Recent content by Emigre

Thanks, that's exactly what I need to read. I’m aware I hold a somewhat simplified and biased view of American history, which places immigrant groups with previous experience of holding dual conceptions of nationhood (primarily Scots and Jews) as the grownups with most of the good ideas, while...

@vimothy, I’ll give you that. But, like the typical Scot, I’d argue that the birth of America was primarily a byproduct of the Scottish Enlightenment, as encapsulated by Tom Paine’s “Common Sense” (said concept being widely known at the time as “the Scottish Philosophy”). I’m genuinely...

@vimothy, I largely agree with you, except for a few specific points: True, but Ferguson seems to apply the term "civilisation" to all the Western powers who engaged in imperialism, not just Britain. Not really. Outside the West, a lot of the world's elites are still organised along lines of...

A Scottish friend of Zhao's chiming in... Britain’s imperial atrocities were not necessarily more horrific than those of other imperial powers; they were simply on a larger scale, due to the larger size of empire. However, in terms of facing up to post-imperial reality, a comparison with...