Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

In everything from the social sciences and technology to art and architecture, 18th century Scotland witnessed a flowering of ideas and innovation.

But what made the Enlightenment in Scotland different to the rest of Europe?

Who were some of its key thinkers?

And why were so few women involved?

To answer the key questions on the Scottish Enlightenment, I spoke to Professor

Craig Smith from the University of Glasgow. Let's begin then, Craig, with a real basic question

that we need to know before going any further. What was the Scottish Enlightenment?

The Scottish Enlightenment was a kind of outpouring of artistic and academic and scientific

achievement that took place in Scotland in the second half of the 18th century.

And it involved some very prominent philosophers like David Hume, historians like William Robertson, economists like Adam Smith, who really brought Scotland to the forefront of the wider European Enlightenment.

You mentioned that this happened in the second half of the 18th century. Can we nail that down anymore or is it one of these big historical trends that's quite hard

to pin an end date and a start date too?

There's a huge debate about this, as you might imagine, amongst historians.

So some historians trace it back into the early years of the 18th century, some even back

into the 17th century, but I tend to view them as kind of pre-enlightment or precursors, and that the high

period of the Scottish Enlightenment, the thing that we talk about as the Scottish Enlightenment,

ran from about 1740 to around about 1790. That's really the high point of the movement,

from the publication of David Hume Street, I's on Human Nature nature to the death of Adam Smith. That's the

time frame that I go with. So you mentioned a couple of fields of learning, but I wonder if you

could pin those down a bit more. What were the main areas of focus for the Scottish Enlightenment

in particular? Yeah. So, I mean, in recent years, people have tried to look at the width or the range of different areas

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