Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

Everyone knows that Welsh invented civilisation as we know it. Go Rangers!!!!

The book might be better titled 'The Scottish Enlightenment and its influences on the modern world.' It is divided into two sections, 'Epiphany' and 'Diaspora'. Few will need an introduction to notions of a Scottish diaspora, but 'epiphany' is an interesting twist on 'Enlightenment'. The conventional academic gloss on the Enlightenment focuses on French appeals to 'reason' culminating in Kant's categorical truths. The followers of Edmund Burke generally dismiss the 'French Enlightenment' as a corruption of the British Enlightenment which focused on 'compassion' rather than 'reason'.

Herman takes both to task for forgetting the evangelical sources of our modern world. Herman starts his story with crusty John Knox and his blend of revolutionary violence, predestination and universal literacy. Knox's reliance on the whirling dervish of 'revival meetings' and individual study of biblical sources provides Herman with all he needs to found the enlightened modern world in foggy Scotland. He is not shy about introducing Christian roots to what became an atheist philosophy. The transition from spiritual epiphany to materialist enlightenment might have been an interesting thread, but Herman avoids the issue. It is enough to boost the Scottish role and leave it at that.

Personally, I found this all a bit more intriguing than convincing. The leap from Knox (1505 - 1572) to Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) required a detour from church history into British nationalism before emerging with a secular history of the Enlightenment. While I enjoyed getting a Scottish view of the 'English' civil war and detailed account of parliamentary debate over the Treaty of Union (1707), I was left wondering if the emphasis on Knox was merely Scottish boosterism, i.e. the Scots invented everything, so we need a 16th century Scot founder. . The genesis story is to short. All this takes place in the first 60 pages, one third of it devoted entirely to the Treaty of Union. To make a case for Hutcheson and Lord Kames inventing the 'Enlightenment', a bit more would be required regarding English and French developments.

Don't get me wrong, I really didn't mind the boosterism. The story moves pretty quickly. Just read it with a skeptical eye, as any Scot would advise you.

Others might say that the book is a much needed hurrah for the Lowland Scots. Given the 19th century's romantic obsession with the Highland clans, the Lowland Scots get ignored or labeled traitors. Herman enjoys debunking these delusions. The Highlanders are simply barbarian holdouts from the feudal age, the truly unenlightened. He gleefully recounts the adulteration of highland kilt into royal mini-skirt, and describes the rising of 1745 as little more than suicidal lunacy. Most tellingly, the highland clans are Lord Kames' model for 'primative man' and thus the model for later notions of 'hunter-gatherer' societies. The lowland Scots provide the heroic model of social elevation from 'hunter-gather' to 'farmer' to 'merchant' to 'enlightened'.

I enjoyed the way Herman connects Knox to Hutcheson, then Hutcheson to Hume, Witherspoon and the American revolution. It is a good story and fine corrective to the conventional emphasis on continental philosophy. The story of Sir Walter Scott would have made a good ending, but Herman presses on with an unnecessary history (but mercifully short) of steam engines, public health and any Scot that made a bundle of cash.

Don't let the title keep you from reading this book. While it does trumpet the achievements of the Scottish people, it is primarily a history of the Scottish enlightenment and its impact on the world. Indeed, it was a remarkable period with a lasting influence. Among the products of this era were Adam Smith, David Hume, and Edward Gibbon. While it is a book of history, as the title suggests, it is a popular history so don't expect lots of footnotes. It is very well written and kept my interest from start to finish.

This book will surprise you more than once, and in doing so surprise again since, from the outset, it sure looks like the sort of book you wouldn't expect to offer any surprises at all - its just history, right?!

This fascinating volume will provide its surprises to readers with a desire for more substance in their understanding of the Scots, but also to those exploring the broad notion that there's more than dry old dust to be raised from looking back to "the Enlightenment" for meanings important in assessing a difficult and dangerous future for "the West."

Some reviewers have suggested that "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek treatment - hinting that it appearance following on the heels of Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilization" is merely a consequence of some sort of publishing industry templating. I could find nary a tongue nor a cheek. This is a quite serious history written by a quite serious historian who states a compelling case for considering the substantial, possibly preeminent contributions of the Scots to the European enlightenment. That he does so in a way that is convincing is a credit to his skill as a writer as much as to unique power of the underlying theme.

