Counterinsurgency in the Age of Enlightenment: military ethnography of the ‘Highland Problem’

ABSTRACT

One of the first and closest ‘laboratories’ of the British Empire in terms of turning the British army into a colonial institution during protracted counterinsurgency was one of the inner Gaelic fringes of the United Kingdom, the Highlands of Scotland. It was there in the first half of the Eighteenth century that the army appeared as a corporate institution with its own views not just on its role in the defeating the Jacobite movement, but in resolving the ‘Highland Problem’, acquiring and applying militarily useable topographic and ethnographic knowledge as well as coercive power. The military presence in the Highlands of Scotland was based on intelligence, collaboration with local allies, social control and working civil-military relations, despite the lack of the unity of command during the whole period of the Jacobite movement. This was the dark side of the Enlightenment: the growth of knowledge about rebellious populations of the European empires that had been tested on the lines of ‘enlightened’ pacification and added to the toolbox of colonial counterinsurgency. It would help shape later methods of colonial counter-insurgency in the next century.

KEYWORDS:

• ‘Highland Problem’
• ‘Highland war’
• military ethnography
• counterinsurgency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. More about the British army production and use of colonial knowledge see: Bayly, Empire and Information; Plank, Rebellion and Savagery; O’ Cadhla, Civilizing Ireland; Thomas, Empires of Intelligence; Hevia, The Imperial Security State; and Malkin, A Laboratory for Empire.

2. Walter, Colonial Violence, 5.

3. More about the ‘martial races’ discourse in concern with the recruitment of the Highland regiments see: MacKillop, More Fruitful Than the Soil; Dziennik, The Fatal Land. About the forms of self-identification in the Scottish regiments see: Henshaw, Scotland and the British Army.

4. For example: Anthropology & the colonial encounter.

5. Griffin, A Revolution in Colonial Military Affairs.

6. Scheipers, “Counterinsurgency or irregular warfare?,” 879–899.

7. Ohlmeyer, “A Laboratory for Empire?” 26–60.

8. Mapping of India, for example, in the second half of the XVIII and first half of the XIX centuries carried out by the British army in parallel with the similar projects in England and Ireland. All these military operations, which were at the same time geographic and ethnographic surveys, relied on an earlier experience – the ‘Military Survey of Scotland’ (1747–1755). The beginning of this project was set by the Duke of Cumberland, commander of the British troops in Scotland during the last Jacobite Rising: The Great Map. More on the transfer of the Scottish Highlands experience in the colonies realized by the British army officers see: Plank, Rebellion and Savagery.

9. George Wade to Sir … Sterling, 27 October 1725//TNA. SP 54.16 (58/300); Wade, ‘Report to His Majesty concerning the Highlands, of Scotland, in 1725ʹ [1726], 309.

10. For example: Prebble, Culloden; Lenman, The Jacobite Risings, 259–261; Speck, The Butcher; Black, Culloden and the 45ʹ, 177–178; Preston, The Road to Culloden Moor, 14; and Roberts, The Jacobite Wars, 176–190.

11. Oats, Sweet William or The Butcher? 18–32.

12. Duke of Cumberland to … Inverness, April 30^th [Extracts of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland’s Letters, concerning the Regulations to be made in Scotland]//The National Archives [TNA]. SP 54.32 (25/111); Duke of Cumberland. Sketch of Regulations proposed to be made in Scotland. 1746 [enclosed: Duke of Cumberland. Letter to His Grace the Duke of Newcastle. Fort Augustus, 26 June 1746]//TNA. 54.32 (24A/91–95).

13. Plank, Rebellion and Savagery.

14. About the XIX century forms of colonial counterinsurgency see: Whittingham, ‘Savage warfare’, 591–607; Rid, “The Nineteenth Century Origins,” 727–758.

15. Hudson, “From Nation to Race,” 247–264; Jacques, “From Savages and Barbarians to Primitives,”190–215; Nash, Wild Enlightenment; and Galloway, White People, Indians and Highlanders, 63–118.

16. Hudson, “From Nation to Race,” 248, 257.

17. As numerous and influential allies in North America, the Iroquois, for example, were more detailed in the comments of the British colonial officials than tribes less reliable from the strategic point of view. For example: Hinderaker, “The Four Indian Kings,” 487-526; and Bickham, Savages within the Empire, 64.

18. Wade, “Report, &c, relating to the Highlands” [1724]//Historical Papers relating to the Jacobite Risings [henceforth HPJR], 133.

