Commonplace Jacobitism: Commonplace Books and Scottish Jacobite Social Imaginaries, 1688-1765

Abstract

Historians have expertly documented how Jacobites produced sermons, poems, broadsides, manifestos and other documents intended to communicate the stories and narratives comprising a Scottish Jacobite understanding of the world. Building on that research, this article uses commonplace books to examine the reception of these ideas among Scottish Jacobites. It reveals that they were not passive consumers: their acts of consumption, purchase, borrowing, note-taking and creative construction demonstrate an immense variety of participatory practices in a broader Jacobite world which extend well beyond a limited focus on participation in high politics, battles or risings.