1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion by Daniel SzechiReview by: Geoffrey PlankThe American Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 3 (Jun., 2007), pp. 925-926Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40006804 .

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Europe: Early Modern and Modern 925

case-by-case treatment of reliability. The second task is to evaluate the ways in which English preoccupations and perceptions distorted the representations. The third is to examine the internal dynamics of the English periodical press - the back-and-forth of the English journalists - as they treated matters Irish.

In the main, there are few surprises and not a little tedium in all this. The outlines of early modern English and "godly" anti-Irish, anti-Catholic bigotry are only too well known, and not much can be added to the pic- ture. By far the most interesting material is the very little that cuts across the grain: those few writers who resisted the cultural reflex and found some sympathy for the native Irish predicament. The royalist journalist- astrologer George Wharton was one and, most inter- estingly, the Leveller John Harris was another (both men were linked through Harris's wife, about whom Wharton wrote an elegy). One problem is that O'Hara simply accepts the principal journalists' careers and at- titudes as they have been well established by other scholars (notably Joseph Frank and Anthony Cotton a generation ago, more recently by Joad Raymond, Jason McElligott, David Underdown, and Jason Peacey), and plugs the "Irish angle" into the existing framework. While specialists will find some points of interest - for example, that the newsbooks of 1641 and early 1642 were more restrained in their treatment of alleged and real Irish atrocities than the "separates" - most of the summary has at most a confirmatory, I-knew-as-much- already value. There is a further, perhaps inevitable, difficulty with the treatment of unfolding events, rather than perdurable attitudes. Newsbooks provided re- ports, commentaries, and reactions to events in weekly dollops. To take periodical issues serially, as O'Hara characteristically does, is to take a giant step backward from historical insight to relentlessly annalistic report- age. Matters are only made worse when the "event" is itself journalistic - one hack's weekly "take" on anoth- er - which more often than not trades historical under- standing for the seventeenth-century analogue of our tiresome nightly television spectacle of squabbling "talking heads." It is one thing to learn that this sort of thing happened, another to have to replay it.

Regrettably, it seems that the publisher's editor has done little to help the author move away from disser- tation-quality writing. Ham-fisted explication of per- fectly obvious quotations surely could have been edited out, even when correct. When the explication is wrong, the effect is deadly, as where (p. 163) "creature" in the clear political sense of "instrument or puppet" (see OED, "creature," sense 5) is glossed as "degenerate beast." Lord Inchiquin's name is spelled three ways, McElligott's (a principal researcher in the same field) name is always misspelled. Trivial as these lapses may be, they are more conspicuous in the absence of coun- tervailing strengths. The author's own conclusion says as much: "it is difficult to imagine" that the newsbooks'

material on Ireland "failed to have some influence upon English society" (p. 206). Indeed.

Michael Mendle University of Alabama

Daniel Szechi. 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 2006. Pp. xvi, 351. $50.00.

On September 14, 1715, a unit of Scottish Highlanders seized control of Inverness. This was the beginning of something potentially momentous, a series of military operations aimed at sparking an uprising across Britain to oust King George and replace him with the exiled son of James II. Over the next few weeks more than 20,000 Scots and approximately 1,200 English took up arms against the king. According to Daniel Szechi's reckon- ing, this was a larger insurrection than the subsequent one in 1745. Unfortunately in 1715 the Jacobites had no Bonnie Prince Charlie to lead them, and very little in the way of a coherent strategic plan. Their putative leader, the would-be King James III, did not arrive in Britain until the worst of the fighting was over. He did not stay long.

Historians of Jacobitism have generally loved drama, and they have consequently focused their attention on the rising of 1745. The resulting scholarly neglect of 1715 is unfortunate. As Szechi demonstrates, the out- break of rebellion in discrete locations in 1715 "can tell us a great deal about the internal workings of society" in each "particular locality" (p. 5). The very aims of the rebels differed depending on their local constituencies. While some Catholics and nonjurors insisted on Brit- ain's unconditional allegiance to the man they identi- fied as the king, others had a much more reciprocal un- derstanding of monarchy and expected James to redress their specific, often sectarian, grievances once he had assumed the throne. The driving force behind the 1715 rising was in Britain, not in the Jacobite court in exile. As Szechi shows, the '15 was not simply an attempted coup. It was a failed revolution (p. 77).

Szechi devotes his first two chapters to an overview of social conditions, sectarian relations and party pol- itics in the various parts of the United Kingdom prior to the rising. Next, he examines the Jacobite leadership. Then for three chapters he focuses on military opera- tions, and his field of vision narrows to Scotland and northern England. Finally he discusses the aftermath of the rising, emphasizing shifts in government policy and the ways in which the Jacobites adjusted to the restored political order. Like W. A. Speck in his study of the '45, Szechi comes to the ironic conclusion that the 1715 ris- ing served to strengthen the Hanoverian dynasty in the long run, and bolstered political stability. His more pro- vocative conclusion is that the effort was doomed from the outset, and that the apparent futility of the under- taking is evidence of the role of religious enthusiasm in motivating the rebels.

