Empire: World History - 186. Scotland: A Nation in Crisis

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

When charting the rise of Scotland’s global influence, few events have been as tragically remarkable as the Darien Scheme of 1698, which saw woefully unprepared Scottish pioneers attempt to settle and colonise the Isthmus of Panama. Scotland during this period was a country bound to England under one crown, originally that of James I and VI, though still in its own right a sovereign state. However, competitive enmity was developing between the two neighbours over the question of empire and their competing ambitions overseas, with England increasingly restricting Scottish trade as a result. This, and a bad harvest saw Scottish finances in dire straits. So it was that the Scottish government, upon the urging of wheeler-dealer businessman William Patterson who himself had been inspired by pirates, decided to fund an expedition to create a permanent Scots colony; New Caledonia, on the thin strip of land uniting North and South America, and so ideally suited for trade. Little did the Scots men, women and children who set out that November - full of hope and enthusiasm - know of the hunger, danger and disease that awaited them… In today’s episode, Anita and William are joined by archaeologist Mark Horton to discuss the disastrous Darien scheme, and the long-term repercussions of this calamitous expedition for the future of Scotland. To fill out the survey: survey.empirepoduk.com To buy William's book: https://coles-books.co.uk/the-golden-road-by-william-dalrymple-signed-edition Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mptopoduk.com. To Scotland's just and never-dying fame, we'll in Africa, Asia and America proclaim. Liberty! Liberty! Neatish shame of all of us. went before. Wherever we plant, trade shall be free. God bless the Scottish company.

Are we interrupting? Hello. Welcome to Empire with me, Anita. This is how we start every podcast before you join us. He does this sort of self-motivating speech into a mirror. We just came on a bit early. So hang on. Hello, welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan.

And me, William Duremple. It's going to be insufferably bearish. in this podcast. Look, what was that that you just read out? So that was the proclamation of the liberty and free trade of the Scottish company that went off to found the Great Darien scheme that tragically never quite reached its full potential, I think it's fair to say. You say the Great Darian scheme.

It is one of those. I mean, a colleague of ours here at Goldhanger said it is much like the fire festival, which I don't know if you are familiar with. But it was a fantastic documentary about this, which was meant to be one of the greatest music festivals on an island in paradise, young influencers from Instagram. And it turned to Lord of the Flies. I mean, basically, it was a disaster. They all let each other almost by the end, exactly. Almost.

By the way, news just in from three days ago, they're doing fire festival too. I'm yet to hear whether we're doing Darien too. I feel we need a goalhanger and empire presence at this great event. I feel not because they didn't have water or anywhere to pee. Look, together, we are going to be diving into this new series, which is just, as you can see, unleashed full-blown William Dorephor. The history of Scotland and empire from the Jacobi uprising and Kolodont to Scots in India. We're going to be charting a remarkable rise of Scotland's global influence.

And many unexpected twists and turns in this story, let me tell you. And I'm so delighted. We've got such a good guess because I've been chatting away while you were God knows where, having the most amazing conversation with archaeologist Mark Horton, who is my favourite Indiana Jones. Seriously, he is a fabulous archaeologist. He is adding to the historical record in ways in which I'm finding my mind blown every time he tells me a story. But he's here to talk about the Darien scheme. One of the most ambitious colonial ventures of the 17th century. It saw Scotland trying to establish its own colony. New Caledonia on the Isthmus of Panama. And, you know, to end this story with it, and they all lived happily ever after, is misleading. It doesn't go that way. I should say that this is not only one of my favourite Scott's stories, tragic, though it is. But Mark and I have been friends since he was my trench supervisor on an archaeological dig at Repton in 1983, Mark.

So we're talking about a baby Dalrym. How old is he, Mark? 17? What was he like? He was 17 and I was not that much older. And he was as bumscious then as he is now. Are we talking uncontrollable? Yes, completely.

