THE HOPES AT WAR IN THE 18TH CENTURY

Abstract

The publication under review is a prosopographical study of those members of a Scottish family - the Hopes of Craig hall and the cadet branches of Hopetoun and Craigiehall – who served in the British armed forces during the eighteenth century. According to Lawrence Stone, collective biography or prosopography "is the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors in history by means of a collective study of their lives". Although only professionalised after the First World War, prosopography has been employed by historians since ancient times but first rose to prominence during the middle of the eighteenth century. Prosopography, according to Stone (page 47), is constructed, by and large, from the following raw materials:…