Scotland's National Day and Saint Andrew's Day on November 30th are celebrated by Scots. The whole country and the Scottish diaspora around the world commemorate such important festivity with family and friends, enjoying Traditional Scottish food like Haggis, tatties and neeps, shortbread and whiskey. Scots gather on parties to talk about the culture and history of Scotland and remember how Scots, men, and women, achieved great accomplishments that benefited Scotland and the worldwide.
On Saint Andrew's Day, let us share with you a portion of Arthur Herman's book's Preface that talks about the Scottish pride.
"How the Scots Invented the Modern World"
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People of Scottish descent are usually proud about their history and achievements. Yet even they know only the half of it. They can recite many names and details in the familiar story of their people. "Braveheart" William Wallace and Robert the Bruce; the Arbroath Declaration and Mary Queen of Scots; Robert Burns and Bonnie Prince Charle. They point out how James Watt invented the steam engine, John Boyd Dunlop the bicycle, and Alexander Fleming penicillin. Yet no one else seems to pay much attention. Scots often complain that Scotland's place among nations deserves more exposure than it gets. But their complaints have an ironic, rather than a beseeching, tone. They seem to take a perverse pride in being so consistently underestimated.
The point of this book is that being Scottish is more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. It is also a state of mind, a way of viewing the world and our place in it. The Scottish mentality was a deliberate creation, although it was conceived by many minds and carried out by many hands. It is a self consciously modern view, so deeply rooted in the assumptions and institutions that govern our lives today that we often miss its significance, not to mention its origin. From this point of view, a large part of the world turns out to be "Scottish" without realizing it. It is time to let them in on the secret.
This is the story of how the Scots created the basic ideas of modernity. It will show how those ideas transformed their own culture and society in the eighteenth century, and how Scots carried them with them wherever they went. Obviously, the Scots did not do everything by themselves; other nations -Germans, French, English, Italians, Russians, many others -supplied bricks and mortar for building the modern world. But it is the Scots who drew up the blueprints and taught us how to judge the final product. When we gaze out on a contemporary world shaped by technology, capitalism, and modern democracy, and struggle to find our own place in it, we are in effect viewing the world through the same lens as the Scots did.
Such an understanding did not come easily. Sir Walter Scott said, "I am a Scotsman; therefore I had to fight my way into the world." The history of Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is one of hard-earned triumph and heartrending tragedy spilled blood and ruined lives as well as great achievements. In 1700 Scotland was Europe's poorest independent country (Ireland, after all, was governed by Englishmen, and Portugal still owned Brazil). Yet the story of how this small, underpopulated (never than two million people as late as 1800), and culturally backward nation rose to become the driving wheel of modern progress is not only largely unknown, it may even be inspiring.
For it you want a monument to the Scots, look around you."
Happy Saint Andrew's Day!
