ABSTRACT
The rising of 1715 greatly troubled the new British parliament and in 1725 a Disarming Act was passed which forbade the highlanders, many of whom had supported the rebellion, to carry arms and required them to hand in any they already possessed. However, because of the remoteness and inaccessibility of the Scottish highlands the Act had little effect. The military roads in the highlands were constructed by soldiers, but except for the engineer officers, these were not specialists like the present-day sappers — rather, they were ordinary soldiers from infantry regiments. The military roads in Scotland are the only example since Roman times of a network of roads being built for military purposes in Great Britain. Even during the great crises of the Civil War, the Napoleonic War, the Great War and the Second World War the ordinary network of civil roads proved sufficient for military traffic, no additional major road construction having taken place during these periods.
