regshoe

Oh, very interesting! Yes, I too should probably read a Hugo book at some point; I never have.

Re: heroically romantic Royalists, I was about to say that reading Broster is probably the first time in my life that I have read such a thing, but I realized that no, it is definitely not, but the many other instances of it have been in fantasy, which of course has it in loads. I mean, just start with Tolkien--it's just that Tolkien really has no competing ideologies, except for the evil Sauron. The peasants of Gondor definitely do not rise up and want to depose Aragorn...

But it's the first time I've read such historical novels, I think. I suppose the ideology I have mostly read romantic historical accounts of has been the syndicalism and anti-fascism of the Spanish Civil War (and Sweden of the same era).

As I understand it, one important factor in this was that the Republicans wanted to suppress the independence and local identity of the provinces

Interesting. I mean, one practical consequence of the French revolution (and, to be fair, Napoleon) was a centralization and increase in state power. Even the metric system contributed to this, since the previous local measurements made it very difficult for the state to keep track of taxes.

Going back to FotH...what I find kind of tragic about the Highlands is that they seem to have gone straight from the feudal and patriarchal clan society to suck-out-the-profit proto-capitalism. The people who were critical of the rent-raising of the latter didn't turn to any sort of proto-socialism/republicanism, instead they idealized the past clan society and criticized the elite for abandoning their traditional obligations in that system.