From Rebel to Hero

From Rebel to Hero: the Image of the Highlander, 1745-1830 examines the transformation in attitudes towards Scottish Gaeldom after 1745, beginning with a study of anti-Jacobite propaganda and the Whig agenda for solving the "Highland Problem", through to the ideals of Improvement.

After the '45, the British Government sought to remodel the Highlands after the Lowland fashion, converting the Gaels from rebellious "barbarians" into loyal, Presbyterian, English-speaking British subjects; dismantling clanship and the Gaelic language and imposing cultural and economic values from outside.
Of the would-be reformers, Dr Samuel Johnson observed, "The state of the mountains and the islands is equally unknown from that of Borneo or Sumatra; of both they have only heard a little, and guess the rest. They are strangers to the language and the manners, to the advantages of the people whose life they would model, and whose evil they would remedy."

An analysis of travellers' accounts (revealing a shift away from the general condemnation of Gaelic culture to wistfulness for its eclipse) is followed by an examination of the romantic sheen which descended over popular impression of the Highlands after the demise of clanship. Once fear of them had subsided, the Gaels became a favoured subject of writers and artists ranging from Burns to Mendelssohn. This change arose not from concern with the Clearances or the destruction of Gaelic culture, but from the ideal of the Noble Savage, initiated by James Macpherson's controversial "translations" of Ossian and carried to completion by Sir Walter Scott.

Finally (and crucially), the role of the recruitment and service of Highland soldiers in the decade after Culloden is considered: the dangerous ruffians of the '45 are transformed in the future heroes of Waterloo.

From Rebel to Hero was first published in Great Britain in 1995, and reprinted in 1998, by Tuckwell Press Ltd, East Lothian, Scotland, and was published in North America in 1998 under license by the History Book Club of New York. Original ISBNs: 1898410216 (cased); 1862320276 (paperback); http://lccn.loc.gov/96143533