What if the Union hadn’t happened

HAD Scotland avoided the 1707 Union “our history and world history would have been different” but not necessarily better (Scotland’s role in world history, Letters, May 14).

As US historian Dr Arthur Herman wrote in The Scottish Enlightenment – The Scots’ Invention Of The Modern World, Scottish geniuses from all disciplines flourished after 1707.

Andrew Carnegie said that without Scotland the modern world would be a “very poor show” and Churchill said that of all the small nations only the ancient Greeks did better.