Inverness, long known as the Capital of the Highlands and administratively distinct from the vast surrounding county of Inverness-shire, stands where the River Ness meets the Moray Firth, its position controlling the eastern end of the Great Glen and, with it, the principal route through the whole Highland region. An eighteenth-century survey recorded a royal burgh of considerable antiquity with more than 10,000 inhabitants, its economy resting on tanneries, linen-yarn spinning, thread manufacture, coarse linen weaving, a bleachfield and brick works, alongside banking offices and a modest export and import trade carried on in a small number of merchant vessels.
The town's recently founded academy, teaching a broad curriculum intended to prepare young men for trade, the army, the navy or life as a gentleman farmer, reflected a deliberate ambition to give the Highland capital an educational institution to match its commercial standing. The military road running south-west from Inverness along the bank of the Ness led past Culloden Moor, scene of the decisive battle that ended the Jacobite rising of 1745-46 within living memory of the survey's writing, and on through Fort Augustus and the Great Glen toward Fort William.
Inverness Castle, rebuilt on a bluff above the river on a site fortified since at least the eleventh century and traditionally, though only legendarily, associated with episodes from the historical Macbeth, overlooked a town whose combination of trade, education and military road-building marked the beginning of the transformation that would carry Inverness from a remote garrison town into the recognised administrative centre of the entire Highland region.