Warriors of Empire: The Scottish Highlander in British Atlantic Print Culture, 1688 - 178

During Britain's century long conflict with France between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the end of the American Revolution in 1783, Scottish Highlanders were important figures of empire in terms of their military experience and the discursive representations of this experience. As potential military allies to both Britain and its imperial enemies, Highlanders were a source of both hope and anxiety in the transatlantic British press. My comparative investigation of British-Atlantic print commentary historicizes the shared and divergent transatlantic understandings of Highlanders' military and geopolitical relationship to empire.;I consider British commentary on Scottish Highlanders as being embedded in a circum-atlantic network of information exchange. Adopting a geographic framework that considers the transnational and transoceanic circulation of experiences, news, and ideas enables a more nuanced understanding of important points of cross-border connection as well as important constructions of difference. Highlanders' entangled military relationship with Britain and France muddled Highlanders' cultural image in the British Atlantic press, and disrupted processes of national identity formation tied to imperial war and military service. It was only when the dangerous entanglements and "mercenary" associations in which Highlanders were embedded could be redefined, as a result of the imperial geopolitical dynamics and military relationships explored by this study, that 'modern' Scottishness could be safely and successfully 'Highlandized,' and a coherent Britishness unified through war could emerge.;These contexts illustrate that transnational and national histories need not be so oppositional in geographic scope or analytical purpose. Though national boundaries have, in the past, unduly distorted the writing of history via circumscribed geographies and ideological bias, such boundaries increasingly mattered to 18th century contemporaries. The transnational circuits of an Atlantic World of communication, culture, and imperialism were just as significant to the historical construction of national differences as they were for cross-border connections and exchange.