I am not a reader, hardly even an appreciator, of History. I am, however, Scottish by descent and brought up, as were so many American Scots in the 50's and 60's, with a regular exposure to the trappings of the culture set up as a colorful surround to a vague sense of the history of a people somehow grand but sad. This has drawn me to more than a few 'histories' of the Scots over the years but I don't think I've finished a one of them. All those battles - with hardly a victory to be found... all those kings and queens - with hardly a Scot among them!

If, like me, you have been drawn by the feeling that there must be more beneath the mere skirl of pipes (or was it kilts that skirled?), but found that somewhere around Culloden or the Clearances it was just too indigestible a haggis of depressing detail, then this is a book for you. It will cleanly but convincingly detach you from some of the more romantic simplifications lodged in the popularized image of the Scottish people. But it will balance the amputation with the attachment of a quite interesting prosthetic, a history that is one of ideas - and big ideas at that!

This book will gently but firmly disperse your romantic notions of the culture of the Highlands. While giving gracious due to the Highlanders ancestral values of clan as family and honor through battle, Herman makes it clear that by the time the clans had entered the era where modern historical consciousness pegs them, they were mostly just conveniences through which a primitive, feudal social and economic structure was maintained by wealthy and distant "chiefs."

Herman does not set out, explicitly, to remove the kilted and piped 'noble Scot' from the picture, but by effectively doing so he opens the story to his more intriguing theme. That is the story of how cultural and religious change, often energized and honed by the conflicts with England, led to the creation of a vastly literate populace with a deep sense of the rightful role of the individual in structuring the institutions of society. It is the story of how that populace elevated ideas and individual to a conjoint prominence that became manifest in the major institutions of learning and commerce which, together, supported a mutual defining of what Herman asks us to agree is truly "the modern."

As an example of the subtle but deeply convincing surprises the book parses out of this history, consider the role of fundamentalist religion. Who would have imagined that the Scots embracing of a rigid and quite rabidly fundamentalist religion would lead, within barely two generations, to an explosion of ideas about individual and intellectual liberty that gained root in the founding documents of our country?

Why should we care? Does this book merely provide an alternate lens through which to view the distant history of a rather obscure people? If that were the case, we might just as well stick with the kilts and pipes.

I would argue, instead, that this book brings important ideas to very contemporary debates. I've often found sweeping critiques of capitilism, colonialism and imperialism to be compelling - critiques of "the west" which seem to root its failings in the very era which Herman celebrates and attributes to our worthy Scots. But the attacks of September 2001 have done much to crystallize these often merely academic debates. If the "critique of the west" finds its final roost in mass murder, one cannot so glibly embrace that censure.

Reading Herman's book I surprised myself by coming, for instance, to view Adam Smith's ideas in a substantially positive light. I gained a balance - a positive appreciation of what was added to the human species' ways of comprehending and organizing our habitation of the earth, of why it was honestly labeled an "enlightenment" in its day and how it might still inform our thinking about contesting the darkness of ours.

Does this view ignore past and present? colonialism? the depredations of GATT and NAFTA? Nah. But we sure do need more of a stance to stand up against these forces than identity politics; and we need more of an alternative than the return to pre-capitalist forms that is implicit in condemnation of the commercial revolution of the 18th century. Not for this Scot, anyways; no return to pipes or kilts - but also no return to mud huts and bloody servitude. We can gain much by acknowledging that the Enlightenment was a positive historical movement. Herman's thoughtful analysis of that movement, albeit through a plaid lens, re-invigorates history by reminding us how much we have to learn from its (re)-reading.

It would appear that much of what was originally well organized and well run in commerce, government, medicine, education, millitary and the arts in the western world, during the last 300 years, was created by the incredibly sound minds of Scotland.

We are fortunate that the Scots exported their enlightened and modern philosophy so freely and universally and profitably. Herman's prose brings alive a spirit that regularly and brilliantly reformed and revitalized whatever the Scots turned the laser sharp intellects towards in the 18th and 19th century. And the effects of their various causes to modernize are still felt today.

