Scotland: Famine of the 1690s

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.

The Company of Scotland for Trading to Africa, returning to Edinburgh, is able to raise what is, for Scotland, a massive amount of capital: four hundred thousand pounds sterling in a few weeks (equivalent to roughly forty million pounds in 2007), with investments from every level of society, and comprising roughly a fifth of the wealth of Scotland.

The Scots-born trader and financier William Paterson had, while in London, met a sailor called Lionel Wafer, a surgeon and buccaneer marooned for four years on the isthmus.

Wafer had told him about a wonderful paradise on the Isthmus of Panama, with a sheltered bay, friendly Indians and rich, fertile land—a place called Darien.

Paterson has long been promoting a plan for a colony on the Isthmus of Panama to be used as a gateway between the Atlantic and Pacific—the same principle that, much later, will lead to the construction of the Panama Canal.

Paterson, who has a great capacity for hard work, is instrumental in getting the Company off the ground in London.

He had failed to interest several European countries in his project but in the aftermath of the English reaction to the Company he is able to get a respectful hearing for his ideas.

The Scots' original aim of emulating the East India Company by breaking into the lucrative trading areas of the Indies and Africa is forgotten and the highly ambitious Darien scheme is adopted by the company.

Paterson falls from grace when a subordinate embezzles from the Company.

The Company takes back Paterson's stock and expels him from the Court of Directors; he is to have little real influence on events after this point.

A large number of former officers and soldiers join happily in the Darien Scheme, as they have little hope of any other employment.

Many are acquainted from serving in the army and several—the best known being Thomas Drummond—are notorious for involvement in the Massacre of Glencoe.

Some regard them as a clique, causing much suspicion among other members of the expedition.

The first expedition of five ships (Saint Andrew, Caledonia, Unicorn, Dolphin, and Endeavour), sets sail in July 1698 from the east coast port of Leith to avoid observation by English warships.

With around twelve hundred people on board, the journey round Scotland while kept below decks is so traumatic that some colonists think it comparable to the worst parts of the whole Darien experience that follows.

The Scottish colonists orders are to proceed to the Bay of Darien, and make the Isle called the Golden Island … some few leagues to the leeward of the mouth of the great River of Darien … and there make a settlement on the mainland.

After calling at Madeira and the West Indies, the fleet made landfall off the coast of Darien on November 2.

The settlers christen their new home "Caledonia" (Prebble, John (1968), The Darien Disaster, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston) With Thomas Drummond in charge, they cut a ditch through the neck of land that divides one side of the harbor in Caledonia Bay from the ocean, and construct Fort St. Andrew, equipped with 50 cannon, on the peninsula behind the canal; the fort did not have a source of fresh water.

On a mountain, at the opposite side of the harbor, they built a watchhouse.

Close to the fort they begin to erect the huts of the main settlement, New Edinburgh, and to clear land for growing yams and maize.

Letters sent home by the expedition create the misleading impression that everything is going according to plan.

This seems to have been by agreement, as certain optimistic phrases keep recurring, but it means the Scottish public will be completely unprepared for the coming disaster.

Agriculture proves difficult and the local Indian tribes, although hostile to Spain, are unwilling to buy the combs and other trinkets offered by the colonists.

Most serious is the almost total failure to sell any goods to the few passing traders that put in to the bay.

Only three hundred of the twelve hundred settlers have survived and only one ship has managed to return to Scotland.

Deaths continue on the homeward-bound Scots ships, and those who manage to survive the journey and return home find themselves regarded as a disgrace to their country and even disowned by their families.

With the onset of summer the following year the stifling atmosphere, along with other causes, leads to a large number of deaths in the Darien colony.

Eventually, the mortality rate rises to ten settlers a day.

Although local Indians bring gifts of fruit and plantains, these are appropriated by the leaders and sailors, who largely remain onboard ship.

The only luck the settlers have is in hunting for giant turtle, but increasingly fewer men are sufficiently fit for such strenuous work.

The situation is exacerbated by the lack of food, mainly due to a high rate of spoilage caused by improper stowing.

At the same time, King William, unwilling to incur the wrath of the Spanish Empire, has instructed the Dutch and English colonies in America not to supply the Scots' settlement.

The only reward the council has to give is alcohol, and drunkenness becomes common, even though it speeds the deaths of many men weakened by dysentery, fever and the rotting, worm-infested food.

After eight months, the colony is abandoned in July 1699, apart from six men who are too weak to move.

Word of the first expedition had not reached Scotland in time to prevent a second voyage of more than one thousand people.

The second expedition arrives on November 30, 1699 and finds two sloops there; one, with Thomas Drummond, from the original expedition.

Some men are sent ashore to rebuild huts, which causes others to complain that they had come to join a settlement, not build one.

Morale is low and little progress is made.

Drummond insists that there can be no discussion, the fort must be rebuilt as the Spanish attack will surely come soon, but he clashes with the merchant James Byres, who maintains the Counsellors of the first expedition have now lost that status, and consequently has Drummond arrested.

Initially bellicose, Byres begins to send away all those he suspects of being offensively minded—or of being loyal to Drummond.

He outrages a Kirk Minister by claiming it would be unlawful to resist the Spanish by force of arms, as all war is unchristian.

He then shows his real concern was for his own personal safety by deserting the colony in a sloop.

The colonists sink into apathy until the arrival of Alexander Campbell of Fonab, sent by the company to organize a defense.

Alexander Campbell, providing the Darien colonists with the resolute leadership that has been lacking, takes the initiative from the Spanish by driving them from their stockade at Toubacanti in January 1700.

Wounded in this daring frontal attack, he becomes incapacitated with a fever.

The Spanish force—who are also suffering serious losses from fever—close in on Fort St. Andrew and besiege it for a month, although disease is still the main cause of death during this time.

The Spanish commander calls for the Scots to surrender and avoid a final assault, warning that if they do not no quarter will be given.

After negotiations, the Scots are allowed to leave with their guns, and the colony is abandoned for the last time.

Only a handful of those from the second expedition return to Scotland.