Szechi's work fills an enormous gap in the literature. Because of the scant attention that historians have de-

American Historical Review June 2007

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926 Reviews of Books

voted to the '15, this book is less a synthesis than an invitation for more research. After his preliminary chapters Szechi understandably concentrates most of his attention on those parts of Britain where fighting actually took place, but much could be learned from a comparative analysis encompassing the south of Eng- land, Wales, Ireland, and the colonies. How did the in- habitants of those regions respond to the rising? What factors, in those diverse places, contributed to main- taining peace?

In general Szechi pays less attention than he should to the linguistic divisions separating the peoples of Brit- ain and Ireland. This is most egregiously true in the case of Wales, which barely gets mentioned except as the junior partner in the region called "England and Wales." Szechi concludes one extended discussion of economic development in "England and Wales" with a one-sentence caveat: "Wales was only lightly touched by any of the new developments" (p. 12). Perhaps he should be forgiven in this case. Historians have been mistreating Wales in this way for generations, and Wales, after all, was not the cockpit of the rising.

Scotland matters more. When he discusses combat operations Szechi acknowledges the distinctiveness of the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. The Highland units recruited differently, fought differently, and "provided the real punch of the Jacobite army" (p. 130). Szechi asserts that the "rank and file of the Highland units were for the most part monoglot Gaelic-speakers with very strong clan affiliation, but little respect for anyone outside it" (p. 153). Nonetheless when he discusses questions of ideology and motivation, like most recent historians Szechi emphasizes the commonalities of Scottish Jacobitism, placing the greatest emphasis on sectarian allegiances that crossed the linguistic divide. Murray Pittock has warned us against too easily asso- ciating militant Jacobitism with the purported restive- ness of the Highlands. Still, given their disproportion- ate share of the fighting, the Highlanders deserve more attention. The next book on the 1715 rising should in- clude a section analyzing in more detail what the Gaelic-speakers thought.

Geoffrey Plank University of Cincinnati

James P. Huzel. The Popularization ofMalthus in Early Nineteenth-Century England: Martineau, Cobbett, and the Pauper Press. (Modern Economic and Social History Series.) Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. 2006. Pp. xiii, 266. $99.95.

James P. Huzel, author of several seminal articles on the impact of Malthusianism on British social policy, has brought the various strands together in an author- itative study. Many years of close reading of the works of Thomas Malthus, as well as those of his key support- ers and radical critics, allow the author to offer a per- suasive account of the reception and impact of the economist's controversial views. Huzel's acuteness in analyzing the primary sources is accompanied by an

equally impressive critique of the work of other scholars in the field. The result is a stimulating and historio- graphically well grounded treatment of arguably the most influential social and economic thinker of nine- teenth century Britain.

The opening chapter, an overview of Malthus's life and work, is scrupulously fair to the economist. Fault- ing those scholars who have relied on the first edition (1798) of the Essay on the Principle of Population, Huzel points out the many changes in later editions, such as the possibility that "moral restraint," education of the laboring classes, and emigration might mitigate the oth- erwise dismal consequences of population increase. Malthus also moved away from an insistence that it was essential to abolish the poor law system. Yet in spite of an "optimistic" evolution in his thinking, his contem- porary opponents continued to fasten on the negative, determinist emphasis of his early work. This hostility was readily extended to his principal supporters, par- ticularly the popularizer of political economy, Harriet Martineau, to whom Huzel devotes a chapter. The au- thor credits her with rendering Malthus's views accept- able to a widening circle of upper and middle-class readers, but notes that she also served to magnify the assault on Malthusian principles. This is ironic, for Martineau was considerably more open to the possi- bility of ameliorating the condition of the lower orders than Malthus. Radical and Tory critics alike pounced on the negative and demeaning aspects of her illustra- tive tales, driven partly, Huzel suggests, by what they regarded as the unseemliness of a relatively young and unmarried woman writing about matters of procreation and sexual morality. The attacks on Martineau became especially pronounced in the turbulent prelude to the passage of the New Poor Law in 1834, especially be- cause of her active role in promoting the measure. The abuse heaped on Malthus himself reached a crescendo during this period, even though he took no part in cam- paigning for the reform.

The second half of the book is devoted to Malthus's radical critics, with pride of place given to William Cob- bett, the subject of a separate chapter. Following the lead of Ian Dyck and other scholars, Huzel accords Cobbett far more intellectual respect than he has tra- ditionally received, even though taking him to task for denying that any population increase had occurred since the Middle Ages. Rather than a nostalgist react- ing "emotionally" to Malthusian principles, as some historians have suggested, Huzel's Cobbett was a pains- taking researcher, reading numerous theoretical works as well as the voluminous report of the 1832-1834 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws. He was also a master publicist, second to none even in that conten- tious age for the power of his invective, and certainly did misrepresent some of Malthus's views, for example the economist's alleged endorsement of birth control and abortion. His hostility intensified over time, espe- cially over what he correctly perceived as the key role played by Malthusianism in the creation of the New Poor Law. Malthus never deigned to respond to any of

American Historical Review June 2007

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