Editing Scottish Enlightenment (section)

==Background==
The union with the [[Kingdom of England]] in 1707, which formed the [[Kingdom of Great Britain]], meant the end of the [[Parliament of Scotland|Scottish Parliament]]. The parliamentarians, politicians, aristocrats, and [[placemen]] moved to London. [[Scottish law]] remained entirely separate from [[English law]], so the civil law courts, lawyers and jurists remained in Edinburgh. The headquarters and leadership of the [[Church of Scotland]] also remained, as did the universities and the medical establishment. The lawyers and the divines, together with the professors, intellectuals, medical men, scientists and architects formed a new [[middle class]] elite that dominated urban Scotland and facilitated the Scottish Enlightenment.<ref>Alexander Broadie, ''The Scottish Enlightenment'' (1997) p. 10.</ref><ref>Michael Lynch, ed., ''Oxford Companion to Scottish History'' (2001) pp. 133–37.</ref>

===Economic growth===
{{Main article|Economy of Scotland in the early modern era}}
At the union of 1707, the Kingdom of England had about five times the population of Scotland and about 36 times as much wealth, but there were five Scottish universities ([[University of St Andrews|St. Andrews]], [[University of Glasgow|Glasgow]], [[University of Edinburgh|Edinburgh]], and [[Aberdeen|Aberdeen's]] [[King's College, Aberdeen|King's College]] and [[Marischal College]]) against two in the Kingdom of England. Scotland experienced the beginnings of economic expansion that allowed it to close this gap.<ref>R. H. Campbell, "The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. II: The Economic Consequences", ''Economic History Review'', vol. 16, April 1964.</ref> Contacts with the Kingdom of England led to a conscious attempt to improve agriculture among the gentry and nobility. Although some estate holders improved the quality of life of their displaced workers, enclosures led to unemployment and forced migrations to the burghs or abroad.<ref>J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, ''A History of Scotland'' (London: Penguin, 1991), {{ISBN|0140136495}}, pp. 288–91.</ref> The major change in international trade was the rapid expansion of the Americas as a market.<ref name=Mackie1991p292>J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, ''A History of Scotland'' (London: Penguin, 1991), {{ISBN|0140136495}}, p. 292.</ref> Glasgow particularly benefited from this new trade; initially supplying the colonies with manufactured goods, it emerged as the focus of the tobacco trade, re-exporting particularly to France. The merchants dealing in this lucrative business became the wealthy [[tobacco lord]]s, who dominated the city for most of the eighteenth century.<ref name=autogenerated2>J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, ''A History of Scotland'' (London: Penguin, 1991), {{ISBN|0140136495}}, p. 296.</ref> Banking also developed in this period. The [[Bank of Scotland]], founded in 1695 was suspected of [[Jacobitism|Jacobite]] sympathies, and so a rival [[Royal Bank of Scotland]] was founded in 1727. Local banks began to be established in burghs like Glasgow and Ayr. These made capital available for business, and the improvement of roads and trade.<ref name=Mackie1991p297>J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, ''A History of Scotland'' (London: Penguin, 1991), {{ISBN|0140136495}}, p. 297.</ref>

