Think of colonial empires throughout history: the Greeks; the Phoenicians; the Romans; the Portuguese; the Spanish; the French; the British; the Dutch; the United States. All were hugely influential and left massive cultural legacies around the world, so they may be the first that comes to mind. There may be others that pop up in your head, such as Belgium, Italy, Germany, or Denmark.Perhaps even New Zealand. But on the flip side, there were some colonial exploits that didn’t result in huge success. Did you know Austria once tried to found a colony in the Indian Ocean? Or that the Delaware River valley was once New Sweden? Today’s post looks at one of the more infamous examples; one that failed so miserably that it actually contributed to the end of the parent country’s independence.
The Kingdom of Scotland was in a very rough position near the end of the 17th century. The country’s economy was small, producing few exports, and its political influence in Europe was compromised by the nature of its personal union with the Kingdom of England (especially in the wake of the Restoration). The major European powers of the day had been able to gain power and prestige thanks to extracting the wealth from their vast territorial holdings, while Scotland was relegated to the periphery.England has even banned Scottish traders from doing business in English colonies; a side effect of the 1651 Navigation Acts meant to stop trade with continental European powers. As the empires around it competed against each other for control of international trade and built up tariff walls around themselves, Scotland found itself with few funds to pay the increasing costs for the goods it needed to import from elsewhere.Having suffered through nearly a century of various internal and external wars, and with crop failure rife throughout the country, Scotland entered the year 1695 in a rather precarious state.
The Scottish parliament responded with a number of economic initiatives, most notably the creation of the Bank of Scotland to assist Scottish businesses, and the chartering of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies to develop Scotland’s overseas trading interests. The Company was granted a monopoly on Scottish trade in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, was permitted to set up colonies anywhere therein, and was promised royal assistance in maintaining agreements and privileges with other nations.Investment in the Company came from public subscription, initially equally split between Scottish and English investors. Thanks to a challenge from the potential rival East India Company, who were worried about losing their trade monopoly, funds were ultimately only allowed to be raised from within Scotland itself. Ultimately a sum of £400 000, equivalent to one-fifth of the country’s wealth and half of its available national capital, would be invested into the company by people from all walks of life. Much of this capital was embezzled and never recovered.
Around the same time, a Scottish financier and international trader named William Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England, had been proposing a settlement scheme in the Isthmus of Darién (known today as the Isthmus of Panama); a plan he had developed as a young man during a stay in the Bahamas. Paterson saw that a settlement on the Isthmus could conceivably become a strategic port for trade with the Far East, given the location’s status as the narrowest point of the land separating the Pacific from the Atlantic (the same rationale, of course, that ultimately led to the construction of the Panama Canal). Having failed to convince the English, Dutch, and Holy Roman Empire governments to go in on the scheme, he found success with the Scottish government and the Company of Scotland (the Company even became known as simply ‘the Darien Company’ in popular parlance as a result).A successful colonisation of Darién would establish Scottish international trade in the New World and reap major benefits for the Company and thus for Scotland. As well, Darién could function as a place for Scots to settle abroad and not have to deals with the effects of crop failure and famine. On 12 July 1698, 1 200 colonists, many of whom were discharged soldiers and Highlanders escaping famine (Paterson, his wife and child were also on board), left Leith on a voyage around the north of Scotland, then to the Azores and through the West Indies to Darién, arriving on 4 November. A bay at the eastern end of the isthmus – known today as Puerto Escocés (Scottish Port), Panama – was chosen as the site for the colony, named New Caledonia.The colony’s settlement would be known as New Edinburgh, buffered by a military fort named Fort St. Andrew.
A 1699 John Senex map of the region shows the settlement of New Edinburgh on the Caribbean coast of the Isthmus of Darién (Panama).
With many of the colonists already sick from the conditions onboard the ships, the landscape they found at Darién were not exactly optimal; no one had bothered to research what the climate of the area was like. It was infested with malaria-ridden mosquitoes; the tropical weather made it impossible to conduct European-style agriculture since cleared land would be taken back by the forest almost immediately; and the wet, humid conditions were utterly oppressive to the settlers, who had only known temperate Scotland (even today, the landscape of the Darién region is so impenetrable that the Darién Gap has yet to be bridged by road). With the food supplies spoiling in the heat, agriculture proving to be a failure, fresh water scarce, and relief ships from Scotland delayed by several months, colonists quickly began dying and relied heavily on the local indigenous population for gifts of fruit and fish (usually taken by the expedition’s leaders for themselves). That said, trade never took off with the natives, for they had little use for the meagre trinkets the colonists had to trade- combs, wool bonnets, and bibles, just to name a few. The foreign fleets the Company had hoped with trade with the colonists never arrived.
