How the Irish Saved Civilization, Crown may be hoping for comparable sales-but probably won't achieve them. (Nov.)įorecast: Clearly modeling this title on Thomas Cahill's Bruce's delightful The Mark of the Scots. Devine's magisterial The Scottish Nation: A History, 1700–2000Īnd Duncan A. This is a worthwhile book for the general reader, although much of the material has been covered better elsewhere, most recently in T.M. The 'democratic' Scottish system of education found a home in the developing U.S. Often, things that are discovered for the first time are also called 'inventions' and in many cases there is no clear line between the two. At the University of Glasgow, James Watt perfected the crucial technology of the Industrial Revolution: the steam engine. In some cases, an inventions Scottishness is determined by the fact that it came into existence in Scotland (e.g., animal cloning ), by non-Scots working in the country.

In 19th-century Britain, the Scottish Enlightenment, as popularized by Dugald Stewart, became the basis of classical liberalism. Herman elucidates at length the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment and their worldwide impact. Hume developed philosophical concepts that directly influenced James Madison and thus the U.S. Smith, in his monumental Wealth of Nations,Īdvocated liberty in the sphere of commerce and the global economy. Hutcheson, the father of the Scottish Enlightenment, championed political liberty and the right of popular rebellion against tyranny. The 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment, embodied by such brilliant thinkers as Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and David Hume, paved the way for Scottish and, Herman argues, global modernity. into a modern society, and open up a cultural and social revolution.' Herman credits Scotland's sudden transformation to its system of education, especially its leading universities at Edinburgh and Glasgow. Union gave Scotland access to England's global marketplace, triggering an economic and cultural boom 'transform Scotland. When Scotland ratified the 1707 Act of Union, it was an economic backwater. Focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries, Herman (coordinator of the Western Heritage Program at the Smithsonian and an assistant professor of history at George Mason University) has written a successful exploration of Scotland's disproportionately large impact on the modern world's intellectual and industrial development.

How scotland invented the modern world