The English Historical Review, June 1994 v109 n432 p737(2)
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1994 Addison Wesley Longman Higher Education Jeremy Black’s Culloden and the ’45 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1990; pp. xiv + 217. [pounds]16.95) is a slim volume which, if its own version of the Black bibliography be taken as a guide, is its author’s ninth book, not to mention the four he has edited and the four he has co-edited, published before he enters the second half of his thirties. We are in neo-Johnson country: like preaching women or walking dogs, the wonder is as much that the deed is done as how it is done, the more so as the title suggests a much narrower book than the one Dr Black has actually written. Presumably publishers much prefer books of Jacobite themes to have simple titles which hopefully elicit an automatic jerking motion towards the wallet on the part of potential buyers, but this is not a simple book. Its structure is in fact complex, reflecting at least three strands in the Black oeuvre and interests. First, there is an overall framework of diplomatic history which provides a survey, not of Jacobitism as a factor in European diplomacy, but of the effects of European diplomatic developments, which, of course, were often kaleidoscopic, on the Jacobites from 1688 to 1759. As the author has written voluminously on eighteenth-century diplomatic history, the result is a very useful summary. Secondly, there is a strand deriving from the author’s ‘military revolution’ writings which leads him, in the second half of the book, into an elaborate analysis of the campaign of 1745-6, culminating in Culloden. It might have been fairer to warn readers that Professor Geoffrey Parker, to name but one, is among those who do not hold with some of Dr Black’s theories in this field. However, the most illuminating point made is the simple one that, having virtually no cavalry, the Jacobites could afford to invade England late in 1745 without waiting for the spring grass of ’46. Finally, there is a revisionist strand, now well-known, out of the Cruikshanks, McLynn, Black school, which quite rightly casts fundamental doubts on Jack Plumb’s strange concept of the growth of political stability in Britain in an era racked by instability, scandal and corruption, and recurring rebellions. Technically, the book is sound. There is only one major howler in the very generous illustration. It is on page 67, where a well-known painting of a squadron action in the Firth of Forth during the abortive Franco-Jacobite invasion of 1708 is inexplicably transmuted into the single-ship action between the Lion and the Elizabeth in July 1745, which left Prince Charles with only the small Doutelle to carry him to Scotland. The footnotes display a predictable barrage of primary sources from all over the Anglo-American world. The book remains a summary of recent work, illustrated from primary material, rather than an original contribution. There is no point in complaining about lack of balance, because at this length idiosyncrasy becomes an asset. BRUCE P. LENMAN University of St Andrews Author: Black, Jeremy |
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