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To what extent could Edinburgh be considered as a world-city during the age of Enlightenment from the intellectual point of view? How could knowledge build an urban center? Since the 1970s, research in urban history, in history of science or Enlightenment studies had underlined the dynamism of the Scottish center. After the union of 1707, Edinburgh lost its status of political capital city of Scotland, but gained that of intellectual capital. This article explores how the transfer could have worked by developing facilities, recognizing university excellence and multiplying social areas. The transformation from a provincial pole in Britain to a center of knowledge could lay on the mobilization of scholars and knowledge at a world-wide scale, by encouraging the mobility and the participation of Scottish diasporas. The city aimed at becoming a point of passage in the constitution of a national cause. By studying the intellectual milieu and the learned practices involved in this claim, one seeks to clarify the stakes of the interpenetration between international recognition and localization.