French influence in Scottish early modern influence

What is it about?

Scottish architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is still usually dismissed as backward in a British context because its patrons carried on building houses which looked like castles while the English abandoned the castle-type house and increasingly followed Italian models. My article shows how the Scots were in fact in step with mainstream French and north European practice and it shows how the pattern books of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau profoundly influenced Scottish architecture up to the mid-eighteenth century. Far from being backward, Scottish architecture was just as up to date as English. It was just different

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Why is it important?

Even now many Scots think Scotland was backward before the Union with England in 1707. My work tries to make Scots shake off that inferiorism which is so pervasive in Scottish culture.