Using in-depth archival research, the book questions the extent to which the currency of kinship patronage politics persisted in Scotland as the competing ideologies of Scottish Jacobitism and British Whiggism grew. It discusses the connection between the manifest corruption of patronage politics and the efflorescence of the Scottish Enlightenment. It also examines the stance taken by David Hume and Adam Smith in defining themselves as philosophers first, Whigs second, but Scots above all else, and analyses whether they achieved international success because of or despite the parliamentary union with England in 1707.

Organised chronologically and concluding with an assessment of the newly formed United Kingdom in the decades following the 1707 union, Making the Union Work: Scotland, 1651-1763 will be of great interest to researchers and academics of early modern Scotland.