The American Revolution and Scotland (1765-1783)

International audienceThis paper argues that their perception of the Scots played a significant part in the thought of America's Founding Fathers. Not only was Scotland viewed as an enemy -due to the commitment of Highlanders in the British army- but also as a countermodel. The colonists invented a fictitious Scottish identity based on Jacobitism and everything they associated it with: tyranny, betrayal to the Hanover dynasty and to Britain, as well as Catholicism. Scotland was the Other against whom the American Whigs defined themselves as Protestant, loyal to the Hanover -at least until 1776- and deeply committed to liberty. What's more the Scots were accused of being responsible for the imperial crisis. The myth of a conspiracy by the king's Scottish ministers against America gained momentum in the 1760s and early 1770s. In the end the invention of an anti-American Scotland was instrumental in the shaping of the American identity as it progressively emerged during the Revolution