Scottish Opinion and the American Revolution

Bibliographic Data

ID3518567
AuthorsDalphy I Fagerstrom (corresponding author)
Year1954
Volume11
Issue2
Pages252
Publication date1954-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1922041
OpenAlexW2328231477
LanguageEN
Citations received10

ARLY in June, I775, accounts of the fighting at Lexington and E Concord crowded even the annual proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland out of the Caledonian Mercury.' The Scottish reading public was well prepared for startling news from America. Between I763 and I789 there was a significant expansion of the Scottish press; the developing quarrel with the colonies was partly responsible. So great was the interest in the course of the American crises that good American coverage was essential to the success of a paper.2 Such reflection of American events made the Scottish press, like that of most of Europe, an agent of the European-American history then in the making.3 But for eighteenth-century Scotland, the tobacco trade with the colonies was a more dynamic agent of Scottish-American interaction. It was perhaps the most important of a complex of factors which contributed to changing economic and social circumstances prior to the better known intellectual flowering of Scotland's golden age. By the period of the American Revolution, the Scottish political structure, which

Political science · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Scottish History and National Identity

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