Scotland, Union, and the French Revolution : an intellectual history of the debates concerning social order and commercial society in Scotland, with a final chapter concerning Ireland, c. 1771–1805

After the Union of 1707, Scottish authors became fascinated by the likely impact of commercial society upon the existing social order. Expectations ranged from civil collapse, as the traditional structures of an agricultural society shifted, to hopes for a new era of civility and peace, as urban life replaced the feudal social relationships. Jacobitism could be seen as an explicable backlash, especially with the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, potentially barbaric and feudal, in conditions of developing commerce. In circumstances of having surrendered their legislative powers to the Westminster parliament in exchange for the promise of economic development, the Scots launched enquiries into the progress of society and commerce and the changes this entailed in manners and culture. By the 1790s, Scotland, as part of Britain, was faced with the political and economic crisis incurred by a mercantile system addicted to the pursuit of wars for empire. Scottish authors were therefore forced to debate the fate of the English Constitution, and the condition of England, alongside their own circumstances. This thesis reconstructs these Scots’ debates concerning social order and commercial society from the 1770s to the 1800s. Beginning with the contextual chapters scrutinising the work of the prominent luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, the thesis focuses on three Scottish authors – John Millar, Dugald Stewart and James Mackintosh – who were at the forefront of these controversies. The thesis ends with the implications for Ireland through the works of Maria Edgeworth, who saw the possibility of Ireland following a ‘Scottish’ trajectory of social change through commerce. The controversies were further fuelled by the outbreak of the French Revolution, which exacerbated hopes of social transformation and of political reform towards a new era of peace and prosperity, but only confirmed the warlike nature of a world of the jealousy of trade.