If you are interested in how the Scots helped frame the American constitution, redefine philosophical thought, conceive and organize the British Empire, revolutionize medicine and import the first system of public education to the rest of the western world, then Arthur Herman's compelling book is for you.

This authour's ability to weave an excellent story from history is a tribute to his expertise as a writer and as a scholar. But since his theme and subject matter offer him a rich primer in how to understand and repair just about anything, abstract or concrete, it is "self evident" that anyone with Scots "common sense" could create this book.

Some of his more dour Scottish readers may very well tell Arthur Herman that he's mixing in a little bit of nonsense here. HOW THE SCOTS INVENTED THE MODERN WORLD is a glowing tribute to the Scots but he does go over the top a bit in giving them credit for more than they actually achieved, and also more than the Scot's ever claimed for themselves.

This book however is a serious study of Scotland in the 18th century, particularly the period following the Act of Union with England in 1707 known as the Scottish Enlightenment. THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT is actually the book's UK title but that doesn't mean too much to us here. Far more eye-catching and interesting sounding is the title used for the US edition. This however creates a problem for the author. Its pop-culture sounding theme gives the impression that we will be engaged in competitive national chest-beating such as HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION and comparing lists of who accomplished what as in SPREZZATURA: 50 WAYS ITALIAN GENIUS SHAPED THE WORLD. Here the Scots supposedly not only CREATED OUR WORLD [but also] EVERYTHING IN IT!. Such claims don't allow the book to be taken very seriously but that is exactly how Herman wants it to be read. It's therefore a credit to him that his presentation of the facts and his arguments are good enough to allow him to make his point.

If we were to compile lists, one that would show Scottish prowess would be that of great thinkers of the 18th century. Start with Adam Smith, David Hume, Walter Scott, James Watt and Lord Kelvin. There is also John Stuart Mill. Those who were less thinkers and inventors but doers were David Livingstone and Scottish-Americans such as John Muir and Andrew Carnegie. It is the presence of transplanted Scots like Carnegie which underlies one of the authors main points. They are the "true inventors" of "modernity" because they carried their beliefs with them as they settled around the world. Thus the roots of the Western traditions of individualism, democracy, and capitalism can all be traced back to Scotland.

It's an interesting argument carried off with much bravado and assured writing on the part of the author. To the extent that he stays away from the stereotypes such as the thrifty, penny-pinching Scot we can be thankful. This is a guid book and as a bairn of the Campbell's of Argyll on my mother's side I am pleased that this book has helped me ken a lot more about Scotland.

but I found this one of the driest books I've read in ages. I was quite eager to learn more about the history of Scotland and the Scots; it's part of my heritage. And I have read scholarly works before, so it's not that I am unfamiliar with such or expected a novel. However, this man took what is doubtless a very interesting topic, and made me cringe repeatedly with his complete lack of finesse with words. It was so dull and ham-handed!

I cannot recommend anything in its place, and there is some good data in the book, but I am really astonished at the good reviews! By all means buy it, but just don't expect a riveting read to keep you awake till the wee hours or anything.

The sensations I have upon completing an exceptional book are very akin to the refreshment, exhilaration, and enlivenment that I feel after drinking a glass of ice water on a hot day. Those were the feelings I had after finishing How The Scots Invented The Modern World.

My feelings were the result of the remarkable way in which Herman organized and presented his work. Herman lays out his case in both chronological and subject order. The result of this organization is that the reader gets a true sense of how the Scottish Enlightenment's ideas not only grew from one thinker to another, but also how they moved across subject fields to create innovations in those areas as well. Herman also provides impeccable sources for his thesis, thereby giving credence to the theories he presents on the depth of Scottish contributions. Finally, he writes these theories and evidence in a way that is very accessible to the average reader. Even the chapters on philosophy, which had the potential for being very difficult, are presented in a comprehensible style. Because the concepts are depicted in an easy-to-understand manner, the reader can recognize the relevance of those ideas to modern life.

How The Scots Invented The Modern World should be required reading for college level history or philosophy classes. However, this is not a work that should be solely confined to the classroom. Any reader that finishes this book will find it impossible not to have an appreciation for the tremendous contributions that the Scots have made to the world.