Scots Scholarship led in 15th & 16th centuries - before Enlightenment

`George Buchanan

“Scotland was culturally as much in Europe as Paris.” 

In the small picturesque town of Killearn there is a tall monument to the great 16^th century scholar George Buchanan. He was tutor to James VI and was the father of democracy who wrote about not allowing the divine right of kings.

The Scottish enlightenment was part of a wider European movement, reaching its height between 1750-1800. Before the enlightenment  Scotland had many renowned and leading scholars who attended and taught at Paris. Scots Scholars led in 15^th & 16^th centuries - before any Enlightenment. The Scottish Enlightenment of the late 1700s did not come totally out of the blue. Lets name a few Scots scholars before 1750: Duns Scotus (1266 – 1308); George Buchannan (1506 – 1582); John Mair (1467 – 1550) theology at Paris, philosopher who taught John Knox; James Dalrymple (1619 – 1695) founder Scots Law; Frances Hutcheson; William Robertson.

There has been a cultural and historical amnesia in Scotland with many totally unaware of the important influence Scots have had over the centuries. Even today there is an image of Scotland as a cringe worthy Brigadoon, of whisky and bonny glens. In the 1700s, the British empire depended on the educated Scots as their bookkeepers, explorers, surveyors, medics, scientists, philosophers, scholars, poets and engineers. 

For centuries Scotland had a strong trade of goods, culture and ideas to Europe by ship, which was much faster than coach to London. According to the book, The Scottish Enlightenment by Alexander Broadie. “The Scottish enlightenment is inextricably bound up with the country’s identity which reaches into Reformation and beyond that to the great cultural achievements of mediaeval Scotland….it is evident that Scotland of the 15^th and 16^th century was an outward looking country, well aware of Europe’s high culture and wide open to new ideas. It is also demonstrable that Scots of the period contributed substantially to that shared European culture.” 

In his article entitled “An Unstoppable Glow” by Louis Hall, Sunday National, 9^th September, he makes the claim that the Enlightenment happened in Edinburgh’s new town, which they only started building in the 1780s. Many of the major Scottish enlightenment figures such as Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) and David Hume (1711 – 1776) were dead by the time the new town was actually built. It is wrong to claim, as Hall does, That for a hundred years, the main cultural, social, intellectual and political content in Britain flowed from south to north. By the 19^th century the current was in reverse.” 

It is also wrong to suggest the Scottish enlightenment started in the new town. The Auld town of Edina was a great melting pot where all walks of life engaged – at gentlemen’s clubs, literati parties, societies and at the Mercat cross and Luckenbooths near to St Giles and the Scottish parliament. Here was William Creech’s publishing house and where Allan Ramsey and many other leading Edina figures lived. The wealthy lived at the top of Edina’s high story buildings that line the Royal Mile, the middle classes in the middle and the poor on the first floors. 

 

The new town was still being built when Robert Burns first visited in November 1786, when he stayed at Baxters close near the castle. Every day Burns went to Creech’s Publishing house to organise his second edition of poetry. He met the enlightenment figures at parties, clubs and at the Luckenbooths every day. On his return to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1787 after his Scotia travels, he stayed with friends in the newly built St Andrews square, the first part of the new town to be built.  

Hall also claims that Charles I “pandered to the Covenanters” – Charles did not ‘pander’, he tried to impose the Anglican Bible and bishops on the Scottish kirk, which Scots rebelled against and this became known as the Bishops War and the War of the Three Kingdoms – and not the English civil war.

There is also the crucial history of Scottish ancient universities, which they based on university models over in Europe. At this time in the late 1700s, Scotland boasted four leading universities and its population was 1m compared to England at 4m. I visited Aberdeen university where my son was studying and I was surprised with its all its ancient history and to discover that Scotland had four ancient universities. In the 15th century it was Scottish universities which were the four leading centres of learning – St Andrews founded in 1410, Glasgow 1451, Aberdeen 1495, Edinburgh 1583. By comparison England had two mainly religious universities at Oxford and Cambridge. It wasn’t until the 1800s that England set up its universities - Manchester 1824, London 1826, Durham 1832.

Scots scholars went over to America and founded several of America’s top universities and Scots Americans were some of America’s Founding Fathers. They were profoundly important to the American constitution with the influence of Scottish moral Philosophy. Scottish enlightenment figures contributed to the American national character, constitution and democracy – such as David Hume and Adam Smith. 

"Americans built their world around the principles of Adam Smith and Thomas Reid of individual interest governed by common sense and a limited need for government.' Historian Arthur L Herman. The historian Tom Devine has written of the profound influence of Scots on American universities notably John Witherspoon (1723 – 1794) who founded Princeton and educated future president James Madison, 28 senators, 49 congressman and 39 judges. “In the 1700s the Atlantic highway from Europe to America was a highway of ideas.”

The Scottish enlightenment – First to think for yourselves. And secondly the virtue of tolerance in an enlightened society is one where people are able to put ideas into the public domain without fear. 

Broadie writes, “The Scottish Enlightenment is inextricably bound up with the country’s identity, which reaches into Reformation and beyond that to the great cultural achievements of medieval Scotland.... “The 1700s Scottish enlightenment brought us theories of common sense and moral sentiment. This was the basis for foundations of democracy and rational thought. And Scotland led the way.