Taking its name from the Latin for James, Jacobitism was a largely Highland-based movement born with the dethronement of James VII and II in 1688. In addition to their distance from the centre of power and proudly independent history, Highlanders were still predominantly Catholic, and saw little grounds for allegiance to William. An early Jacobite victory over the government at Killiecrankie in 1689, however, was to prove a false dawn, the Highlanders being swiftly routed in turn at Dunkeld the same year.

After William demanded an oath of allegiance from all clan chiefs, the notorious although much-distorted Massacre of Glencoe in 1692 poured further fuel on the flames, shocking even Lowland Scotland with its ruthlessly cynical playing-off of rival clans against each other. Anti-government opposition was fomented further by the Act of Union, with the death of Queen Anne in 1714 the catalyst for the first major Jacobite rising, in support of James VII’s son James Edward Stuart, known as the “Old Pretender”, in September 1715. Anticipated French support was stymied by the death of Louis XV, and the rebels’ advance was checked by the end of the year.

Overpopulation of the meagrely fertile Highland landscape, and the emergence of landlord-tenant relationships in place of traditional clan structures, had created a backdrop of poverty against which the execution and transportation of Jacobite leaders, and the forfeiture of their estates, could only breed further resentment. Within Scotland as a whole, however, support for the cause was always limited, while French reinforcements, despite repeated promises, continued to prove elusive at the crucial moment. The last of these moments came with the rising of 1745, led by the “Young Pretender” Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, and his conclusive defeat by forces under the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden in 1746.

Much of the romance attached to Charles’s story has arisen from later embellishment and editing. His celebrated escape to Skye in women’s clothing, and thence to France, was widely seen at the time as more ignominious than heroic, a view borne out by the dissipation that characterised the rest of his life in exile. The soft-focus, tragically doomed image attached to Jacobitism after its demise was a key element in the vogue for “Highlandism” which took off in the late 18th century, reaching its apotheosis in the huge popularity of Walter Scott’s novels, and George IV’s infamous kilted visit to Edinburgh in 1822. This cultural trend can be seen as the ideological “good cop” to the draconian repression of Highland culture after 1745, including wholesale executions and land seizures, the banning of Highland dress and the bagpipes, and the systematic co-option of Highland soldiers into British regiments - in which guise they were to become, ironically, famously effective agents of Empire.

Corrupted as “Highlandism” may have become, it first emerged in highly distinguished intellectual company, namely the extraordinary and far-reaching confluence of innovative thought, across all manner of subjects and disciplines, which would later be christened the Scottish Enlightenment. The era’s pre-eminent philosopher, David Hume, author of such classic works as A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), here sums up its holistic spirit, which was widely fêted throughout Europe and beyond: “The same age, which produces great philosophers, and politicians, renowned generals and poets, usually abounds with skilful weavers and ship-carpenters. We cannot reasonably expect, that a piece of woollen cloth will be brought to perfection in a nation, which is ignorant of astronomy, or where ethics are neglected.”

Alongside the publication of other key Enlightenment texts, such as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Thomas Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind and James Beattie’s Essay on Truth, major advances and discoveries took place in fields such as chemistry, physics, geology, mathematics, anatomy and medicine, paving the way for many of the following century’s industrial achievements.