Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow): Edinburgh’s Enlightenment 1660-1750: The French Connexion (18 Feb 2021)

(Audio a bit soft. Clicking on YouTube English subtitle facility suggested)

'This lecture examines the final functional century of the Auld Alliance in terms of France’s historic influences on Scotland and its capital, and on the extent that these underpinned the infrastructural and civic development of the Scottish Enlightenment. Scotland’s exclusion from an independent foreign policy after 1603 led to a series of futile attempts to embed Scottish interests in the English Empire which brought it into conflict with France for the first time; but Scottish intellectuals continued to flourish in French society. After 1707, Scotland’s status changed and French foreign policy objectives frequently focused on the redivision of the new British state through intermittent support for the Stuarts. The liberty-loving mountaineer and the concept of Highlandism left an enduring legacy in France. In Scotland, the capital, Edinburgh, not only dominated Scotland’s trade with France and continued to look to France - and in particular Paris - for a lead in urban design and other areas, but also engaged with its example in infrastructure, communications, research, innovation, the arts and commerce and society as well as providing - in John Law -one of the most controversial and farsighted financial innovators of the modern era. The lecture closes with a brief consideration of France’s contribution to the last major Jacobite Rising of 1745, and the end of the Auld Alliance when Le Grand Dérangement brought British Army policy in Scotland into French Canada, followed by Scottish troops.'