Scotland's Newspapers, the French Revolution and Domestic Radicalism (c.1789–1794)

Abstract

This paper examines responses in the Scottish newspaper press to the French Revolution and the associated rise of domestic radicalism. The development of the press in Scotland still awaits its modern historian, and this paper furnishes a picture of it in a crucial phase in its growth. However, the main emphasis is on how Scotland's newspapers ‘represented’ the French Revolution as its character changed between 1789 and the advent of the Terror. In 1793–4, the Scottish press provided powerful support to the anti-reformcause, but this could not have been easily anticipated as late as the middle of 1792. A further aim of the paper is to establish the distinctive importance of the newspaper as a site of idealogical and political struggle in Scotland in the 1970s.