On Tartan Tides: The Failure and Legacy of the Darien Scheme

Political Analysis Volume 19 Volume XIX (2018) 2018 On Tartan Tides: The Failure and Legacy of the Darien Scheme Michael Novak Seton Hall University, Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.shu.edu/pa Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Novak, Michael (2018) "On Tartan Tides: The Failure and Legacy of the Darien Scheme," Political Analysis: Vol. 19 , Article 7. Available at: https://scholarship.shu.edu/pa/vol19/iss1/7 Article 7 POLITICAL ANALYSIS · VOLUME XIX · 2018 On Tartan Tides: The Failure and Legacy of the Darien Scheme Michael H. Novak Michael is originally from Colonia, New Jersey, and a junior at Seton Hall. He is a History major, and Classical Studies and Medieval Studies minor, planning to graduate in Spring 2019. He is in the University Honors Program, an active member of Seton Hall’s History and Slavic Clubs, and acts as a photographer for the Slavic Club. Post-graduation, he plans to pursue a graduate degree in European History, then hopefully to work at a think tank, policy analysis firm, or politics. He enjoys playing video games, reading, and spending time with friends and family. N orth and South America are continents defined in almost every respect by European colonization. However, for every successful European settlement in the Americas, there were many more that failed. Social experiments (such as George Oglethorpe’s Georgia), ill-conceived moneymaking schemes too numerous to list, and the personal vanity projects of emperors and kings all perished due to boiling jungles, searing deserts, rough seas, disease, Native Americans, rival Europeans, and a myriad of other obstacles. One of the more bizarre failed colonies was the socalled “Darien Scheme,” the disastrous attempt by the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies (hereafter referred to as the CSTAI) to establish a colony, to be named “New Caledonia”, in the area around the Gulf of Darien in presentday Panama in 1698. To this day, Darien remains a somewhat obscure incident outside of Scotland; there is no great “mystery” or “scandal” to draw attention to it in the same way as other, more famous, colonial failures such as Roanoke. Nevertheless, the story of Darien is still significant within the wider sweep of both British history and the history of European colonization in the Americas. That the Darien Scheme was a failure is essentially a given; New Caledonia was levelled, all of its inhabitants died or fled, and Scotland was dealt a heavy economic blow. However, other questions about the Scheme are less settled. Of these, the questions of why the Darien Scheme failed in the first place, and how the Scottish public and state reacted to this failure “in the moment” will be examined throughout this paper. Based on close readings of both scholarly secondary sources, and primary sources such as letters, ballads, popular pamphlets, and personal journals, it is clear that the Darien Scheme was not by any means intended to be a shoddy, ill-conceived moneymaking operation. Rather it was a massive national enterprise, years in the making, one that began with all the trappings of a successful trading colony. Intentions aside, the colony of New Caledonia still failed, and failed for a number of reasons, including poor planning, natural factors such as disease and weather, direct and indirect interference by foreign powers, and constant feuding among both the project’s leaders and the community as a whole. Upon learning of the abandonment and destruction of New Caledonia, the Scottish public reacted with a mixture of dismay, fear, and anger, while the Scottish government attempted, with mixed results, to maintain public order. Before an in depth discussion of the various facets of the Darien Scheme can begin, it is necessary to give a brief outline of the general course of events. Though William Paterson, the Scottish entrepreneur who initially developed the Darien Scheme, had already been advocating for a similar operation for years, nothing concrete really emerged until the establishment of the CSTAI in 1695.1 The next three years were spent planning and promoting the Scheme, and culminated in the sailing of the first expedition to Darien from 77 POLITICAL ANALYSIS · VOLUME XIX · 2018 Scotland in July of 1698. This fleet arrived in Darien in November of the same year; New Caledonia was quickly established, but almost immediately began to founder for reasons which will be discussed shortly. By May of the next year, conditions had deteriorated so badly that the decision to abandon the colony was taken, and most of the surviving colonists fled to either Jamaica or New York. However, news of this decision did not reach Scotland in time to prevent a relief expedition from sailing for New Caledonia around the same time. This expedition arrived in November of 1699, but had no better luck than the first in creating a viable settlement. The story of New Caledonia ended for good in April of 1700, when the few remaining colonists surrendered the remains of New Caledonia to a Spanish army, which leveled the settlement shortly thereafter. In order to accurately assess the reasons for the failure of the Darien Scheme, it is necessary to start at the beginning, with planning. As previously stated, the Darien Scheme did not begin life as the spontaneous dream of a madman or a profiteer. Rather, it actually has origins deeply rooted in the political and economic thought of the time. During the 1690s, the time in which New Caledonia was conceived, Scotland was in fairly dire straits. Having been legally bound to England by the ascension of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne as James I in 1607, Scotland was perpetually abused by its southern neighbor. Dependent on the old trade networks of the North Sea for it survival, Scotland had an extremely weak economy, and its monarch, the Dutch-born William III, “thought of the country as a recruiting center only, a storehouse for supplies, and was impatient with its Parliament and its peculiar pride.”2 Hoping to help his homeland escape this fate, William Paterson first devised the plan that would eventually become the infamous Darien Scheme.3 Though Paterson’s plan seems almost insane in hindsight, it was actually fairly sensible according to the political and economic thought of the time. The political theorists of the time (of which Paterson was one), promoted international trade as the surest way to prosperity for any nation, and a state built on naturalized citizens, a “universal monarchy,” as a solid foundation for any res publica.4 Thus, from the perspective of the late-17th century, the Darien Scheme made perfect sense: a free-trade port astride Panama, one of the great hubs of trans-oceanic shipping, to draw the wealth of the world into poor little Scotland.5 By all accounts, it certainly seems to have been taken as a serious proposition by most of the Scottish public, and by several fore (...truncated)