Completely uncontrollable, yeah. Mark, in those days, was exactly as he is now with the difference that he had this terrible, terrible car. He had this sort of motorised Tupperware, a reliance Robin that he used to ride around in at high speed. without ever looking left or right, charging forward. And I've never felt more insecure in my entire life than were being driven by Mark from Formark Hall, where we were staying, to the Reptons Vickers Garden,

where Mark had just found an enormous Viking charnel house that we've dealt with before on Empire, because it's where Kat Jarman's little garnet bead turned up, found by Mark and I in 1983. Wow, wow. I even saw the label and had my handwriting on it. How delightful. But none of us really realised what it was, didn't we?

We didn't know it was an Indian bead. Absolutely not. Yeah. Well, Mark, apart from the fact that after we come off air, I'm going to be completely pumping you for information about the Young Derrim. I suspect I know what most of the answers will be already. Just to give the full picture, Mark at this point, was already a fully figured fellow, I think it's fair to say, was wearing these sort of 1930s British Empire building khaki shorts

to dig the vicar's garden in Repton. And the vicar would occasionally emerge from his porch to find Marks on a wheel building a Viking sword or whatever he'd found. It changed my life. Yeah. If you remember, we laid out all the skulls on his lord in serious ranks. He must have been delighted. Mortiva. Look, we are so happy that you're here and you're going to talk us through something that I guarantee

most people will not know about the Darien scheme because I didn't know until, you know, we proposed doing this as a subject on empire. Just, first of all, that it happened. Second of all, how. terribly disastrous it turned out to be, and also the reasons that it went very, very wrong. So look, let's first of all paint a picture, Mark. Let's start with a little bit of context. Scotland towards the end of the 17th century. What was it like? What did it think of itself and what other people think of Scotland? And I think we probably need to go back to the accession of James I the First, James VI, when the Crown was unified. James I, the First, the Sixth being the son of

Mary Queen of Scots, who comes to the throne after her judicial murder by Elizabeth I and her then death. And essentially he would amount to enmity between the Scots and English. But because the dynastic succession, James I was, as it were, king in two nations. But the two nations were effectively independent of one another. The king had two privy councils and so on and so forth. And the great deal of enmity existed between the two. In much the same way that Australia, Britain have the same king today, but are entirely independent of each other. Yes. And essentially, in the 17th century, we see a burgeoning colonial trade emerging. The English established colonies, for example, in North America at Jamestown,

and the Scots see themselves missing out on this great bonanza, the sugar production in the West India is being produced and realized that if they were going to survive economically, they would have to join the colonial race. But the English were going to have nothing of it. The English East Indies Company was in its early formation. I defer to William about this. But in particular, the directors of Indies companies were really concerned about Scotland coming into competition with the English.

So that was the context. Scotland was a very poor country. We should say that the East Indies company had to beat off English rivals too at the beginning. There have been various other attempts to mount rival East Indic companies. And the last thing they wanted was Scots competition too. So the Scots were viciously excluded. If any Scots landed in Madras or Bombay at this point, they would be arrested and put in prison. Okay, but is it just the Scots in their own right?

Or is it a little bit of a worry that the Scots were very cosy with the Dutch. And the Dutch were great empire builders already. And that was something that really made the English uncomfortable. Absolutely. Into now the figure William Patterson. So William Patterson was one of a group of London Scots. Born in Dunfries, though. By in Skipmeir in Dunfries.

And I actually even found his little house where he was born, actually. It still exists. Still standing. In Dunfrewshire? In Dunfrewshire, yes. The inhabitants don't know. So William Patterson was essentially a proto-economist. This is slightly before Adam Smith, but very interested in money, the circulation,

the circulation of trade. He spent an early part of his life in Bristol. and got to know about the trade of Bristol, in particular its activities in the West Indies by which you mean the slave trade? Well, it's a bit early for the slave trade. It's really sugar at this point. Bristol really enters slave trade in 1700,

so immediately before that. But Patterson also spends time in Port Royal, which is, of course, the great sort of hub for piratical activities as well as trade in Jamaica. It's the kind of pirates the Caribbean pub. That's right, indeed. Unfortunately, there was an earthquake and it's now largely under the sea. But Patterson, two things he learned, one of which was the Dutch were doing really well by free trade.

