While the popular romantic image of the wild Highlander is a very old invention, it has also been an enduring one. The relatively limited historical inquiry into the social and political structures of the Highlands has meant that such images continue to color our general understanding of the nature of Highland society in the late Middle Ages and into the early modern period. Alison Cathcart's monograph Kinship and Clientage seeks to address this concern to some extent by placing the changes confronting “clanship” in the greater context of events shaping the entire kingdom during this period. The choice of dates delimiting this study signifies Cathcart's intent to move away from a strictly regional focus toward a more “nuanced understanding of Highland clanship” (213) that reflects the fluidity of local, regional, and national politics. The relatively lengthy chronological overview, from 1451, when the Crown granted to the second earl of Huntly the important northern lordship of Badenoch, to 1609, when James VI attempted to draw Highland chiefs closer to the policies formed in Edinburgh through the Statutes of Iona, enabled Cathcart to explore periods of success and failure on both sides of the Highland/Lowland divide. Ultimately, this meant shedding light on the nature of clan society and the political tools of its chiefs—bloodlines, marriage, fictive kinship, clientage, bonds of manrent and military cooperation with other clans, and, sometimes more important, agents of the Crown—within this broader context.

Building on the work of Alan MacInnes, Jane Dawson, Steve Boardman, and Robert Dodgshon, Cathcart takes a rather novel approach to the Highlands by starting from the premise that it was a more heterogeneous region. Providing a solid description of the differences within clan organization and society, Cathcart demonstrates that the Highlands and Highland society can no longer be approached as singular entities. One area of difference, according to Cathcart, is how chiefs consolidated power. She informs the reader that the Macintoshes and Clan Chattan expanded their power and landholdings through “clannish association, socio-economic and political obligation,” whereas the Grants depended largely on kinship for their own growth (25). And while a number of historians have examined Highland politics and society in isolation, it is crucial to the book's thesis that clan rivalries are understood within the context of the political rivalries of the great magnates in the north and west of Scotland, the Gordon earls of Huntly, the Stewart earls of Moray, and the Campbell earls of Argyll. By exploring in greater detail the central and eastern Highlands, Cathcart focuses on areas where the Scottish crown had long involved itself in both administration and influence. In this way, Cathcart connects the Highlands with the rest of Scotland to illustrate that this region was not completely isolated and removed from the rest of the historical processes shaping Scotland in the early modern period.

The outstanding achievement of this book is that it emphasizes that the leading men of the Highlands, the clan chiefs, were as much concerned with order and stability as their counterparts in the rest of Scotland. “Indeed as chiefs acquired disparate estates so their need for external clientage with both lesser kindreds and other clans increased. By forging and maintaining obligations within and between clans, albeit obligations that had nothing to do with kinship—[they] were able to reinforce clan unity” (214). As Cathcart suggests, the networks that bound clans together throughout the sixteenth century served to prevent unrest and feud. Of course, external clientage was only one of the many tools at the chief's disposal. Ultimately, marriage, bloodlines, and fictive kinship continued to be crucial for stabilizing areas not yet entirely under the control of the Crown. Indeed, Cathcart skillfully demonstrates that intrusion into Highland society by agents of the Crown destabilized, as much as it attempted to stabilize, this region. Achieving stability and order in the localities and the kingdom required negotiation, adaptation, and political nous as clan chiefs found themselves controlling increasingly disparate landholdings and peoples.

As part of Brill's The Northern World series, Kinship and Clientage contributes to our understanding of the “culture, economy and society of northern lands from the early medieval to the early modern period” and should be read by anyone interested in early modern Scotland. That said, the book is overly narrative at times, with analysis and conclusions kept to a minimum. This reflects less Cathcart's abilities as a historian and more the fact that the book has its origins in her doctoral dissertation and would have benefited from greater editorial work that would have resulted in a restructuring and reorganization of the ideas she presents. Yet despite this, Kinship and Clientage makes some interesting and important claims. For example, the Statutes of Iona were more likely James VI's implementation of policies informally instituted by his grandfather and father, rather than any innovative centralizing tendency. More important, instead of being the static, backward society as many historians have characterized it, clan society was in a constant state of flux, challenged both internally and externally where clan chiefs depended on their fine (the chief's leading men) as much as the clan depended on its chief. By taking the Highlands out of isolation, Cathcart has gone some way in expanding our understanding of clan society and in revealing that early modern Scotland was not as separated by the Highland/Lowland divide as many of us have assumed.