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Why did Enlightenment happen in Edinburgh?

This is a study of Enlightenment in Edinburgh like no other. Using data and models provided by urban innovation and Smart City theory, it pinpoints the distinctive features that made Enlightenment in the Scottish capital possible.

In a journey packed with evidence and incident, Murray Pittock explores various civic networks - such as the newspaper and printing businesses, the political power of the gentry and patronage networks, as well as the pub and coffee-house life - as drivers of cultural change. His analysis reveals that the attributes of civic development, which lead to innovation and dynamism, were at the heart of what made Edinburgh a smart city of 1700.

Murray Pittock is a leading international scholar of the British Isles in the long eighteenth century, and the author or editor of over twenty books, including Culloden (2016), Material Culture and Sedition (2013) and The Myth of the Jacobite Clans (Edinburgh University Press, 2009). He is also the General Editor of the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Allan Ramsay.