This is a welcome and long-overdue reissue of the late John
Prebble's 1968 classic about Scotland's disastrous venture into
creation of a trading colony. Even today, the Scots do not like to
talk about Darien - it remains a scar on their national
consciousness, one that arouses bitterness and helps to inflame
anti-English passions. In the 1690s the Scottish parliament
overcame royal opposition, voting to set up a trading company and
settle a colony on the Panama isthmus. The colony, Darien, was the
brainchild of William Paterson, a Scot to his core although he
helped to found the Bank of England. Paterson described his utopian
colony as 'the door of the seas and the key of the universe'.
Doubters were assured, 'Trade will increase and money will beget
money.' Paterson convinced himself, and most of his countrymen,
that Darien would become a cultural and trading bridge between East
and West, a portal for the world's wealth - a sort of Hong Kong
well before its time. He proved to be woefully wrong. The Scots'
determination was reinforced by the reaction from England. The
London parliament scorned what it regarded as too uppity an idea,
and English MPs did all they could to undermine the venture.
Nettled by this, the enthusiastic Scots sank half of the nation's
wealth into their dream - and lost the lot. One disaster followed
another due to the machinations in England, the armed opposition of
Spain and the quarrelsome stupidity of Darien's leaders. Thousands
of colonists died, ships were destroyed or abandoned, and in three
years a bankrupt Scotland faced the ignominious reality of a forced
union with England. John Prebble, the author of many Scottish
histories, spared no nationalist agonies in compiling this first
detailed account of the Darien disaster. He drew upon journals,
letters and memoirs of those who believed they could turn William
Paterson's dream into reality, and his writing is as compelling as
are the salutary incidents he narrates. (Kirkus UK)
The word Darien is a scar on the memory of the Scots, and the hurt
is still felt even where the cause of the wound is dimly
understood. Three hundred years ago the Parliament of Scotland, in
one of its last acts before the nation lost its political identity,
defied the King and the persistent hostility of the English to
establish a noble trading company, to settle a colony, and to
recover its people from a century of despair, privation, famine and
decay. The site of the colony, Darien on the Isthmus of Panama, was
the enduring dream of William Paterson, the erratically brilliant
Scot who had helped to found the Bank of England. He called it 'the
door of the seas, and the key of the universe', and believed that
it would become a bridge between East and West, an entrepot through
which would pass the richest trade in the world. The first attempt
to make the Company a joint Scots and English venture was crushed
by the English Parliament. The Scots created it by themselves, in a
wave of almost hysterical enthusiasm, subscribing half of the
nation's capital. Three years later the 'noble undertaking',
crippled by the quarrelsome stupidity of its leaders, deliberately
obstructed by the English Government, and opposed in arms by Spain,
had ended in stunning disaster. Nine fine ships owned by the
Company had been sunk, burnt or abandoned. Over two thousand men,
women and children who went to the fever-ridden colony never
returned. It was a tragic curtain to the last act of Scotland's
independence. John Prebble's book is the first detailed account of
the Darien Settlement, drawn from original sources in the records
of the Company, the journals, letters and memoirs of those who
tried to turn William Paterson's dream into reality.
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