A ‘VIRTUOUS RABBLE’ OF VIRTUAL REBELS
In this 275th anniversary year of the final Jacobite rising – commonly known today as ‘the ‘45’ – the cultural significance of Jacobitism and its historical legacy have never before enjoyed greater public interest. Thankfully, the venerable field of Jacobite studies stands ready to provide an extensive corpus of reading material for the recent Outlanderfuelled surge of fresh and enthusiastic advocates! Amongst other topics, this historiography of Jacobitism is packed with accounts of the last campaign and the short but violent battles of the ‘45, with memoirs and biographies of the principal Jacobite officers, and with interdisciplinary treatises that examine the politics of Jacobitism against the context of the British and European polities during the 18th century.
By now we understand that the ‘Jacobite struggle’ was not simply one of religious conflict, dynastic intrigue, or embryonic nationalism. Instead, we can place the century-long Jacobite movement and its many constituent causes within an international context, and we can describe how it was sustained and combatted both in Britain and upon the continent between martial outbreaks. We have also gathered a great deal
