I was sorely tempted to judge this book by its cover. The ‘Scotland’ of the title is large, bold, and confident. The subtitle ‘The Global History 1603 to the Present’ is there in diminuendo, unassuming and easy to miss. This encapsulates the volume’s central tension: how is it possible to write the global history of a single nation? How can the emphasis of the first project on boundaryless movement, circulation, and exchange be made to play nicely with the second genre’s preoccupation with distinctiveness, peculiarities, and place?

Successful examples of global history have tended to focus on the circulation of one or more of those three categories which its practitioners privilege: things, ideas, and people. There is an abundance of all three of these in Murray Pittock’s sprawling account. There is also, however, an awkward and idiosyncratic tacking between the national and the global throughout the volume. In truth, this is a history of Scotland and its connections and interactions with the world since 1603, rather than global history per se.

With that qualification, there is a good deal to admire here. Readers unfamiliar with Scottish history in general and with the many faces of the global Scot in particular will be well pleased. A brisk narrative of Scotland’s history since its constitutional entanglement with England in the Union of the Crowns underpins a wider story of traders, soldiers of fortune, men and women on the make and on the take, slave drivers and humanitarians, professors, teachers, and preachers.