Darién project

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Coordinates: 8 ° 50 ′ 2 "  N , 77 ° 37 ′ 54"  W.

Map of the Isthmus of Darién and Panama. From "A New Voyage Round the World". London 1697.
Darién in the 17th century
Map of the Bay of New Caledonia in Darién, Panama: The Scottish settlement in America called New Caledonia. AD 1699. Lat. 8-30 north. After an original drawing from 1729 , printed as an engraving by Herman Moll in London in 1736 .

The Darién Project was an attempt to establish a Scottish colony in Panama . The catastrophic failure of the project brought Scotland to the brink of national bankruptcy, accelerating the amalgamation with England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain .

history

The Company of Scotland

During the 17th century, England increasingly benefited from its overseas colonies, particularly in North America . Since 1603 the King of England was also King of Scotland (or the Scottish Stuarts inherited the English throne), but the Scots were still denied access to the English colonies. Because colonies were under the administration of a trading company ("company") at that time , which had a patent from the king for the colony and thus the right to decide on participation in a colony. The Scots were excluded because they were not English citizens.

The Scottish financial expert William Paterson , who founded the Bank of England in London and made a fortune in England, believed he had found a solution to the dilemma: he founded the Company of Scotland - a Scottish trading company - and planned a colony in Darién in today's Panama.

The subscription book of the Company of Scotland was opened in London on November 13, 1695: the aim was to take advantage of the strength of the English money market. The target volume of £ 300,000 was drawn within a short period of time. It was precisely this successful start that triggered the Company of Scotland's first crisis : in the age of mercantilism , it was assumed that the wealth of every nation was limited and that the wealth of England would be withdrawn from the Scots in order to compete with England. English merchants, especially the British East India Company , saw their position at risk. The case was discussed in the House of Lords , to which the (English) board members of the company were summoned under threat of punishment. A delegation of representatives of both chambers of the English parliament traveled to King William in the Netherlands to appeal to official protest. The king signed a document in which he declared that he had been badly treated by the Scots in this matter ("ill-served in Scotland").

After the project as a Scottish-English joint venture had failed, the Company of Scotland decided to act on its own. Authorized by a law passed by the Scottish Parliament, the Company reissued the subscription in Scotland on February 26, 1696. More than £ 50,000 was drawn on the first day alone. Since the "own colony" was considered a national project, not only rich citizens and nobles, cities and guilds signed the bonds, but also the less well-off. When the goal of raising £ 400,000 had been reached to £ 2,000, the Company of Scotland decided to close the subscription list on August 3, 1696. Ships were chartered and equipped, sailors hired and settlers recruited for the planned colony. It was to be called New Caledonia , taking the old, Celtic-Latin name of Scotland's Caledonia .

Foundation and fall of the New Caledonia colony

On July 18, 1698, the first fleet of five ships hoisted the sails in Leith . On November 2, 1698, they reached the coast of Darién. The colonists built Fort St. Andrews on the Gulf of Darién as a base . Then they began to clear the jungle and create fields for the planned New Edinburgh settlement. But soon all hopes were dashed: The selected site was infested with mosquitoes and malaria (which is why the neighboring Kuna avoided the area); the soils were not very fertile; Supplies that had been brought to rot in the tropical rain; the humid and hot climate bothered the 1200 settlers. They were starving. More and more sick. After all, up to ten people died every day. The ships whose cargo should have been transported over the Darién Isthmus to the Pacific ports (this business idea was decisive for the decision in favor of Panama) did not materialize.

As a result, the settlers in New Caledonia asked the English colonies in the New World for assistance. King William and his cabinet should have assisted the Scottish settlement of New Edinburgh as well as those of English subjects. But they gave priority to other interests. Among other things, they did not want to give rise to a conflict with Spain, which was provoked by the new foundation. Therefore, the governors of the English colonies from Massachusetts to Jamaica were instructed not to give any assistance to the Scottish settlers. A delegation from New Caledonia pleading for help in Port Royal , the capital of the colony of Jamaica, was accordingly turned away. Left in the lurch, the New Edinburgh settlers gave up in July 1699. The barely seaworthy ships sailed home; but only one of them reached Scotland with 300 survivors.

In the meantime, since nothing was known of the failure in Scotland, a second fleet with a further 1,140 settlers sailed for New Caledonia, which went ashore on November 30, 1699. They found only abandoned ruins and set about rebuilding New Edinburgh. But then Spanish colonists who claimed the area as part of the Real Audiencia de Panamá attacked the "intruders" and besieged Fort St. Andrews. In March 1700 the last Scottish settlers surrendered to the Spanish.

