concern, popery sparked greater interest as a platform for exploring issues within Scottish Protestantism. The Church of Scotland, re-established as Presbyterian in 1690, was threatened not only by Catholics, but by Episcopalians and a growing body of Presbyterian dissenters. Clerical petitions about popery reflected this duality: they were expressions of concern about the Catholic community, but were also used to undermine Episcopalian challenges to Presbyterian government. Popery also became entangled in controversies about Presbyterian separatism. The Church's national leadership became preoccupied with using popery to denigrate its religious rivals, leaving activism against Catholics to local church courts. The thesis goes on to argue that attitudes towards popery were shaped increasingly by the declining status of the Church of Scotland, rather than by the remnant Catholic community. Presbyterian complaints about popery had little impact, and demonstrated the Church's waning influence in Scottish society. Missions to the Highlands attempted to eradicate Catholicism, but Presbyterian activism against Catholicism faltered by the middle of the century. However, popery within Protestantism remained of central importance, as Presbyterians experienced significant internal divisions. Rival Protestant factions sought to control this language, which was central to debates over what constituted the true Church and the legitimate boundaries of doctrine. It is shown that, while popery was traditionally invoked in relation to calls for Protestant unity, by the mid-eighteenth century, popery was being used to justify the growing reality of religious pluralism in Scotland. The thesis thus problematises the unifying potential of anti-Catholicism. More broadly, it aims to reintegrate anti-Catholicism into studies of religion in eighteenth-century Scotland, demonstrating its influence on the development of Scottish Protestantism in an important period of religious transition.

This thesis examines the distribution and exercise of power within the Highlands in the fifteen years that followed the Jacobite rising of 1745-6. Critical aspects of the Highlands' status within the United Kingdom were negotiated during this period, which has often been overlooked in terms of its broader significance. The ways in which the Highlands were imagined helped to determine how its inhabitants were defined, and defined themselves, as a political community within the United Kingdom. The thesis examines how representations of the region functioned as an assertion of power, by comparing a wide range of perspectives which includes: central government figures, military commanders, Highland magnates, Scottish officials, agencies operating in the Highlands, independent travellers, surveyors and Gaelic poets. It argues for a more capacious definition of the Scottish political nation which recognises the role played by these actors, while questioning the usefulness of core-periphery paradigms for understanding the heterogeneous nature of the struggle to control the Highlands. The process was one of negotiation between different parties, in which representations of the region were instrumentalised in the pursuit of sectional aims. Narratives about the importance of improving the Highlands allowed landed interests to consolidate power, while the appropriation of ideas about Highlanders' 'villainous' character enabled prohibitive legislation to be enforced more rigorously against particular parts of the region. Highlanders recognised the importance of such narratives and constructed alternative accounts, contesting their status as 'rebels' and the policies which were predicated on this characterisation. These findings point to a new way of understanding developments of this period which fully recognises the complexities of the Highlands' relationship with 'the state', and the levels of interaction between numerous parties. The British state should not be viewed as a coherent and singular agency but as a confederation of interests, including those of Highlanders, between whom power was negotiated. Insofar as it determined control of territory, and influenced constructions of Highland identity, this negotiation shaped significant developments of the second half of the eighteenth century and the one that followed.