Why am I passionate about this?
Growing up in the former Jacobite heartland of Aberdeen, I've had an interest in the Jacobites for almost as long as I can remember. When I was about six, my father was explaining to me on a bus in King Street in the city that Charles Edward could never have won, when another passenger walked the length of the top deck to contradict him. Lost, excluded, and alternative histories fascinated me and still do. History’s winners still too often present partial and excluding stories. Even in Scotland, Jacobitism is still misunderstood, but understanding is much better than it was thirty years ago, and I'm pleased to have done my bit to change that.
Murray's book list on how Jacobitism had a different vision for Britain
Why did Murray love this book?
The largest – but also the worst led – Jacobite military challenge to Great Britain happened in 1715, when more than 20 000 men volunteered to fight.
Daniel Szechi tells their story more fully than anyone else, and sees Scottish opposition to the 1707 Union with England as one of the greatest motivators of the Jacobite Rising.
1 author picked 1715 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Lacking the romantic imagery of the 1745 uprising of supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 has received far less attention from scholars. Yet the '15, just eight years after the union of England and Scotland, was in fact a more significant threat to the British state. This book is the first thorough account of the Jacobite rebellion that might have killed the Act of Union in its infancy.
Drawing on a substantial range of fresh primary resources in England, Scotland, and France, Daniel Szechi analyzes not only large and dramatic moments of the rebellion but also…