Allan I. MacInnes 
Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788 [EPUB ebook] 

This is an appraisal of clanship both with respect to its vitality and its eventual demise, in which the author views clanship as a socio-economic, as well as a political agency, deriving its strength from personal obligations and mutual service between chiefs and gentry and their clansmen. Its demise is attributed to the throwing over of these personal obligations by the clan elite, not to legislation or central government repression. The book discusses the impact on the clans of the inevitable shift, with the passage of time, from feudalism to capitalism, regardless of the ‘Forty Five’. It draws upon estate papers, family correspondence, financial compacts, social bonds and recorded oral tradition rather than the biased records of central government.

About the author

Allan I. Mac Innes is a specialist in early modern Scottish History in an international context. A graduate of the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, he has held academic positions at the universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen, the latter position as Burnett-Fletcher Chair of History. He is currently Professor of Early Modern History at Strathclyde University, Glasgow, and is author of a number of books including Charles I and the Making of the Covenanting Movement, 1625–41; Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603–1788; Union and Empire: The Making of the United Kingdom in 1707; and The British Revolution, 1629–1660.