===Education system===
{{Main article|Education in early modern Scotland}}
The humanist-inspired emphasis on education in Scotland culminated in the passing of the [[Education Act 1496]], which decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools.<ref name=Bawcutt&Williams2006pp29-30>P. J. Bawcutt and J. H. Williams, ''A Companion to Medieval Scottish Poetry'' (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2006), {{ISBN|1-84384-096-0}}, pp. 29–30.</ref> The aims of a network of parish schools were taken up as part of the Protestant programme in the 16th century and a series of acts of the Privy Council and Parliament in [[School Establishment Act 1616|1616]], [[Education Act 1633|1633]], [[Education Act 1646|1646]] and 1696 attempted to support its development and finance.<ref>{{cite journal |title=School education prior to 1873 |journal=Scottish Archive Network |year=2010 |url=http://www.scan.org.uk/knowledgebase/topics/education_box1.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928100213/http://www.scan.org.uk/knowledgebase/topics/education_box1.htm |archive-date=28 September 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> By the late 17th century there was a largely complete network of parish schools in the Lowlands, but in the Highlands basic education was still lacking in many areas.<ref name=Anderson2003>R. Anderson, "The history of Scottish Education pre-1980", in T. G. K. Bryce and W. M. Humes, eds, ''Scottish Education: Post-Devolution'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2nd ed., 2003), {{ISBN|0-7486-1625-X}}, pp. 219–28.</ref> One of the effects of this extensive network of schools was the growth of the "democratic myth", which in the 19th century created the widespread belief that many a "lad of pairts" had been able to rise up through the system to take high office, and that literacy was much more widespread in Scotland than in neighbouring states, particularly England.<ref name="Anderson2003"/> Historians are now divided over whether the ability of boys who pursued this route to social advancement was any different than that in other comparable nations, because the education in some parish schools was basic and short, and attendance was not compulsory.<ref name=Devine2001p91-100>T. M. Devine. ''The Scottish Nation, 1700–2000'' (London: Penguin Books, 2001). {{ISBN|0-14-100234-4}}, pp. 91–100.</ref> Regardless of what the literacy rate actually was, it is clear that many Scottish students learned a useful form of visual literacy that allowed them to organise and remember information in a superior fashion.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Eddy|first=Matthew Daniel |url=https://www.academia.edu/1817033 |title=The Shape of Knowledge: Children and the Visual Culture of Literacy and Numeracy|journal=Science in Context |year=2013|volume=26|issue=2 |pages=215–45 |doi=10.1017/s0269889713000045|s2cid=147123263 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Eddy|first1=Matthew Daniel|title=The Child Writer: Graphic Literacy and the Scottish Educational System, 1700–1820|journal=History of Education|date=2016|volume=45|issue=6|pages=695–718|url=https://www.academia.edu/23569976|doi=10.1080/0046760x.2016.1197971|s2cid=151785513}}</ref>

By the 17th century, Scotland had five universities, compared with England's two. After the disruption of the civil wars ([[Wars of the Three Kingdoms]]), [[Scotland under the Commonwealth|Commonwealth]] and purges at the [[Restoration (Scotland)|Restoration]], they recovered with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry.<ref name=Anderson2003/> All saw the establishment or re-establishment of chairs of mathematics. Observatories were built at St. Andrews and at King's and Marischal colleges in Aberdeen. [[Robert Sibbald]] (1641–1722) was appointed as the first Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh, and he co-founded the [[Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh]] in 1681.<ref name=Devine2012p373>T. M. Devine. "The rise and fall of the Scottish Enlightenment", in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, ''The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), {{ISBN|0-19-162433-0}}, p. 373.</ref> These developments helped the universities to become major centres of medical education and would put Scotland at the forefront of new thinking.<ref name=Anderson2003/> By the end of the century, the University of Edinburgh's Medical School was arguably one of the leading centres of science in Europe, boasting such names as the anatomist [[Alexander Monro (secundus)]], the chemists [[William Cullen]] and Joseph Black,<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Eddy|first1=M D|title=Useful Pictures: Joseph Black and the Graphic Culture of Experimentation|journal=In Robert G. W. Anderson (Ed.), Cradle of Chemistry: The Early Years of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2015)|pages=99–118|url=https://www.academia.edu/6346321}}</ref> and the [[natural historian]] [[John Walker (naturalist)|John Walker]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Eddy|first=Matthew Daniel|url=https://www.academia.edu/1112014 |title=The Language of Mineralogy: John Walker, Chemistry and the Edinburgh Medical School, 1750–1800|year=2008|publisher=Ashgate|access-date=2014-05-09}}</ref> By the 18th century, access to Scottish universities was probably more open than in contemporary England, Germany or France. Attendance was less expensive and the student body more socially representative.<ref>R. A. Houston, ''Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England, 1600–1800'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), {{ISBN|0-521-89088-8}}, p. 245.</ref> In the eighteenth century Scotland reaped the intellectual benefits of this system.<ref name="HermanTwo">A. Herman, ''How the Scots Invented the Modern World'' (London: Crown Publishing Group, 2001), {{ISBN|0-609-80999-7}}.</ref>

===Intellectual climate===
In France, the Enlightenment was based in the [[Salon (gathering)|salons]] and culminated in the great ''[[Encyclopédie]]'' (1751–1772) edited by [[Denis Diderot]] and (until 1759) [[Jean le Rond d'Alembert]] (1713–1784) with contributions by hundreds of leading intellectuals such as [[Voltaire]] (1694–1778), [[Rousseau]] (1712–1778)<ref>D. Vallier, ''Rousseau'' (New York: Crown, c1979).</ref> and [[Montesquieu]] (1689–1755). Some 25,000 copies of the 35-volume set were sold, half of them outside France. In Scottish intellectual life the culture was oriented towards books.{{clarify|date=December 2014}}<ref>Mark R. M. Towsey, ''Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and Their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750–1820'' (2010).</ref> In 1763 Edinburgh had six printing houses and three paper mills; by 1783 there were 16 printing houses and 12 paper mills.<ref>R. B. Sher, "Scotland Transformed: The Eighteenth Century", in J. Wormald, ed., ''Scotland: A History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 169.</ref>

