TIMES City was in the thick of bid to restore country’s fortunes FROM OUR PICTURE ARCHIVE
Glasgow’s rich merchants also got involved
IT is almost axiomatic for anyone researching the period that led up the Union of 1707 to be told that the failure of the Scottish attempt to colonise the Darien area of the Isthmus of Panama led directly to the treaty negotiations between England and Scotland.
That assertion is true, but it was not the only reason why the unitary state came into being.
As we shall see next week, the Union was not popular with the people of Glasgow. By the 1690s, the city had become the second largest burgh in the land in terms of population, behind only Edinburgh.
The best estimate is that 12,000 to 15,000 people lived in Glasgow by the turn of the century, with 400 of them being students at Glasgow University. This was at a time when Scotland was a very rural country with a population of less than a million, or a fifth the size of England’s population.
The rural nature of Scotland was shown by the fact that national prosperity and indeed the feeding of its people were reliant on agriculture, and for several years in the 1690s, entire crops failed and harvests were poor.
Tree records have shown that the decade was the coldest in Scotland in the past eight centuries, and famine was widespread on several occasions in numerous places, only the nationwide power of the Church of Scotland ensuring that relief was sometimes sent to those parishes needing it.
Still, between 10 and 15% of the population died from starvation and disease in a dire decade. The political scene was still febrile. The Jacobites had not gone away after the victory at Killkiecrankie was followed by the disasters at Dunkeld, the Boyne and Aughrim, and the Massacre of Glencoe in February, 1692, ensured the Jacobite cause would stay alive. Interestingly, legend has it that two junior officers from Glasgow broke their swords and refused to take part in the horrific murderundertrust of the MacIain MacDonalds. Trade, especially with England, France and the Netherlands, had been the backbone of Glasgow’s growth, but in the last quarter of the 17th century there were other drivers of the city’s increasing wealth – coal, for instance, began to become a commercial commodity and there were pits dotted in and around the city and its environs, including one in what is now the Gorbals. Yet imports and exports were the lifeblood of Glasgow and there were precious few exports by the 1690s.
The main problems with international trade by ship were that Scotland had no navy to speak of and the Royal Navy was exclusively an English institution which rigorously enforced the Acts of the English Parliament which forbade Scottish ships to trade with English colonies – despite the two kingdoms having the same king, William of Orange.
Then in 1695, along came an idea, a project, which Scotland hoped would restore the country’s fortunes, and Glasgow was in the thick of it.
William Paterson, inset, founder of the Bank of England in 1694, came back to his native Scotland the following year.
A man with a keen sense of geography and economics, he had realised many years before that anyone controlling the Isthmus of Panama would be able to facilitate trade between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, especially the slave trade through which he had acquired vast wealth.
The governments of England, the Dutch republic and the Holy Roman Empire were all interested in the idea at one time or another but it was Scotland’s Parliament which took up the notion
The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies was founded by an Act of Parliament in June, 1695, giving the Company exclusive Scottish trading rights to Africa, India and the Americas.
One month later the Bank of Scotland was also founded by a Parliamentary Act. In London,
King William was not best pleased as he did not want to offend Spain which had allied with him against France – and the Company of Scotland’s first attempt at colonisation would be at Darien, part of the territories claimed by the Spanish.
Foreign sources of investment including English institutions were banned from dealing with the new Company, but in what appears to have been a fit of national madness, somewhere between a half and a quarter of all the wealth in Scotland was invested in what became known as the Darien Scheme.
The Provost of Glasgow at the time was John Anderson of Dowhill, generally reckoned to be one of the best holders of that office – he was elected to it four times. Anderson eagerly promoted the Darien Scheme, and as burghs and not just firms and individuals were able to invest, he persuaded the city council to put up a huge sum. The council records of the time stated: “Taking to their consideration that the company of this nation for trading to Africa and the Indies ... seems to be very promising, and apparently may tend to the honour and profit of the Kingdom, and particularly to the great advantage of this Burgh to share therein ... therefore ... with consent of the merchants and trades, their respective houses ( previously convened for giving advice in the said matter) do resolve and conclude to stock in and adventure for this Burgh and common good thereof ... the sum of three thousand pounds sterling money.”
Glasgow’s rich merchants also got involved with several becoming directors of the Company while Anderson himself put up £ 1000. In total, Glasgow and its citizens invested £ 56,000 – a quarter of the eventual £ 220,000 fully paid up shares in the Scheme.
We all know what happened next. Five ships sailed from Leith – despite Glasgow lobbying hard for the honour – with 1200 wouldbe colonists aboard, and though they landed successfully at Darien in November, 1698, within eight months they had to abandon the settlement as disease killed Scot after Scot.
A second expedition of more than 1000 settlers sailed before news of the disaster reached Scotland and it, too, collapsed. Only a few hundred survivors made it home while all of Scotland was shocked at the catastrophic failure that was costly in human and economic terms. The biggest “disaster”, as many Glaswegians would see it, was still to come.