How the Scots Invented the Modern
World: The True Story of How
Western Europes Poorest Nation
Created Our World & Everything in It
by Arthur Herman
Being At The Right Place At The Right Time Is Important To Making History
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 Europes 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 Scotlands 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
Personal Review: How the Scots Invented the Modern World:
The True Story of How Western Europes Poorest Nation Created
Our World & Everything in It by Arthur Herman
This is a terribly interesting an unexpectedly good read, unlike its
counterparts (by Tom Cahill "The Gift of the Jews," and "How the Irish
Saved Civilization", or Thomas E. Woods "How the Catholic Church Built
Western Civilization," all of which I have reviewed here on Amazon), this is
a more organic, more tighten woven narrative about the unusual
juxtaposition in space and time of a small but important country; about its
strong character and undying streak of independent, its fierce defense of
democratic principles, and how these put that little nation in the right place
at the right time to have a disproportionate impact on the development of
the "New World."
In this sense it is less of a self-promoting ethnocentric claim to greatness
as one would expect, or as the other books mentioned above, more or
less, are. In the hands of this author, Scottish greatness is as much a
natural byproduct of its sibling rivalry with its older, richer, more-powerful
and much hated brother, England, as it is about the men, events and
character that made Scotland a pivotal data point in modern history.
The first half of the book is tightly written important history, and simply
sparkles with every revealing fact, with each scenario and with each multi-
generational vendetta that weaves together a compelling story of the
Scottish role in a world experiencing tectonic changing in its historical,
political and economic contexts. The second half of the book is less
interesting as it is more or less what one would expect from the title: a
checklist of the great men and their contributions to the modern world.
Taken as a whole, the book reveals three aspects of Scottish history and
character that seem determinant in the important role that nation played in
inventing the modern world. First is its proximity to its incestuous but
nevertheless sibling rival, England. The second lies in a full understanding

of the meaning of the phrase "invention of the modern world." And finally
the third is in the cantankerous, "in your face," "take no prisoners," Scottish
character, best exemplified by the likes of Protestant Reformer John Knox.
With regard to the first two aspects, as a part of the British Isles, at the turn
of the 17th Century, Scotland, along with Britain, Holland, Spain and
Portugal, was well-placed at the very cusp of a newly emerging and very
much uncharted era, the era of adventure and exploration, development of
new markets (including slavery from Africa), and the infrastructure of
banking needed to support them. This is by definition what is meant by:
"inventing the modern world." None of these things played a pivotal role in
history before the 16th Century. By virtue of being the little brother of
England, Scotland thus got in on the ground floor of these enterprises, so
much so, that arguably, without English support, circumstances may have
been well beyond Scotland's ability to have been an independent player on
the world stage, or have had a determinant impact on the course of
modern history. That is to say, as a result of the juxtaposition in time and
space alone, Scotland was thrust into the limelight on par with its larger,
world-class maritime power, (but still) sibling rival, England.
The first several chapters of the book tells beautifully how Scotland both
benefited and suffered from this proximity to the English Crown. It
struggled mightily to maintain its independence, sovereignty and national
integrity, against the constant and all-consuming encroachment from its
larger, stronger, economically more robust and intimidating brother from
the South. A large part of Scotland's spunkiness as a "crappy little nation"
comes directly from its implacable need to constantly spar with England in
order to defend against constant encroachments by one representative of
the British Crown or another. In the end, with the Treaty of Union, Scotland
was forced by a fait accompli borne out of a conspiracy of existing
circumstances, into a compact with the English devil. It was a treaty of
capitulation that traded Scottish independence for access to the bounties
of British maritime trade and trade routes. This treaty set the course for
English dominance over Scotland for the next two centuries.
As for the third and final aspect, although Scotland almost always found
itself at a disadvantage, or in a slightly inferior position with regard to the
British Crown, this was never perceived as a reason to capitulate, but as a
patriotic rallying point to fight with ever more vigor. As the "old World"
slowly changed into the "New World," increasingly, the tool of choice was
intellectual. Even Scottish religious victories over the Crown and the
flowering of Scottish intellectuals across the British Isles more generally,
and eventually to the rest of the world, must in the end be seen primarily in
intellectual terms. But also and more importantly, the Scottish people
always maintained a strong sense of fairness, justice, democracy, rooting
for the common man and the underdog, and always coated this with
intellectualism for intellectualism's sake and an unadulterated dose of
piousness, all of which served its designs well in its long-term struggles
with England. As the "New World" opened up, no people were more ideally

suited and prepared to take advantage of it than the Scottish. The U.S.
became one of the primary beneficiaries of this preparation.
Five Stars
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