Glencoe

I have waggishly remarked that "Glencoe proves that the British have no talent for atrocity" because it wasn't an efficient massacre. Only forty men and thirty-eight women and children died that night. There were more refugees than corpses created that night. "It filled the pubs of Scotland with sole survivors for a generation", has also been said. The actual Soldiers that were involved were other Scots provided by Lord Argyll, not Englishmen.
But it was a ghastly act, that perhaps came about due to more miss-information than malice. But trust was betrayed, and this remains a book that can be studied with profit by students of relationships between colonial powers and their aboriginals. A very good book.

Prebble's Glencoe, already half a century old and rarely out of print, is narrative history at its best. It tells the story of a late seventeenth century war crime and it carefully apportions blame on the evidence and without prejudice (not easy sometimes in writings on Scottish history).

This is at least one crime that is not down to the English. Ultimately the coldly detached Dutchman William II gave the order for the murder of over 30 men, women and children in Glencoe in February 1692 but, as always, things are a little more complicated than they might at first appear.

For William II the Scottish Highlands more like the American West in the age of the Frontier than anything we would recognise as orderly - or perhaps like the Balkans show more at any time - was a sideshow in a sideshow, for even England was a sideshow to his struggles with Louis XIV.

This massacre was fundamentally a Scot-on-Scot crime, part originating in ancient clan feuds, part in Lowlander negativity towards Highlanders but mostly arising from the ambitions of a politically astute Scots politician, the 'Master of Stair' (Sir John Dalrymple, First Earl of Stair).

Stair was William's Chief Minister in Scotland. His ideological drive was towards something that is still a matter of political interest today - the Parliamentary Union of the Two Kingdoms. This was to happen in 1707 and, although he died during the process, it was to be his legacy.

The victims of the massacre were not wholly innocent (at least not the men folk since how a murdered child of four could be otherwise is a fact). They were bandits, in effect operating much like the reivers of the previous century at the border of the pre-Union Kingdoms.

But, for all the undoubted brutalities of the age, the intentional murder of an entire community - the orders were for much more extensive killings - was always outside the moral compass of seventeenth century Scotland (let alone England).

The book is interesting not only for the conditions that led to the crime and the apportionment of blame but also for the political shenanigans involved in inquiring as to who gave the order and why - there are lessons in this for today.

Political considerations had the Scottish Parliament, with a public horrified at reports of the atrocity, undertaking its own inquiry in a final pre-1707 burst of energy. But the King must be protected against Jacobite critics and so he was. Stair scarcely suffered at all. Quite the contrary.

The game was to pin it on a chain of command below those who planned the murder and protect a brilliantly slippery and cynical King from blame. It was easy to deal with the 'only obeying orders' defence and go for the military perpetrators and save the politicians. Plus ca change!

There are few truly decent characters in this story - even amongst the leading victims - but one comes out of it rather well, as do two officers who broke their swords rather than become murderers and the soldiers who connived at the escape of their would-be victims.

This was the old Commonwealth era Puritan Governor of Inverlochy (the garrison that sent the trrops into Glencoe), Sir John Hill, who did obey a key order that enabled the massacre but who tried every possible means to avoid it and who showed consummate honesty in the inquiry.

He was stuck in the dilemma of all soldiers - what to do when an order is clear? From a humanitarian position he perhaps failed to make the right decision but it is unclear what alternatives he had. He was totally out-manouevred by the political will and connivance of others.

A salutary tale told by a fine writer (we forgive occasional lapses into local colour that might or might not be justified by the evidence) who was also a fine historian.

Perhaps the only criticism is that the Scots of that era, caught between a Gaelic and a Lowland culture, seem to have had several names depending on circumstances (family, title or nickname) and Prebble is sometimes not good at being clear which one he is using at any one time.

It all works out in the end. What he does do well is get across that this was a frontier society, a marginal zone to Edinburgh let alone London, fought over for influence by political forces with no intrinsic interest in the natives.

As for the natives, these come across as somewhat barbaric but led by the sort of cynical opportunists with titles who would later clear these poor loyal and sentimental saps from the land (in the Highland Clearances) for profit.

As a snapshot of Scottish history, an easy conclusion to draw is that Scottish nationalism is a bit of a side issue here. Scotland was divided in 1692 and it is divided today. The problem was one of different levels of social development and an 'ancien regime' with its eyes on Paris and London.

Simply making Scotland 'independent' would make no difference to its people if its elites were beholden to Paris in the 1690s or to Brussels in the 2010s. London looks problematic not because of its alleged oppression (though this will change in the 1740s) but because of its utter indifference.

Well researched history and readable (once the scene is set with some dense material on the complicated familial and clan relationships of the Highlands), Prebble also provide plenty of material to suggest he has done his research. Recommended. show less

Useful history of the 1692 massacre.
Read in Samoa July 2002