"Evangelicalism became a culture-shaping force in North Atlantic societies because of its compelling power in scenes of social disorder and national distress. The disorder and distress were often the result of political revolutions that wracked the Anglo-American world from the middle of the eighteenth century to past the midpoint of the nineteenth. In the wake of these revolutions, evangelical religion flourished. The details were unique in each case, but the general pattern was clear. Different varieties of evangelical Christianity took hold with great force-in the Scottish Highlands after the Stuart (Catholic) invasions of 1745-1746; in the United States after the Revolutionary War, 1776-1783; in the Canadian Maritimes after ‘’rejecting’’ the American Revolution; in lowland Scotland in connection with mobilization for war with France in the 1790s; likewise in England in the wake of the threat of war, and of actual warfare, with France; in the north of Ireland after the failed rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798; in Upper Canada (modern Ontario) after the American invasions of the War of 1812; and in the American South after the devastation of the Civil War. A possible exception to this pattern was the situation in Wales, where the tumult of the French wars did seem to stimulate a turn to evangelicalism, but where the long-standing affinity between preaching in Welsh and practicing evangelical faith was probably more important than any one period of social unrest."