18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 32

[cahn]

:) Still talking about Charles XII of Sweden / the Great Northern War and the Stuarts and the Jacobites, among other things!

Comments

Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)

[regshoe]

Thank you very much for this write-up—absolutely fascinating stuff!

I'm intrigued by how the political position of the Jacobites in exile seems to have shaped their actual politics, more than their identity as a faction as such, and the tension between 'the Jacobites are about rightful absolute monarchy' and all these radical views. What would the Levellers and Gerrard Winstanley have made of these Stuarts...! Perhaps there's a sort of inverted parallel here with how the Whigs talk so much about how they're the party of liberty and equal treatment and then cheerfully start brutally repressing everyone else once they're in power.

The practical difficulties of communicating and plotting over large distances is also an interesting point—when writing about the period I'm often trying to remember to keep in mind the realities of communication and travel (how bad the roads were, how slow even the best travel possible with period technology could be).

Interesting also to see the tensions between the different countries, with Jacobites in Ireland, Scotland and England all having their own ideas and influences (does the book say anything in particular about Wales? I was just reading in the preface to Fight for a Throne that Duffy thinks the Welsh Jacobites are a promising area for further study!). Especially to see the political influences of the English Jacobites, when so much of their contribution to the big Jacobite events seems to involve them not doing anything! And the background in Ireland—I've read very little about this bit of Irish history until it appears at the centre of British politics as the Irish Question in the late nineteenth century, so I like seeing how the same themes fit into my other favourite historical period.

Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)

[luzula]

Yeah, there's definitely something interesting in how political position shapes action and influences ideology.

What would the Levellers and Gerrard Winstanley have made of these Stuarts...!

Well, but they still aren't radical in the sense that they want to empower poor people and do away with economic inequality, like Winstanley wanted (if I understand him correctly--I have still to read that Christopher Hill book). But neither were the Whigs, of course.

There is that interesting hint about William Mackintosh of Borlum (a Jacobite commander in the '15, for others reading along) expressing sympathy for the Galloway Levellers in the 1720's, though. I should finish reading his book...

Nope, there isn't much about Wales as a separate region; some of the English Jacobites he mentions are actually from Wales, I think, so I guess he just subsumes Wales into England.

Re: Write-up of "The Jacobites", by Daniel Szechi (2019)

[regshoe]

Well, but they still aren't radical in the sense that they want to empower poor people and do away with economic inequality, like Winstanley wanted

True!

Mackintosh of Borlum's fictional son as written by Naomi Mitchison is pretty sympathetic to the Quakers, isn't he—that's a potentially interesting thing (um, in Mitchison's imagination if not in real history), considering the seventeenth-century connections between the Quakers and the Levellers. Hmm, I want to read that book, though it looks as though it's still not available anywhere that allows download of the whole thing.