The Dundas despotism

Abstract

This volume presents a biography of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811) and of his son Robert, 2nd Viscount Melville (1771-1851). With other members of their family they governed Scotland from 1770s to 1830s, a regime dubbed the Dundas despotism and conventionally seen as a corrupt and underhand period in British history. This account radically revises this view and shows instead that Dundases sought and achieved good government within conventional political parameters. It charts their relationship to Scottish Enlightenment, describing how Scots applied enlightened ideas in spirit of progressive paternalism, believing that they would maintain a conservative social order. Above all, it sets out Dundases' part in making 1707 Union between Scotland and England work, after nearly a century in which it had never fully done so. The book uses primary and secondary information culled from sources in England, Scotland, Ireland and United States, and also contains details of part played by Henry Dundas in Warren Hastings affair and growth of British Raj in India.

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