This is an appraisal of clanship both with respect to its vitality and its eventual demise, in which the author views clanship as a socio-economic, as well as a political agency, deriving its strength from personal obligations and mutual service between chiefs and gentry and their clansmen. Its demise is attributed to the throwing over of these personal obligations by the clan elite, not to legislation or central government repression. The book discusses the impact on the clans of the inevitable shift, with the passage of time, from feudalism to capitalism, regardless of the "Forty Five". It draws upon estate papers, family correspondence, financial compacts, social bonds and recorded oral tradition rather than the biased records of central government.

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Chapter 1. The Traditional Basis of Clanship
• Chapter 2. Clanship and Disorder
• Chapter 3. ‘Civilising’ Influences, 1603–38
• Chapter 4. Political Polarisation and Social Dislocation
• Chapter 5. Restoration, Repression and Reconstruction
• Chapter 6. Jacobite Commitment and Whig Polemics
• Chapter 7. Dynasticism and Nationalism
• Chapter 8. The Final Convulsion: Clanship to Clearance
• Maps
• Appendix Clan Index: Religious and Political Affiliations
• Bibliography
• Index