{"id":1706,"date":"2026-07-06T09:52:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1706"},"modified":"2026-07-06T09:52:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:52:46","slug":"21-years-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1706","title":{"rendered":"21 years to go…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As I mentioned in my last post<\/a>, I am gearing up for what will be the last substantive empirical section of the book: the chapter (and I hope it remains just one<\/em> chapter) dealing with the period of Macintosh’s life from his flight from revolutionary Avignon in 1792, through his transformation into an agent of the counter-revolution as part of William Wickham’s spy ring<\/a> in Switzerland, to his exile and eventual death<\/a> in Eisenach in 1813.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
A selection of the books on which I will depend in writing about Macintosh’s experiences as a counter-revolutionary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As with the earlier parts of the book dealing with the Caribbean and India, beginning work on this final section feels a little like starting again from square one, since it means familiarising myself not just with an entirely new cast of characters (brought into Macintosh’s life as a consequence of his restless geographical mobility), but also a new (and very large) literature. While this process is daunting\u2014perhaps inevitably so\u2014it is also a great opportunity to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was reminded of this fact whilst listening to a recent episode of the wonderful podcast Drafting the Past<\/a><\/em>, which featured an interview<\/a> with the political scientist Anna O. Law, about her book Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship<\/a><\/em> (2026). Law discussed the work involved in writing history as a non-historian, and particularly the challenges of getting to grips with both the events and the historiography in order to make a contribution to it. I felt very “seen” by her reflections on writing one particular chapter on colonial America:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

So, my friend Rachel Sheldon said, you know, for us the past is a foreign country. It really was. So, for an example, the colonial chapter. Oh my god, people, please read my colonial chapter, because it took three years. One chapter took three years. Why did it take three years? Because I did two years of reading just to understand basic information before I was willing to put pen to paper. So, retraining myself as a historian meant I have to read a ton to lay down basic information, whereas a colonial historian would have probably blown through that chapter in a couple of months, not three years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Although I lack Law’s level of dedication to the task, I entirely sympathise! I just hope this chapter doesn’t take three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my last post, I am gearing up for what will be the last substantive empirical section of the book: the chapter (and I hope it remains just one chapter) dealing with the period of Macintosh’s life from his flight from revolutionary Avignon in 1792, through his transformation into an agent of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1708,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions\/1708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}