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How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It
 
 

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It [Paperback]

Arthur Herman
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
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"I am a Scotsman," Sir Walter Scott famously wrote, "therefore I had to fight my way into the world." So did any number of his compatriots over a period of just a few centuries, leaving their native country and traveling to every continent, carving out livelihoods and bringing ideas of freedom, self-reliance, moral discipline, and technological mastery with them, among other key assumptions of what historian Arthur Herman calls the "Scottish mentality."

It is only natural, Herman suggests, that a country that once ranked among Europe's poorest, if most literate, would prize the ideal of progress, measured "by how far we have come from where we once were." Forged in the Scottish Enlightenment, that ideal would inform the political theories of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and David Hume, and other Scottish thinkers who viewed "man as a product of history," and whose collective enterprise involved "nothing less than a massive reordering of human knowledge" (yielding, among other things, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, first published in Edinburgh in 1768, and the Declaration of Independence, published in Philadelphia just a few years later). On a more immediately practical front, but no less bound to that notion of progress, Scotland also fielded inventors, warriors, administrators, and diplomats such as Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, Simon MacTavish, and Charles James Napier, who created empires and great fortunes, extending Scotland's reach into every corner of the world.

Herman examines the lives and work of these and many more eminent Scots, capably defending his thesis and arguing, with both skill and good cheer, that the Scots "have by and large made the world a better place rather than a worse place." --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

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. When Scotland ratified the 1707 Act of Union, it was an economic backwater. Union gave Scotland access to England's global marketplace, triggering an economic and cultural boom "transform[ing] Scotland... into a modern society, and open[ing] 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. 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. Hutcheson, the father of the Scottish Enlightenment, championed political liberty and the right of popular rebellion against tyranny. Smith, in his monumental Wealth of Nations, advocated liberty in the sphere of commerce and the global economy. Hume developed philosophical concepts that directly influenced James Madison and thus the U.S. Constitution. Herman elucidates at length the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment and their worldwide impact. In 19th-century Britain, the Scottish Enlightenment, as popularized by Dugald Stewart, became the basis of classical liberalism. At the University of Glasgow, James Watt perfected the crucial technology of the Industrial Revolution: the steam engine. The "democratic" Scottish system of education found a home in the developing U.S. This is a worthwhile book for the general reader, although much of the material has been covered better elsewhere, most recently in T.M. Devine's magisterial The Scottish Nation: A History, 1700-2000 and Duncan A. Bruce's delightful The Mark of the Scots. (Nov.)Forecast: Clearly modeling this title on Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization, Crown may be hoping for comparable sales but probably won't achieve them.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
Just as the German Reformation was largely the work of a single individual, Martin Luther, so the Scottish Reformation was the achievement of one man of heroic will and tireless energy: John Knox. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

49 Reviews
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4.2 out of 5 stars (49 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4.0 out of 5 stars Scotland Forever!, Mar 8 2003
By 
P. Byrd (hickory, nc United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
What a warm and revealing book. For so many of us in America of Scot descent, too many of us had no idea of the importance of this poor and ignored nation that produced such a revolution of new ideas in law, philosophy, government, economics, education, and religion that are with us today and taken for granted. Scotland overcame every adversity and stands proud today as a grand part of our heritage.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting book, a little uneven, Mar 1 2002
By 
"mcferrans" (Eddy, TX United States) - See all my reviews
I found the first half of "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" to be very informative and entertaining. The portraits of Hutcheson, Kames, Hume and Smith were interesting both by themselves and in the way in which the author explained the connections (both personal and intellectual) between these thinkers of the Scottish "Enlightenment." I was convinced that in one sense these Scots really did invent the modern world, or at least the modern mindset.

The book weakens, however, as it becomes in the second half a fairly pedestrian retelling of accomplishments of Scotsmen and their descendants. It was refreshing not to read any excessive English-bashing in this account, in fact, it might be the most pro-English book about Scotland I have read.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Absolute Rubbish, Jan 23 2002
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Everyone knows that Welsh invented civilisation as we know it. Go Rangers!!!!
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