Military Roads and King’s Houses: Spaces of Conflict, Mobility, and Cultural Assimilation in the Scottish Highlands

Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources pertaining to military roads and King’s Houses, this paper highlights the significance of space and material culture during the century of conflict, mobility, and cultural assimilation that drew the Scottish Highlands and Gaelic culture into the nation-state of Great Britain. The original fieldwork presented here locates, identifies, and analyzes lost inns known as King’s Houses, government-owned inns established along military roads constructed by the British army throughout the eighteenth century. King’s Houses were central to the narrative of Highland Scotland as a site of both improvement and internal colonialism within the British Isles.