Nên đọc Walter Scott

hồi thế kỷ 17, như Afghanistan hiện nay, xung đột các bộ tộc, thần giáo Calvin, quá nhiều đâm chém...

thế rồi chỉ trong thời gian ngắn, gần như ngay lập tức, cuối thế kỷ 17, đầu thế kỷ 18, trở thành "con hổ" năng động nhất của thế giới, là cái nôi của phong trào khai sáng với tất cả ý tưởng tốt nhất của văn minh phương tây, chỉ với nhúm người quanh Glasgow và Edinburgh...

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during the pandemic, I started reading the Waverley novels, and it’s all there: all the fundamental dilemmas (vấn đề nan giải cơ bản) that were raised, not just by the Glorious Revolution (Cuộc cách mạng), but prior to that by the Civil War (chiến tranh) of the 17th century, and that were raised again in the 1745 Jacobite rising.

Scott’s brilliant (sự thông minh) at explaining something that I don’t think is properly understood, and that is that Scotland had the most extraordinary (đặc biệt) historical trajectory (quỹ đạo). It went from being Afghanistan in the 17th century — it was basically Afghanistan. You had violent warring clans (gia tộc tham chiến) in the north, in the mountainous (miền núi) parts of the country, and a theocracy (thần quyền) of extreme Calvinist zealots (những kẻ quá khích) in the Lowlands. This was a deeply dysfunctional (rối loạn chức năng), very violent place with much higher levels of homicide (tội giết người) than England. Really, it was a barbaric () place.

And something very strange happened. That was that in the course of — beginning really from the late 17th century — in the course of the 18th century, Scotland became the most dynamic tiger economy (nền kinh tế hổ) in the world. Also, it became the cradle (cái nôi) of the enlightenment (giác ngộ), had really all the best ideas of Western civilization, all at once in a really short space of time with a really small number of people, all sitting around in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

I still don’t think a book has been written that properly explains that. You certainly wouldn’t have put a bet on Scotland behaving that way by the late 18th century, if all you knew about it was Scotland in the mid-17th century. If you look at it that way, then you kind of have to be a Whig. You have to recognize that the institutions (thể chế) that came from England, including the Dutch institutions that were imported in the Glorious Revolution, really helped Scotland get out of its Afghan predicament (tình trạng khó khăn).