Consequences of the failure of the project

The first news from Spain about the end of the New Caledonia colony had not been believed in Scotland. However, in the course of 1700, investors realized that the project had failed. Of the total subscribed capital of £ 400,000, £ 153,448 had actually been paid up by the end of the colony. Historians estimate that a quarter or even half of the total liquid Scottish national wealth had been brought into the Company of Scotland . Now many had lost all of their capital. Their bankruptcy was rife. The state finances were in ruins; even the otherwise successful John Law was unable to save them.

Queen Anne saw the opportunity to completely abolish Scottish independence. In 1706/1707 the Act of Union was negotiated and England took over the Scottish national debt. Scotland was included in a customs union with England and its colonies. The fact that the Union Treaty was adopted in the Scottish Parliament on February 16, 1707 with 110 to 69 votes was also due to the fact that many MPs voted for it who had lost money through the Darién project and could now expect compensation according to the Union Treaty.

literature

  • The Scottish Colony of Darien, 1698-1700 . In: The Retrospective Review, Consisting of Criticisms Upon, Analyzes of, and Extracts from Curious, Valuable, and Scarce Old Books , edited by John Russell Smith. Vol. 1. London 1853, pp. 173-189.
  • Laura Held: The Darien disaster . In: ila , ISSN  0946-5057 , issue 372 (February 2014), pp. 55-56.
  • John Prebble: The Darien Disaster . Secker & Warburg, London 1968, ISBN 0436386062 .
  • John Stuart Shaw: The Political History of eighteenth century Scotland. Macmillan [u. a.], Basingstoke 1999, ISBN 0-312-22430-3 .
  • Helmut Weber: Oppressed Nation or Beneficiary of the Union? Scotland's role in the United Kingdom (lecture on June 23, 2003 at the Great Britain Center of the Humboldt University in Berlin), p. 8–10.

Literary processing

  • Douglas Galbraith: The long journey of the Rising Sun . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 3-596-50716-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Norman Davies: The Isles. A history. Macmillan, London [a. a.] 1999, ISBN 0-333-76370-X . P. 670.
  2. ^ The Scottish Colony of Darien, 1698-1700 . In: The Retrospective Review, Consisting of Criticisms Upon, Analyzes of, and Extracts from Curious, Valuable, and Scarce Old Books , edited by John Russell Smith. Vol. 1. London 1853, pp. 173-189, here p. 179.
  3. ↑ Thomas Christopher Smout: A history of the Scottish people, 1560-1830. Collins / Fontana, London 3rd ed. 1975, p. 225.
  4. ^ The Scottish Colony of Darien, 1698-1700 . In: The Retrospective Review, Consisting of Criticisms Upon, Analyzes of, and Extracts from Curious, Valuable, and Scarce Old Books , edited by John Russell Smith. Vol. 1. London 1853, pp. 173-189, here p. 178.
  5. ↑ Laura Held: The Darien disaster . In: ila, issue 372 (February 2014), p. 56.
  6. ^ The Scottish Colony of Darien, 1698-1700 . In: The Retrospective Review, Consisting of Criticisms Upon, Analyzes of, and Extracts from Curious, Valuable, and Scarce Old Books , edited by John Russell Smith. Vol. 1. London 1853, pp. 173-189, here p. 181.
  7. ↑ Laura Held: The Darien disaster . In: ila, issue 372 (February 2014), p. 56.
  8. ^ Rory Carroll: The sorry story of how Scotland lost its 17th century empire . In: The Guardian, September 11, 2007.
  9. ↑ Helmut Weber: Oppressed Nation or Beneficiary of the Union? Scotland's role in the UK . P. 9.
  10. ↑ Laura Held: The Darien disaster . In: ila, issue 372 (February 2014), p. 56.
  11. ^ The Scottish Colony of Darien, 1698-1700 . In: The Retrospective Review, Consisting of Criticisms Upon, Analyzes of, and Extracts from Curious, Valuable, and Scarce Old Books , edited by John Russell Smith. Vol. 1. London 1853, pp. 173-189, here p. 182.
  12. ^ The Scottish Colony of Darien, 1698-1700 . In: The Retrospective Review, Consisting of Criticisms Upon, Analyzes of, and Extracts from Curious, Valuable, and Scarce Old Books , edited by John Russell Smith. Vol. 1. London 1853, pp. 173-189, here p. 178.
  13. ↑ Helmut Weber: Oppressed Nation or Beneficiary of the Union? Scotland's role in the UK . P. 9.