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Metadata
- Author: Ian Fraser
- ASIN: B00KRCKR9A
- Reference: https://amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KRCKR9A
- Kindle link
Highlights
in order to promote Scottish international trade and challenge the might of the London-based East India Company. The Company of Scotland secured the rights to establish a colony, Scotland’s first, in Panama and its promoters insisted that business would be brisk and offer investors spectacular financial returns — location: 292
The project was under-researched and poorly planned. The Company of Scotland failed to appreciate that the Panamanian coast was an — location: 296
inhospitable, malaria-ridden swamp. — location: 297
years, the so-called Darien Scheme — location: 298
Some £153,000 sterling, nearly a quarter of Scotland’s liquid capital, had gone up in smoke. The warm embrace of political union with England, sweetened by financial compensation for the company’s backers, began to have some appeal. In 1707, after many centuries of discord and mutual distrust, Scotland and England signed the Treaty of Union. — location: 300
In Article XV, England agreed to pay Scotland a very large sum of money, which was ostensibly to compensate Scotland for taking on a share of England’s national debt. In the end, however, the sum of £398,085 and 10 shillings sterling (worth some £44 million today) was extended to the Scots (mainly members of Scotland’s upper middle classes and aristocracy) who had lost their shirts in Darien. Whether it was overt bribery is open to debate but Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, certainly thought it was. — location: 303