MANPOWER, MYTH AND MEMORY: ANALYSING SCOTLAND'S MILITARY CONTRIBUTION TO THE GREAT WAR

The aim of this article is to determine what conclusions the available sources allow us to make about the nature of Scottish service and sacrifice in the Great War. The article finds that contemporary sources do not lend themselves well to statistical analysis of Scotland's manpower contribution in the Great War. The lack of an agreed definition of who counted as a Scot makes establishing an exact number of Scottish war dead impossible. It establishes that in trying to quantify the Scottish manpower contribution historians have relied too heavily on statistics produced in the 1970s by Jay Winter, which, while broadly accurate, mask the nuances of armed forces recruitment in Scotland