The Taming of Highland Masculinity: Interpersonal Violence and Shifting Codes of Manhood, c. 1760–1840
The Taming of Highland Masculinity: Interpersonal Violence and Shifting Codes of Manhood, c. 1760–1840
This chapter argues that male interpersonal violence provides a way in which divergent, conflicting and shifting codes of manliness in Scottish society can be discerned. Historians of masculinity have argued that the eighteenth century saw a change in the model of manhood as male interpersonal violence in defence of honour and reputation was replaced by the advocacy of self-governance and recourse to the law. Using court records of violent assault, this chapter focusses on a type of modernizing society – the Scottish Highlands 1760-1840 - in which a code of violence governed by an indigenous culture of manhood was gradually superceded by new cultural norms. An earlier association of masculinity with interpersonal violence in the Highlands was challenged increasingly from around 1800 by those who advocated civility and restraint amongst men, especially in the growing Highland town of Inverness, the centre of an emerging middle-class culture with changing social sensibilities
Keywords: Scotland, Inverness, violence, Highlands, honour, masculinity, law, self-governance
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