Scotland has had a difficult time in…

Scotland has had a difficult time in the late seventeenth century.

The country's economy is relatively small, its range of exports very limited and it is in a weak position in relation to England, its powerful neighbor (with which it was in personal union, but not yet in political union).

In an era of economic rivalry in Europe, Scotland is incapable of protecting itself from the effects of English competition and legislation.

The kingdom has no reciprocal export trade and its once thriving industries, such as shipbuilding, are in deep decline.

Goods that are in demand have to be bought from England for Sterling.

The Navigation Acts, a series of laws that restrict the use of foreign shipping for trade between England and its colonies, have further increased economic dependence on England by limiting Scots shipping; the Scottish navy is tiny.

Several ruinous civil wars in the late seventeenth century have squandered the country's human and other resources.

The 1690s, referred to as the "ill years," also see several years of wide-scale crop failure, bringing famine.

The deteriorating economic position of Scotland leads to calls for a favorable political union, or at least a customs union, with England.

However, the stronger feeling among Scots - which plays to their pride - is that the country should become a mercantile and colonial great power like England.

In response, a number of remedies are enacted by the Parliament of Scotland: in 1695 the Bank of Scotland had been established; the Act for the Settling of Schools had established a parish-based system of public education throughout Scotland; and the Company of Scotland had been chartered with capital to be raised by public subscription to trade with "Africa and the Indies".

In the face of opposition by English commercial interests, the Company of Scotland has raised subscriptions in Amsterdam, Hamburg and London for the scheme.

For his part, King William III has given only lukewarm support to the whole Scottish colonial endeavor.

England, at war with France, does not want to offend Spain, which claims the territory as part of New Granada.

It therefore forces the English and Dutch investors to withdraw.

The East India Company threatens legal action on the grounds that the Scots have no authority from the king to raise funds outside the English realm, and oblige the promoters to refund subscriptions to the Hamburg investors.

This leaves no source of finance but Scotland itself.