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1705 England and Scotland had shared kings for 100 years, but were still separate, but Scoland was bancrupted by the colony idea so the Act of Union was the only way to fix finances (would have probably happened eventually, but the failure of the colony brought it forward. Organised by Pattereson founder of Bank of England. If it had succeeded would have damaged Spanish silver route and colonialism. The colony couldn't trade with the Spanish, and St Andrews had no water.
- unlucky if gone 2 years later would have been OK - The condition of Union was a kind of bribe to the Colony Investors who were mostly Scottish politicians they were paid $1.42 for evry $1. Union was unpopular with the Scots public
BBC Prog on Panama Scottish Colony
- based on the book The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations, by Douglas Watt, published by Luath Press, 2007
- "Michael Portillo presents a series revisiting the great moments of history to discover that they often conceal other events of equal but forgotten importance.
The real reason behind the 1707 Act of Union which saw England and Scotland merged was a disastrous colonial expedition. But why did a small settlement in what is now Panama bring a nation to its knees and why it has been reduced to such a tiny footnote in the story?"
The OU text :
“There’s the end of an auld sang” said the Earl of Seafield, as he signed the Act of Union in 1707. Since then, the story of the Act has been seen in terms of a deal between Commissioners, lubricated by bribes to the Scottish side.
But the fate of Scotland as an independent state was settled not in smoke-filled rooms, in Edinburgh and London, but thousands of miles away in the jungles of Panama, in a deserted settlement on the Spanish Main. For it was there that Scotland’s last bid to thrive alone came to grief. Before England’s South Sea bubble, there was Scotland’s Darien Company – the brainchild of the Scot who had already founded the Bank of England.
It was an attempt to emulate London’s commercial success by mobilising Scotland’s meagre reserves of capital to found a world-wide trading empire. The capital was mobilised, but the trading empire was mismanaged.
The Scots had hoped for support from their monarchs, but William and then Anne were more concerned with their English subjects: the English saw no reason to antagonise the Spanish merely to help interlopers. The Company crashed, and a bankrupt Scotland was forced to look to the only other game in town: union.
THe OU website has heaps of info for people interested in general history click around more
- Things We Forgot Homepage
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