This book is the first full-length study of Scots in the United Provinces between 1650 and 1750, showing that the Scottish-Dutch relationship provided the infrastructure, which allowed Scotland to become part of the Republic of Letters.

The late seventeenth century Netherlands have traditionally been viewed as the intellectual entrepot of Europe in general, and for Scotland in particular. Scottish students flocked in large numbers to the Dutch universities, bringing back ideas and books which influenced Scottish learning well into the eighteenth century. This book is the first full-length study of Scots in the United Provinces between 1650 and 1750. It analyses their numbers at the Dutch universities, the education they received and the impact this had on Scottish learning, on the eve of the Enlightenment, showing that the Scottish-Dutch relationship provided the infrastructure, which allowed Scotland to take part in a wider Republic of Letters and that its culture was increasingly characterised by it.

George Buchanan (1506-82) was the most distinguished Scottish humanist of the sixteenth century with an unparalleled contemporary reputation as a Latin poet, playwright, historian and political theorist. However, while his contemporary importance as the scourge of Mary Queen of Scots and advocate of popular rebellion has long been recognised, this volume represents the first attempt to explore the subsequent influence of his ideas and his contested reputation as a political ideologue and cultural icon. Featuring a wide-ranging selection of essays by an international cast of established and younger scholars, the volume explores Buchanan's legacy as an historian and political theorist in Britain and Europe in the two centuries following his death, with particular emphasis on the reception of his remarkably radical views on popular sovereignty and political assassination. Divided into four parts, the volume covers the immediate impact and reception of his writings in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Britain; the wider Northern European context in which his thought was influential; the engagement with his political ideas in the course of the seventeenth-century British constitutional struggles; and the influence of his ideas as well as the changing nature of his reputation through the eighteenth century and beyond. The introduction to the volume not only reviews the material in the body of the collection, but also reflects on the use and abuse of Buchanan's ideas in the early modern period and the methodological issues of influence and reputation raised by the contributors. Such a reassessment of Buchanan and his legacy is long overdue and this volume will be welcomed by all scholars with an interest in the political and cultural history of early modern Britain and Europe.

This collection brings together a selection of the most cited articles published by Professor John W. Cairns. Essays range from Scots Law from 16th and 17th century Scotland, through to the 18th century influence of Dutch Humanism into the 19th century, a

Using untapped archival sources from Britain, France and America, Talbott presents a comparative view of British relations with France over the long seventeenth century.

Presents an overview of early modern Dutch history in global context, focusing on themes that resonate with current concerns.

This volume provides a new and nuanced appreciation of David Hume as a historian. Gone for good are the days when one can offhandedly assert, as R. G. Collingwood once did, that Hume “deserted philosophical studies in favour of historical” ones. History and philosophy are commensurate in Hume’s thought and works from the beginning to the end. Only by recognizing this can we begin to make sense of Hume’s canon as a whole and see clearly his many contributions to fields we now recognize as the distinct disciplines of history, philosophy, political science, economics, literature, religious studies, and much else besides. Casting their individual beams of light on various nooks and crannies of Hume’s historical thought and writing, the book’s contributors illuminate the whole in a way that would not be possible from the perspective of a single-authored study. Aside from the editor, the contributors are David Allan, M. A. Box, Timothy M. Costelloe, Roger L. Emerson, Jennifer Herdt, Philip Hicks, Douglas Long, Claudia M. Schmidt, Michael Silverthorne, Jeffrey M. Suderman, Mark R. M. Towsey, and F. L. van Holthoon.