10 - Conclusions

Summary

In eighteenth-century Scotland, where no militia was formed until 1797 despite sustained agitations for such a force from much earlier, support for a militia was largely centred around two key themes: the national and the social. A Scottish militia was promoted because of a need to preserve Scottish ‘national independence after the Union’, and the necessity of maintaining harmonious ‘social relations’ through local military service. In England the militia issue was more complex. At first support for a statutory militia was clearly an attempt to oppose and limit Crown power and influence, and also to balance the ambitions of central government with the prerogatives and status of local elites. The Westminster act of 1757 was indicative of the continued tendency to strip the Crown of its powers, and perhaps marks the final victory of parliament over the monarchy. Calls for a militia had generally been supported by ‘backward-looking’ Whigs. However, the issue became increasingly depoliticised from the 1750s, and the militia debate became increasingly ‘utilitarian’, with parliament and wider society concerned about the militia's efficiency and utility rather than its political importance. Military and national defence needs finally defeated purely political concerns regarding the necessity of a militia. From 1786 the militia in England had become a government prerogative. The force had already become broadly acceptable to all, not least because of the decline and virtual extinction of the radical, republican Whig concepts that had been vital in initially supporting the institution. At least in its complexity, the situation in Ireland was comparable with that in England.