The United Irishmen were one of the most determined and energetic radical organisations challenging the old regime in the British Isles at the end of the eighteenth century. Based on extensive new research, this book explores a previously little-known dimension of their activity - their involvement in Scottish society and politics - and sets the Scottish relationship against the climate of international brotherhood which followed the French Revolution.

From the 'Polite Era' of constitutional reform, to the role of Irish agents in the creation of a Scottish revolutionary underground, it describes the growth of ideological and organisational connections between Irish and Scottish radical movements.

It then examines the United Irishmen's Rebellion of 1798 and its impact on the Scottish press, government agencies and the radicals themselves, before exploring the fate of refugees from the Irish crisis in the political and industrial strife in Scotland in the early nineteenth century. This challenging book places Scottish radicalism within its full European context, and sheds new light on the nature of the United Irishmen's movement and the threat it posed to the existing social order.