This book is a frontal attack on an entrenched orthodoxy. Our official,
public vision of the early eighteenth century demonises Louis XIV and
France and marginalises the Scots Jacobites. Louis is seen as an
incorrigibly imperialistic monster and the enemy of liberty and all that
is good and progressive. The Jacobite Scots are presented as so
foolishly reactionary and dumbly loyal that they were (sadly) incapable
of recognising their manifest destiny as the cannon fodder of the first
British empire. But what if Louis acted in defence of a nation's
liberties and (for whatever reason) sought to right a historic
injustice? What if the Scots Jacobites turn out to be the most radical,
revolutionary party in early eighteenth-century British politics? Using
newly discovered sources from the French and Scottish archives this
exciting new book challenges our fundamental assumptions regarding the
emergence of the fully British state in the early eighteenth century.