19. Anne, “Memorial Concerning” [1747]//Albemarle Papers [henceforth AP], 305.

20. Bland, Fletcher, “Proposals for Civilizing the Highlands” [1747]//AP, 491.

21. On the role of the internal colonization experience realized in continental Europe (Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Russian Empire) in the process of reforms in the Scottish Highlands see: Johnsson, The Enlightenment in the Highlands, 43–47.

22. Herman, The Scottish Enlightenment, 60–103, 255–277; and Porter, The Enlightenment.

23. In fact, many traditional regulations in the Highlands outlived by the end of the XVII century, so the chiefs and magnates were forced, raising the men, threaten them in the event of refusal with ‘fire and sword’: Report of the Committie anent the Peace off the Highlands, 1699//HPJR, vol. I, 1–3. See also: Macinnes, “Repression and Conciliation,” 168–172.

24. For example: Strachan, “An Account of the number of Men the highland Chieftains” [1716-1717]//National Archives of Scotland [henceforth NAS]. GD 1/616/46; Forbes, ‘Memoriall Anent the True State of the Highlands as to Their Chieftenries, Followings and Dependances before the Late Rebellion’ [1746]//HPJR, vol. I, 166–176.

25. Trevor-Roper, “The Invention of Tradition,” 15–41; and McNeil, Scotland, Britain, Empire.

26. Wade, “Report, &c, relating to the Highlands” [1724]//HPJR, vol. I, 140.

27. Lang, The Highlands of Scotland in the 1750.

28. For a long time, attempts were made to hold the chiefs and magnates liable for the conduct of their clansmen and tenants: ‘A Memorial from the Commissioners of Enquiry in Scotland to The Right Honorable The Lord Viscount Townshend, one of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State’ [5 October 1716]//The National Archives [henceforth TNA]. SP 54.12 (220B/547–550).

29. This refers not only to those chiefs who supported London, but to those who had supported the Jacobites but then got engaged in the more lucrative act of recruiting the Highland regiments in connection with the beginning of the Seven Years’ War: Dziennik, The Fatal Land.

30. Bland, Fletcher, “Proposals for Civilizing the Highlands” [1747] // AP, 490.

31. Plank, Rebellion and Savagery, 176.

32. MacKillop, More Fruitful Than The Soil, 45–47.

33. General Bland to the Right Honourable The Lord Hardwick. Ed., 24 December 1754; same to same. Ed., 11 February 1755//British Library [henceforth BL]. Hardwick Papers [henceforth HP]. Vol. C. Correspondence of the Lord Hardwicke on Scotch Affairs.1753–1756. Add. MS 35448. P. 220, 230.

34. General Bland to His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, and etc. etc. etc. Edinburgh, 29 October 1754//BL. Newcastle Papers. Vol. LII. Add. MS. 32737. P. 225.

35. Lemprière, ‘A Description of the Highlands of Scotland. The Situation of the several Clans and the Number of Men able to bear Arms, as also ye Forts lately Erected and Roads of Communication or Military Ways carried on by his Majesty’s command, with the Seats of the most considerable Nobility in the Low Country’ [1731]//NLS. Acc.11104. Map Rol.a.42.

36. An indirect proof of this fact is the full-height portrait of General Wade painted by John van Diest in the same year 1731. It also reflected Wade’s success in the Highlands: General is portrayed on the background of Scottish mountains where a group of ‘Redcoats’ is busy constructing a military road: Diest, ‘Major-General George Wade’ [1731]//Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Accession No. PG 2416.

37. Wade, “Report, &c, relating to the Highlands” [1724]//HPJR, vol. I, 131–132.

38. In reality, the socioeconomic order in the Highlands and the related local form of military organization were far from an ideal alignment with feudal and clan principles. Commercialization went beyond the ‘Highland Line’ as early as in XVII century, and the military and mobilization capabilities of the feudal and clan relations had become quite limited long before the Disarming Acts of 1716, 1725 and 1747. Thus, following the list of persons capable of bearing weapons in Blair Athol and Glen Tilt, only 46% possessed weapons of any kind and only one out of every five was armed with a broadsword and a musket: MacKillop, More Fruitful Than The Soil, 7.

39. For the first time General Mackay used this term in his memoirs: Mackay, Memoirs of the War carried on in Scotland and Ireland, 80.

40. Black, To the Hebrides.

41. Copy of a letter from John Duke of Argyll to William Stuart, esq., Member of Parliament. Written from Scotland in 1715 a little before the Battle of Dunblane//BL. HP. Historical Collections. 1567–1720. Add. Ms. 35,838. P. 390.

