The cause of Scottish independence needs to ditch 19th-century ideas of nationhood and join "a springtime of victorious dwarves" in which smart, small nations take the lead, according to one of the leading thinkers on Scottish nationalism.

Professor Tom Nairn last night set out a significant revision of his case for Scotland to become independent during a keynote lecture in Edinburgh.

He argued that the heirs of the nationalists of the 19th century are the British nationalists who enforced and widely exported their model of large nations with large markets in which the old industrial economy could prosper.

The author of The Break-up of Britain, a Marxist analysis of the British state published in 1977, said globalisation has changed the way nations operate and interact, and that rules will no longer be made by the larger nations.

"The old question used to be: Are you big enough to survive and develop in an industrialising world?'" he said.

"The advent of globalisation is replacing this with another, something close to: Are you small and smart enough to survive and claim a positive place in the common global culture?' "Not too surprisingly, the most common answer coming up from the bowels and steerage accommodation of the common ship is You bet we are - nor do we mean to be deprived of the chance'."

In a talk as part of the Edinburgh Lectures series, introduced by First Minister Alex Salmond, Mr Nairn explained that globalisation is a stimulus for a new type of nationality-politics, which is less about nationalism in its past sense that "the emergence of new, smaller communities of will and purpose, the nations of a new and deeply different age".

Mr Nairn ridiculed larger nations and their academic cheerleaders for wanting to "freeze global history in its tracks , for the convenience of existing agglomerations, in-cluding the United States and loyal fan-club Great Britain. Only thus will stability and reasonable global order prevail. "

By contrast, the professor pointed to league tables of the countries doing best out of globalisation, the top 20 of which include the US but also Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Finland, Norway and Israel.

"The broader picture remains unmistakeable: a springtime of victorious dwarves, one might say. No more convincing illustration of globalisation's new sliding scale' can be imagined. And with equal ease, anyone can see Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland queuing up to claim their places."