'News from the Republick of Letters' Scottish Students, Charles MacKie and the United Provinces, 1650-1750

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-90-04-21068-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 161, 10 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 499 g

Reihe: Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions

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.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in intellectual and cultural history, Scottish history, the history of the university, the history of the book, the history of the Republic of Letters and the early Enlightenment, the history of the Scottish diaspora, as well as migration specialists and historians of the later Dutch Golden Age.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mijers, Esther

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder England, UK, Irland: Regional & Stadtgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
Map: The United Provinces c. 1700
Introduction
a. Historiography
b. Approach and Outline
c. Sources and Terminology
I. Context and Numbers
a. Scots in the United Provinces
b. Students
II. A Dutch Education
a. The Scottish Infrastructure
b. Institutions and Universities
c. The Curriculum
d. The Grand Tour
III. Going Dutch
a. Scotland and the Scottish Universities
b. The Book Trade
IV. Charles Mackie and the Limits of Dutch Learning
a. Mackie as Agent in the Republic of Letters
b. The Polyhistor
Conclusion
Appendix: Scottish Students in the United Provinces, 1650-1750
Bibliography
Index

Leseproben

Introduction

On the second of January 1733, following his arrival at the University of Groningen, the Scottish student Robert Duncan (1699-1729) wrote to Charles Mackie (1688-1770), professor of history at the University of Edinburgh: ‘As for news from the Republick of letters you cannot expect much from me yet’. Duncan needed time to settle into the University, a recent favorite of Scottish students, but soon the letters began flooding in with details of the latest publications, ideas and learned discussions, and information and gossip about fellow students and professors at Groningen and elsewhere in the United Provinces. Duncan’s letters were among the vast number written by Scottish students attending Dutch universities in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. That Scots in the later early modern period were educated in large numbers in the United Provinces is well-known to scholars of Scotland’s intellectual and educational history. The Dutch universities had a reputation for excellence and Protestant yet relatively latitudinarian views, which appealed to Scottish students who wanted to continue their education abroad for a variety of reasons. While studying on the Continent had been part of the academic pilgrimage since medieval times, by the middle of the seventeenth century the popularity of the Dutch universities had taken off exponentially, instigating a century of virtual monopoly of the United Provinces on the further education of young Scottish men of aristocratic, professional and merchant backgrounds. Although certainly not the only European universities frequented by Scots, they became the starting point for their academic overseas education, often followed by a Grand Tour, and the universities where Scots would spend most of their time. For these students, the United Provinces became the center of the world of learning, or the ‘Republic of Letters’, as well as the gateway to Europe, although the latter was not a new continent, intellectually or otherwise.
Before we come to the story of Scottish students in the United Provinces, the wider historical context needs to be addressed. Scotland, like most poor areas in Europe, had a long tradition of looking abroad for employment and improvement. From the Middle Ages onwards, trade with Europe or, closer to home, with England and Ireland, provided opportunities for the inhabitants of this poor but enterprising nation. Although England and especially Ireland were favorite destinations for Scottish migrants throughout the early modern period, many more left for the Continent which provided economic, intellectual and religious alternatives to England. T.C. Smout has estimated that during the period 1600-1650, migration accounted for the loss of 85,000-115,000 Scots, mainly to Scandinavia, Poland and Ulster. In the next fifty years, he estimates these numbers to have been somewhere between 78,000 and 127,000, but after 1700 the numbers dropped to some 90,000. These figures and destinations have been recently put into question in a new overview of Scotland’s migrant destinations during the period 1500-1700; still, it remains undisputed that, while Scotland’s migration conformed to wider European patterns, her ‘level of out-migration [was] much higher than for the rest of north-west Europe.’ Although small, with a population of 1-1.2 million in the seventeenth century, Scotland was a particularly outward-looking place, characterized by a ‘culture of migration’. During the Middle Ages and the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the entire North Sea region, including Scandinavia, the Baltic and Poland, were popular destinations for Scottish migrants motivated by military, economic, religious and educational considerations. Many also went south to Flanders, France, Spain and Italy. They served both Catholics and Protestants and could be found in the armies of central Europe, on ships and ashore in the western ports of France and the Low Countries, trading

Über Autor(innen)

Mijers, Esther
Esther Mijers, Ph.D. (2002) in Scottish History, University of St Andrews, is lecturer in British History at the University of Reading. She is the author of numerous articles and edited collections on Scotland and the Netherlands in the late seventeenth century.

Esther Mijers, Ph.D. (2002) in Scottish History, University of St Andrews, is lecturer in British History at the University of Reading. She is the author of numerous articles and edited collections on Scotland and the Netherlands in the late seventeenth century.