Intellectual life revolved around a series of clubs, beginning in Edinburgh in the 1710s. One of the first was the Easy Club, co-founded In Edinburgh by the Jacobite printer [[Thomas Ruddiman]]. Clubs did not reach Glasgow until the 1740s. One of the first and most important in the city was the Political Economy Club, aimed at creating links between academics and merchants,<ref name="Lynch1992p346">M. Lynch, ''Scotland: A New History'' (London: Pimlico, 1992), {{ISBN|0712698930}}, p. 346.</ref> of which noted economist [[Adam Smith]] was a prominent early member.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Wood |editor-first1=John Cunningham |title=Adam Smith: Critical Assessments vol. 1 |date=1993 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=9780415108942 |page=95 |edition=[Repr.].}}</ref> Other clubs in Edinburgh included [[The Select Society]], formed by the younger [[Allan Ramsay (artist)|Allan Ramsay]], a prominent artist, and philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith<ref name="MacDonald2000p57">M. MacDonald, ''Scottish Art'' (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), {{ISBN|0500203334}}, p. 57.</ref> and, later, [[The Poker Club]], formed in 1762 and named by [[Adam Ferguson]] for the aim to "poke up" opinion on the militia issue.<ref name="Lynch1992p348">M. Lynch, ''Scotland: A New History'' (London: Pimlico, 1992), {{ISBN|0712698930}}, p. 348.</ref>

Historian [[Jonathan Israel]] argues that by 1750 Scotland's major cities had created an intellectual infrastructure of mutually supporting institutions, such as universities, reading societies, libraries, periodicals, museums and masonic lodges. The Scottish network was "predominantly liberal Calvinist, Newtonian, and 'design' oriented in character which played a major role in the further development of the transatlantic Enlightenment".<ref name="HermanTwo"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Israel|first=Jonathan|title=Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3xP4l0ug3rAC&pg=PA233|year=2011|publisher=Oxford UP|page=233|access-date=2014-05-09|isbn=9780191620041}}</ref> Bruce Lenman says their "central achievement was a new capacity to recognize and interpret social patterns."<ref>R. A. Houston and W. W. J. Knox, ''The New Penguin History of Scotland'' (London: Penguin, 2001) p. 342.</ref>

The Scottish Enlightenment owed much to the highly literate culture of Scottish Presbyterianism. Established as the Church of Scotland following the Revolution of 1688, the Presbyterians supported the 1707 Act of Union, and the protestant Hanoverian monarchy. The eighteenth century saw divisions and dispute between hard-line traditional Calvinists, Enlightenment influenced Moderates, and increasingly popular Evangelicals. Moderate clergy, with their emphasis on reason, toleration, morality and polite manners, were ascendant in the universities. Some of the leading intellectual lights of the Scottish Enlightenment were Presbyterian ministers, such as William Robertson (1721–93), historian and principal of the University of Edinburgh. The careers of sceptics, such as Adam Smith and David Hume, owed much to the tolerance, support and friendship of Moderate clergy.

Such was the reputation of the Scottish clergy for their Enlightenment values that a friend in England asked the Rev. James Wodrow, a minister in Ayrshire, whether two thirds of the Scottish clergy were in reality Deists. Wodrow dismissed the suggestion, and observed that "I cannot imagine the number of Deists among us bear almost any proportion at all to the rest. A few about Edinburgh in east Lothian & in the Merse by reading David Hume's books & by their conversation & connexions with him & his friends, to whom you may add a scatered Clergyman or two here & there in other parts of [the] Country who has happened to get his education among that set of people; are all you can reckon upon & it is no way difficult to account for their forsaking the faith … & loving a present World & the mode of thinking fashionable in it." (James Wodrow to Samuel Kenrick, 25 January 1769).<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Fitzpatrick|first1=Martin|title=The Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence 1750–1810, Volume I: 1750–1783|last2=Macleod|first2=Emma|last3=Page|first3=Anthony|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2020|isbn=9780198809012|location=Oxford|pages=291–92}}</ref>