By Scott Minto
A couple of years before the 2014 referendum, the Economist published an article called "Skintland", accompanied by a sneering, condescending front cover. The feature it purportedly advertised was a hatchet job on Scotland, which cobbled together some fairly bog-standard Unionist innuendo, supposition and misrepresentation amounting to nothing much that we haven't heard a hundred times before.
The most interesting thing about the article was that it started with a preamble about the Darien Scheme, a 17th-century business venture which went horribly wrong and which Unionists are very fond of bringing up as a stick to beat Scottish nationalists.
Here, we're going to look at the theme of BritNat mythology, and in particular the re-writing of the story of the Darien Scheme to that end.
A report written by Professor Malcolm Chalmers about the defence of an independent Scotland started with Darien. He wrote:
"The failure of Scotland's fleet to establish a colony in Central America in 1698-99 (the 'Darien adventure') was a key part of the chain of events that led to the Act of Union in 1707. For it convinced the business classes that they needed the military protection of the Royal Navy if they were to benefit from the new riches that colonialism promised."
But this account is a somewhat airbrushed one. The story of Darien is a tale of betrayal, power, and military and political might brought to bear against Scotland.
Darien was a disaster, of that there can be no doubt, but it wasn't the end result of any inherent flaw in the Scottish psyche, or an indicator of the inability to manage our own affairs. That's just the position the BritNat mythology wants to portray.
The Background
The relationship between Scotland and England in the 14th and 15th centuries was tempestuous at times. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, Scotland found itself progressively poorer, neglected by its King in London and dragged unwillingly into England's wars.
Scotland's naval priorities were the protection of national trade, and the pursuit of profitable raiding cruises against enemy cargos. Despite these efforts, Scotland quickly found itself drawn into the war, proving to be a very capable ally.
In 1632 Scotland lost Nova Scotia — her only colony — as a result of the English war against France. England's Dutch wars subsequently compromised valuable trading privileges upon which Scottish merchants had previously relied. Scottish overseas trading activity was further hampered by the Navigation Act, which cut Scottish ships out of international trade by forbidding the import of goods into England or her colonies unless carried in English ships.
The Darien Plan
This situation gave rise to the reasoning behind the Darien Scheme — access to trade. The architect of Darien was a man called William Paterson, who would the following year be instrumental in the foundation of the Bank of England. He proposed that the Scottish Parliament should grant a Scottish monopoly on overseas trade to a trading company, enabling it to harness the lucrative Far Eastern market.
Key to the plan was the establishment of a Scottish colony in Central America, at a place called Darien (now part of Panama), so that goods could be transferred from the Pacific to the Atlantic without having to make the long and perilous journey around Cape Horn.
In 1695 the Bank of Scotland was established and the Company of Scotland was born. Investors in England, Amsterdam and Hamburg quickly raised their share, but the East India Company — fearing that their monopoly would be broken — used their influence on the king and English Parliament to persuade them to act against the venture.
The English government of King William III didn't need much persuading, as the proposed Scottish colony would be located on land Spain had its own designs on. The East India Company threatened legal action and obliged the promoters to refund subscriptions to the Hamburg investors, with English investors also quickly withdrawing their money.
This left no source of finance but Scotland itself, yet so fierce was the resentment at the duplicity of the king and English Parliament that Scots resolved to raise all the capital alone. Thousands of Scots put their own money into the enterprise alongside money from the nobles, and the Company raised just under £400,000 in a few weeks — totalling roughly a fifth of the wealth of Scotland.
The Sabotage
The first fleet set sail from Leith so as to avoid observation by English warships. At a time when the total Scottish population amounted to only about one million, the amount of manpower committed to the venture was every bit as staggering as the financial commitment.
They built Fort St Andrew and began to erect the huts of what they hoped would become their permanent town, New Edinburgh. But the local indigenous people proved unwilling to buy the combs and other trinkets offered by the colonists, and no fleets of merchant ships arrived to use the trade route.
The lack of trade was not an accident, as the English colonies in the West Indies and North America had been forbidden to communicate with the Darien colonists or offer them any help or assistance, by order of William and his government in London. By the onset of summer the following year, the climate, disease and hunger had led to a large number of deaths in the colony. The mortality rate rose to ten settlers a day.
After eight months the colony was abandoned. One ship, desperate for aid, arrived at the Jamaican city of Port Royal but was refused assistance in response to the king's standing orders not to help the settlers. Only 300 of the original 1,200 settlers returned on a single ship to Scotland.
A second expedition arrived at Darien to find the huts of New Edinburgh in disrepair and the jungle reclaiming the land. The persistence of the Scots prompted the Spanish to take measures to prevent the Scots from securing the land. Ships carrying supplies to the settlers failed to arrive and the ship carrying the settler's food supply mysteriously caught fire and burned to ashes.
The Spanish blockaded Fort St Andrew, with the Scots settlers bravely holding out for more than a month before eventually surrendering. Decimated by disease and hunger and defeated by the Spanish, the colonists left Darien for the last time in April 1700.
The Consequences
The failure of the scheme provoked tremendous discontent throughout lowland Scotland, where almost every family had been affected. Many held the English responsible.
After the failure of the Darien colony, the capture of one of the company's ships led to an outbreak of Scottish anger towards England. These were the events which Robert Burns would decades later bitterly sum up in the famous lines "We're bought and sold for English gold, sic a parcel of rogues in a nation".
For both William and Anne, the lessons of the Darien affair were clear. The result was the plan to undertake a union of the Scottish and English Parliaments.
And so the negotiations with the Scottish nobles began. Article 14 of the proposed Treaty was a direct bribe to the nobles. It granted £398,085 and 10s to Scotland — known as 'the Equivalent'. Some of the money was also used to hire spies, such as the author Daniel Defoe.
In 1724 the two societies of debenture-holders united to create the Equivalent Company. Three years later this company sought a royal charter to allow it to offer banking services. When the charter was granted, the new bank it created was called The Royal Bank of Scotland.
The Lesson
The failures of a private venture over 300 years ago have no bearing on the future prosperity of Scotland, however many times the Unionists drag them up. We are not bound by the mistakes of the past — we can learn, improve and adapt, as all nations must. Darien is not a monument to failure, but a testament to the ambition and drive that the Scots people can muster against overwhelming odds and adversity.
To describe the Union as a benefit is to stretch the truth to breaking point. In reality Scotland's nobles were bullied and bribed into signing the treaty by their more powerful neighbour. Scotland was not bankrupt and could have continued on as an independent nation.
In today's globalised free-market world, there are no English privateers roaming the North Sea, and we no longer require the permission of the monarchy to conduct international business. So why do we still need to be in the Union?
#endtheunion