A map of New Caledonia (not to be confused with New Caledonia or New Caledonia).
Within seven months, 400 settlers were dead; the rest emaciated and/or stricken with yellow fever and dysentery.At one point, the mortality rate was over ten settlers per day and as high as sixteen. The colony was a failure, and the remaining settlers decided to return to Scotland, abandoning the colony in July 1699 (with the exception of six men too weak to make the journey). Only 300 of the original expedition of 1 200 colonists made it back home. Sadly, word of the colony’s hardships did not make it back in time to prevent the second fleet of 1 300 colonists from leaving for Darién (letters sent home falsely proclaimed the success of the scheme). Refused water and food at Montserrat thanks to instructions sent from England not to assist the Scottish colony, the new settlers (excluding the 160 who died en route) found New Edinburgh in disrepair and essentially abandoned. They rebuilt, but soon encountered the other major issue with the colony: Spain had controlled the area for nearly two centuries at this point. A foreign colony on what it considered to be Spanish soil would not be tolerated, even if it was in an inhospitable place like Darién. Fearing a Spanish attack, the Company organised a defence force from the colony and attacked a nearby Spanish stockade.Again, this move was ill-planned, and Spanish forces staged a month-long siege on Fort St. Andrew before the disease-ridden colonists negotiated a truce on the condition that they abandon the colony, closing the door on the Darien Scheme for good. Most of the survivors died on the return journey home; 250 were lost to disease on the ship leaving Darién and another 140 were lost in a shipwreck.
The Scottish Parliament had asked King William for assistance in recognising the colony as a legal settlement. Such a declaration would solidify the legitimacy of the colony, helping out the ailing settlers and potentially open up the door to English trade. William acknowledge the loss of settlers but declined recognition, only offering to free Scottish prisoners held by Spain. Many blamed the failure of the colony on English interference (so as not to anger Spain, English and Dutch colonies in America had been instructed not to aid the Scots; the ship carrying the 300 original settlers attempting to return home was even denied entry while trying to call at Port Royal, Jamaica for supplies). In 1704, the captain of an East India Company ship who had sunk a Company of Scotland ship some years earlier for violating its monopoly was even executed by a Company of Scotland-led mob in Leith on charges of piracy.
The final toll of the Darien Scheme was staggering: only one of the sixteen ships that sailed to the colony ever returned; over 2 000 settlers died, and the investments Scottish nobles had made in the Company of Scotland were completely lost, essentially bankrupting the country (one-quarter of Scotland’s liquid assets were wiped out). Within a decade, the Scottish parliament passed the Acts of Union with England in an effort to secure the country’s economy, giving up its independence in the process. The terms included the granting of an ‘Equivalent’; £398 085 to Scotland to help offset liability toward the English national debt, a figure roughly equivalent to the amount of money Scotland lost in its ill-fated Panamanian adventure. Today’s Royal Bank of Scotland actually traces its origin to investors in the failed scheme looking to protect the monies they received in compensation from England. RBS’ website has an educational feature on the Darien scheme you can visit here.
Further Reading
Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department (2005). The Darien Scheme. May 2005. Available at http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/may2005.html. Accessed 11 May 2011.
Hemming, S. (2010). Pivotal chapter in Scottish history. Financial Times, 13 August 2010. Available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a8c715a8-a668-11df-8767-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1Lyd6jK00. Accessed 10 May 2011.
History UK (2010). The Darien Scheme – The Fall of Scotland. 21 July 2010. Available at http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Scotland-History/DarienScheme.htm. Accessed 10 May 2011.
Mair, G. (2006). Ship of fools sank Darien scheme. The Scotsman, 8 October 2006. Available at http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Ship-of-fools-sank-Darien.2816786.jp. Accessed 11 May 2011.
Moorhouse, R. (2001).Darién – the Scottish ‘Empire’. BBC History, July 2001. Available at http://www.rogermoorhouse.com/article2.html. Accessed 10 May 2011.
National Library of Scotland and Scran (2001). Pathfinder Pack on The Darien Scheme. Resources for Learning in Scotland, May 2001. Available at http://www.rls.org.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-000-001-451-L. Accessed 10 May 2011.
Paul, H.J. (2009). The Darien Scheme and Anglophobia in Scotland. Discussion Papers in Economics and Econometrics. Southampton, ENG: School of Social Sciences, Economics Division, University of Southampton. Available at http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/79228/1/0925.pdf. Accessed 11 May 2011.
Royal Bank of Scotland (2011). The Darien Experience: A history for teachers. Curriculum for Excellence. Available at http://www.rbs.com/microsites/our-teaching-resources/content/curriculum-for-excellence/darien-adventure/history.htm. Accessed 10 May 2011.