This SSHRC-funded project, “Mediating Jacobites in Cultural Memory, 1688-1845,” presents a new critical understanding of the literary culture of the Jacobites by analyzing the impact of mediation on the way in which Jacobite culture was represented in British cultural memory in the century after Culloden. The research will culminate in the joint textual/digital publication of Jacobitism and Cultural Memory, 1688-1845 (under contract, Cambridge UP) in the innovative Eighteenth-Century Connections Elements series, designed to present new theoretical perspectives in eighteenth-century studies to both new and expert audiences. “Mediating Jacobites in Cultural Memory, 1688-1845” will be the first study to situate the shaping of the Jacobite cause within the shifting media landscape of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland. 

“Mediating Jacobites in Cultural Memory, 1688-1845” 

Jacobitism — derived from Jacobus, Latin for “James”—was a complex social and political movement dating from 1688 that involved all three kingdoms of the British Isles: England, Scotland and Ireland. Aimed at the political restoration of the Stuart monarchy, Jacobitism also concerned issues of religion, culture, dynasty, and nationalism, taking on different forms in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Jacobites staged a series of continuous plots and risings in the first half of the eighteenth century, the most significant of which were the armed conflicts of 1715 and 1745. The final military event of the 1745 Rising, the Battle of Culloden (April 16, 1746), marked the effective end of the Jacobite cause and was followed by the violent suppression of Jacobites through mass transportation and execution, and official attempts to eradicate Scottish Highland culture. Despite the fact that Jacobitism was so pervasive in the British archipelago and that it posed such a danger to the government, its impact has been altered over time; the serious threat that the Jacobites posed has been minimized by the movement’s associations with barbarity and ineffective leadership.