In the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745–6, Parliament passed a series of measures designed to end forever the Jacobite threat to the Hanoverian state. The accepted association of the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlands with Jacobitism made the Gàidhealtachd the explicit target of these measures. Not satisfied with the apocalyptic violence that accompanied the pacification of the region, the Hanoverian regime believed that only by purging the Gael from the culture map of Great Britain would there be any end to the Stuart challenge. A tradition of local autonomy, the supposedly ‘savage’ nature of the Gael, and the ‘slavish servitudes’ of the people toward the clan elites were supposed to have created the conditions for the rebellion and were to be removed root and branch. Changes were to be made to Highland landholding, cultural traditions, religious persuasions and language. As ‘Justus’ reported in the Scots Magazine in 1746, ‘The name of Highlanders would, by this means, in another century scarcely exist’.

Historians have long been convinced of the importance of the post- Culloden acts in undermining the political and cultural autonomy of the Gàidhealtachd. Since the emergence of the cultural turn in historical studies and J. G. A. Pocock's crucial 1975 plea for a new subject, we have become increasingly aware of the cultural dimensions of ‘four nations’ British history. The post-Culloden acts are situated not only as political measures, but also as reflections of the ethnic hostility of the Englishspeaking world. In many studies, either implicitly or explicitly, the acts served as the agent of change in the Gaelic world and had considerable successes in oppressing the culture of Gaelic Scotland. Recent contributions to the history of the Highlands by literary scholars have further added to our understanding of the colonisation of the Gàidhealtachd and the devaluing of Gaelic culture which accompanied it.

A crucial point, however, has been neglected. How were these measures received and evaluated within the region? To what extent was cultural colonisation transferred from the pages of Anglophone parliamentary proceedings and political pamphlets into the Highlands and Islands? By considering the difficulty of translating political thought into political action, this essay re-evaluates the impact of the post-Culloden acts of Parliament.