42. Stevenson, The Hunt for Rob Roy, 107–108.

43. Wade, “Report, &c, relating to the Highlands” [1724]//HPJR, vol. I, 139.

44. Ibid., 133–134.

45. Fraser, ‘Memorial addressed to His Majesty George I concerning the State of the Highlands’ [1724]//Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, 254–267; and Wade, ‘Report, &c., relating to the Highlands’ [1724]//HPJR, vol. I, 132–149.

46. Erskine, “An Account of the Highlanders and Highlands of Scotland” [1724]//NAS. Mar and Kellie Papers. GD 124/15/1263/1. P. 1.

47. For example: Stevenson, Military Instructions; Emmerich, The Partisan in War. About the history of this term see: Selig, Skaggs, “The Concept of the Kleiner Krieg in the Context of Warfare in the Age of Absolutism”//Ewald, Treatise on Partisan Warfare, 9–12; and Heuser, “Small Wars in the Age of Clausewitz,” 139–162.

48. Geo. Carpenter to Lord Townshend. Edinburgh, 13 September 1716//TNA. SP 54.12 (174/425).

49. Bruce, “Pandours, Partisans, and Petite Guerre,” 329–347.

50. Lawrence, “Poachers turned gamekeepers,” 843–857; and Heuser, “Introduction,” 741–753.

51. Lawrence, “Poachers turned gamekeepers,” 843–857; Forrest, “The insurgency of the Vendée,” 800–813; Kleinman, “Initiating insurgencies abroad,” 784–799; and Heuser, “Lessons learnt?,” 858–876.

52. Wade, “Report, &c, relating to the Highlands” [1724]//HPJR, vol. I, 139–140.

53. During the War of the Spanish Succession France and Spain borrowed from the local traditions of the partisan war forming the regiments of mountain fusiliers who were outfitted, equipped and acted following the model of the Catalan regiments of mountain fusiliers who had borrowed the tactics from the Catalan and Roussillon guerillas (miquelets) that had opposed Madrid and Versailles as early as in mid-XVII century: Guizard, “Fusiliers et Arquebusiers de Montagne ou du Roussillon,” 20–27.

54. Wade, “Report, &c, relating to the Highlands” [1724]; idem., ‘Scheme deliver’d to the King in April, 1725ʹ [1725]; idem., “Report, &c, relating to the Highlands” [1727]//HPJR, vol. I, 141–142, 148–149, 161–165; idem., ‘Report to His Majesty concerning the Highlands, of Scotland, in 1725ʹ [1726]//Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, 291–292; 311–316; General Wade to Lord Townshend. Edinburgh, 9 August 1726//NLS. Marshal Wade Orders. Ms 7187, 82; General Wade to Lord Townshend. London, 10 April 1727//NLS. Marshal Wade Orders. Ms 7187, 97; Tabraham, Grove, Fortress Scotland, 100; Hodson, William Roy and the Military Survey of Scotland//The Great Map, 7–24; and Tabraham, The Military Context of the Military Survey//The Great Map, 25–35.

55. Cit. by: Oats, Sweet William or The Butcher? 104.

56. Humphrey Bland to the Duke of Newcastle. 24 November 1747//TNA. SP 54/37/31A.

57. List of Governors and other Officers proper to be put into the New Commissions of the Peace for the Highland Countys in Scotland [1727]//TNA. SP 54.18 (25B/128).

58. List of Officers of the Army proposed to be added to the Ordinary Lists of the Justices of Peace in all the countys where the Disarming Act takes place [1747]; List of persons proposed to be assisting to Lieutenant General Bland in the execution of the Disarming Act [1747]//AP, 503–504.

59. Christian Tripodi offered quite characteristic lineage of the most prominent figures in the development of modern counterinsurgency – from famous Lieutenant-General David Petraeus downwards Major-General George Wade, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in Scotland: Tripodi, “Enlightened Pacification,” 40–74.

60. More on the thoughts of Marquis of Santa Cruz de Marcenado see: Strategy Makers, 124–146.

61. Kurukin, The Persian Campaign, 238–64.

62. Lapin, The Russian army, 295–7.

63. More about this process: Clyde, From Rebel to Hero.

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Stanislav Malkin

Stanislav Malkin, Doctor of historical sciences, Associate professor, Head of the Chair of World History, Law and Methods of Education and Historical Faculty, Samara State University of Social Sciences and Humanities.