Summary of Arthur Herman's How the Scots Invented the Modern World

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 The Scottish Reformation was the work of one man, John Knox, and he was able to turn the Scots into God’s chosen people and turn Scotland into the New Jerusalem. He imposed the Calvinist Sabbath on Scottish society, and banned all traditional forms of collective fun.

#2 The Kirk, which was the main church in Scotland, turned its back on secular values and embraced God alone. It created a new society in the image of Knox’s utopian ideal.

#3 Knox despised political authority, and treated all monarchs he came across with impatience and contempt. Yet he knew that monarchs were ordained by God, and that the people had to defend their political power against any interlopers.

#4 The dream of the people as sovereign died in Scotland with the death of John Knox, but it left its trace within the church itself in the system of synods peculiar to every parish and province in Scotland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669381914

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Insights on Arthur Herman's How the Scots Invented the Modern World

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Scottish Reformation was the work of one man, John Knox, and he was able to turn the Scots into God’s chosen people and turn Scotland into the New Jerusalem. He imposed the Calvinist Sabbath on Scottish society, and banned all traditional forms of collective fun.

#2

The Kirk, which was the main church in Scotland, turned its back on secular values and embraced God alone. It created a new society in the image of Knox’s utopian ideal.

#3

Knox despised political authority, and treated all monarchs he came across with impatience and contempt. Yet he knew that monarchs were ordained by God, and that the people had to defend their political power against any interlopers.

#4

The dream of the people as sovereign died in Scotland with the death of John Knox, but it left its trace within the church itself in the system of synods peculiar to every parish and province in Scotland.

#5

The National Covenant was the Presbyterian version of democracy in action. It challenged the king’s prerogative to make law without consent, and affirmed that the Scottish people would oppose any change not approved by a free General Assembly and Parliament.

#6

The same fanaticism that was used to persecute individuals was also used to oppose public tyranny. It was the enemy of individual liberty and thought, but it was also the enemy of public tyranny.

#7

Scotland was the first modern literate society, and as the barriers of religious censorship came down in the eighteenth century, a literary explosion ensued. intellectuals such as Adam Smith and David Hume wrote not just for other intellectuals but for a genuine reading public.

#8

Reading and writing became embedded in Scottish society, even in rural areas. The book trade was a important part of the local economy, and there were six publishing houses in Edinburgh in 1763.

#9

The University of Edinburgh and Aberdeen’s Marischal College and King’s College were founded more recently, but they never became remote ivory towers or intellectual backwaters, as eighteenth-century Oxford and Cambridge did.

#10

The Schools Act of 1696 had a huge impact on the Kirk, as it set off far-reaching changes that the church could never have foreseen. It taught almost the whole common people to read and write, and a great proportion of them to account.

#11

The relationship between England and Scotland had never been easy, but it had not been so unbalanced until very recently. The two had been joined together by history and geography since the fall of the Roman Empire.

#12

The English Civil War was as much a Scottish war as an English one, and when Charles I lost his fight against his English subjects in 1647, he offered the Scots religious freedom and state support of their Kirk if they would help him retake his southern crown. They accepted, and were defeated at the battle of Preston by Oliver Cromwell.

#13

The Scottish political nation was relieved when James II was overthrown and his Protestant daughter Mary took his place in 1688. But some Highland clans, such as the Camerons, the Appin Stewarts, and the MacLeods, had prospered under the old regime. They were willing to see James II back on the throne.

#14

The Scottish economy was already struggling before the English invaded, as the old ties between laird and tenant had been severed following the Glorious Revolution. The English, like the Dutch before them, learned how to import food when they needed it, in exchange for profitable manufactured goods.

#15

The Scottish company, the