{"id":212,"date":"2008-03-31T19:06:28","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T02:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/2008\/03\/31\/the-invention-of-tradition\/"},"modified":"2008-03-31T19:35:33","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T02:35:33","slug":"the-invention-of-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/2008\/03\/31\/the-invention-of-tradition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invention of Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kimbellart.org\/Collections\/Images\/AP2002_05L.jpg\" title=\"The Allen Brothers at the Kimball\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kimbellart.org\/Collections\/Images\/AP2002_05M.jpg\" alt=\"The Allen Brothers (Raeburn)\" align=\"left\" height=\"351\" width=\"286\" \/><\/a>I can still remember how I felt when I first read Hugh Trevor-Roper&#8217;s essay, &#8220;The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland,&#8221; the mix of dizzy excitement at the utterly complete debunking of an idea that I thought was real and the thrill of a great story with fantastic(al) characters, all in the calm cool prose of a professional historian writing in full stride.<\/p>\n<p>In 25 pages Trevor-Roper explains that what we think of as Scottish &#8212; &#8220;real Scotland,&#8221; the highlands that were never pacified by the British, that of kilts and bagpipes and clan tartans and all the rest &#8212; is a retrospective romantic invention.  The Scottish hinterlands were actually an Irish colony, but after the union with England, as a sort of protest, the Scots invented the culture of the Highlands and invested it with the aura of antiquity.  Tartans?  <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vestiarium_Scoticum\" title=\"Vestiarium Scoticum\">Invented <\/a>in 1842 by the awesome <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Sobieski_Stuart\" title=\"The Allen Brothers on Wikipedia\">Allen <\/a>brothers, who deserve a movie or something.  Kilts?  Invented in 1730 by an English Quaker from Lancashire, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Rawlinson\" title=\"Thomas Rawlinson\">Thomas Rawlinson<\/a>.  Bagpipes ought to be harps.  And the whole fraud of Ireland as colony of Scotland rather than the inverse is the product of two unrelated Macphersons, James and Rev. John.<\/p>\n<p>The essay is in an edited volume by Hobsbawm and Ranger likewise entitled <em>The Invention of Tradition<\/em>.  Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can still remember how I felt when I first read Hugh Trevor-Roper&#8217;s essay, &#8220;The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland,&#8221; the mix of dizzy excitement at the utterly complete debunking of an idea that I thought was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/2008\/03\/31\/the-invention-of-tradition\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-identity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8jQA6-3q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}