Darien - The Preparation
Its Ultimate Failure Would Lead to the Union of Parliaments in 1707
With English Navigation Laws forcing Scotland to turn from its traditional trading partners, the Scots formed a company to rival the powerful English East India Company.
Today, Darien now part of modern Panama, means little to most Scots but in the final years of the 17th century the name became synonymous with hope, greed, failure and ultimately the Act of Union with England.
When King James VII (II) was finally deposed and William and his wife Mary took the throne, Scotland was on its knees. (Between 1603 and 1707 Scotland and England had one royal family but separate parliaments).
The English Navigation Acts (legislation designed to protect English trading vessels from foreign competition. At that time it included Scotland) coupled with difficult trading conditions and poor harvests had left Scotland almost bankrupt and its people on the brink of starvation.
Indeed one eminent historian subsequently said, “At the end of the 17th century Scotland was a byword for irredeemable poverty, social backwardness and political faction…”
Scots were now forced to seek new trading partners and turned away from Europe to the Darien Isthmus in Central America to build a trading empire to rival the powerful English East India Company.
Darien had been chosen as the site for the new venture by William Paterson, a Scot who would later found the Bank of England, after a conversation with one Lionel Wafer described as a sailor, but probably an English buccaneer. Wafer had persuaded Paterson that Darien was a wonderful paradise.
King William agreed to allow the Scots to establish a company, perhaps as a way of diverting recriminations over his involvement in the Glencoe Massacre some years earlier.
During a session in the Edinburgh parliament of 1695, a short statement was given to the effect that an act should be passed which would promote the advancement of trade.
Writer John Prebble in his book the Darien Disaster described the feeling in Edinburgh, “It was if a window had been opened, flooding the grey and impoverished rooms of Scotland with the sunlight of the Indies…”
William Paterson helped frame the first draft of the legislation establishing, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies. It became law in June 1695. Others, notably Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, soon joined Paterson.
A subscription book to raise money was opened in London and because the company’s charter seemed so attractive to investors, money poured in. Such was the interest in England that the Scots struggled to retain control.
However, King William recently returned from fighting in France, found himself under pressure from the English Parliament which saw the Scottish enterprise as a growing threat.
A House of Commons committee which had been examining what they called the “Scotch East India Company” proclaimed they were guilty of a, “ High Crime and Misdemeanor.” English support for the project evaporated.
With backing from south of the border suddenly removed a new mood swept through Scotland, “A new and intense hatred of the English, coupled with a unity rarely seen before.” A rising tide of support for Darien brought Highlander and Borderer together, men of noble birth together with the poorest wretch.
