Scotland is unique. It is a nation rich in inventions and achievements. It has given the world golf, whisky, tartan, the telephone, the television, the steam engine, penicillin, and insulin. Arguably, Scotland invented Philanthropy too.

The Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century saw a huge outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. The results were staggering. Despite being the poorest country in the world in Western Europe, by 1750 Scotland was the most educated, with over half of its population able to read and write, every major town having a library, and Scotland being home to the best universities in the world.

Among the fields that rapidly advanced were philosophy, political economy, engineering, architecture, medicine, geology, archaeology, law, agriculture, chemistry and sociology. The great Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period included David Hume, Adam Smith, Robert Burns, and John Playfair. Crucially, these writers shared a humanist and rationalist outlook and the main philosophers of the Enlightenment proposed philanthropy as the essential key to human happiness. Self-development, manifested in good deeds towards others, was the surest way to live a pleasing, fulfilling, and satisfying life, as well as to help build what the Scots called a “Commonweal,” a community of people working together for the common good.

The notion distinguished the Scottish Enlightenment from the corresponding changes sweeping Europe and had effects far beyond Scotland itself, not only because of the esteem in which Scottish achievements were held in Europe and elsewhere, but also because its ideas and attitudes were carried across the Atlantic by American students who studied in Scotland. In the United States, the significance of the Scottish Enlightenment on North American political, social, and philosophical thinking was profound – inspiring both the U.S Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution and informing the work of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in particular. The link between free trade and social responsibility prevailed in American consciousness and is best recognized in the activities of probably the greatest and most influential philanthropist – Scotsman Andrew Carnegie.

Ironically, despite inspiring so much social progress around the world, the effects of the Enlightenment in Scotland itself were quickly dissipated. The 18th century saw Scotland’s national poverty deepen, attempts to re-establish the Scottish monarchy fail, and mass emigration of vast numbers of Scots. While Scots thrived abroad, at home they were increasingly assimilated into the United Kingdom and the British Empire, to the stage that Scots nowadays have neither a constitution nor a bill of rights and have only a devolved parliament, secondary to the UK government in most important aspects of Scottish life.

In terms of current trends in charitable giving, there is evidence that the principals of the Enlightenment did serve to create an ethos within Scotland that helping others is a shared responsibility. While this ethos is not unique to Scotland, it is certainly true that successive studies of charitable giving in the United Kingdom place Scottish donors as significantly more generous than in any other part of the UK.

Within Scotland, the most generous parts of the country are the rural, more traditional areas. It is also the case that those in the lowest economic groups give significantly more to local charities, while higher-earning groups give more to Scotland-wide and international charities. This suggests that the legacy of the “Commonweal” is still embedded in the rural, traditional, working-class areas of Scotland.

Three hundred years later, signs are starting to emerge that Scotland may be recovering and emerging from its more recent role as a touristy, historic theme park of a land full of castles, bagpipes, and mythical monsters. In 2014, Scots narrowly voted to stay within the United Kingdom rather than achieve full independence; however, the referendum debate and its aftermath served to raise the national political consciousness in Scotland by a considerable degree. A corresponding growth in the Scottish cultural, economic, and academic world has some observers predicting the possibility of a second Scottish Enlightenment.