Kirakow, which is just around the corner, was obviously the model that he thought this is the way forward. And the second was the pirates had just come back from the great pirate expedition of 1680, 1681, where they crossed the isthmus of Panama and realized it was relatively easy to cross the isthmus. And if they walked across the Isthmus, they could then attack the Spanish in the Pacific. Got it. So they landed an island called Golden Island, which will appear later in our narrative, and set out across the mountain range, arriving down into the Pacific. They captured a couple of Spanish ships down there, as a small town called Santa Maria Antigua, and then sailed up to Panama City, where they managed to raid some Spanish ships. and then banished to return back with their loot.

Various people got lost on the way, including a doctor called Lionel Waifer, who then spent a year amongst the Indians of the Isthmus and came back and wrote a lavish account about how friendly they were, how wonderful the landscape is, how prosperous it is. And that also effectively gave the Scots the idea, well, why don't we go to the Isthmus of Panama?

So he's overhearing this, William Patterson, as they're all these excitable pirates are coming back going, you'll never guess what we just did. Ho, ho, ho. And a bottle of rum. That's right. He hears about an import royal from the pirates in person, does he? From the pirates in person. Brilliant. In probably 1681.

And these pirates are licensed by the Crown? They're official pirates or unofficial? These were not licensed. These were to unofficial pirates. It's sort of the early period of the great era of piracy going on here. But basically, a confederation of pirates marched across the Isthmus. A great story. Indeed. So Patterson had this idea and he went back to London, nurtured the thing, this is the way forward for Scotland, but tried to tell this story in London and nobody would listen to him.

Now, is it on a fag packet in the Caribbean that he suddenly comes up with this Darian scheme or is it when he comes back saying, look, we've got possibility here, the Isthmus is crossable, we can do some stuff? It gels in his mind in the 1690s when all these other schemes are happening and he wants to establish this. as a company in London. But the English East Indies company are going to have nothing of it. And the promoters of this effectively have to escape to Scotland. There were impeachment proceedings placed against Patterson and the other merchants with this scheme. And they have to flee to Scotland, otherwise they were likely to be arrested by Parliament. He heads towards what? Edinburgh. Is heads to Edinburgh? And as an alternative idea comes up with this idea of setting that part as a Scottish company because of Scotland at this point at independent, were able to do

this. And the initial idea was to create the company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies. There was no fixed idea of where this trading company was going to operate. It was the idea initially of just being a trading company. Okay, so just being a trading company. But, you know, trading companies don't come cheap. They are not built on fresh air and ambitious hopes. So does he have money? to back this scheme? No, not at this stage at all. They create an act of parliament to create the company, but I'm certain that in the back of his mind, Darien was going to be their objective. But this was kept incredibly secret at this point. They just created the company. And then once the act of parliament had been established, the cat was out of the bag. And Lionel Wafer, the doctor

with this testimony about this amazing countryside, this landscape in Panama, was brought up secretly to Scotland, and he was interviewed by the directors of the company, who then were then convinced, along with Patterson's reasoning, that they should go for Daria. And was he a fraud? I mean, was he selling castles in Spain, or had he had a lovely time and genuinely thought this was a goer? I think he had a lovely time, and they thought it was a goer. And his account, I mean, he was looked after by the Indians. The critical thing was the Indians were very friendly to him. and looked after him. And we have an incredible detail of the Indian life amongst whom he stayed. But one crucial factor we're not talking about here, and indeed he may not have talked about at the time, in that isn't this actually now an area claimed by Spain?

It's not just an area claimed by Spain. It was the second place where Spain established a permanent colony on the mainland of the new world. Though I've obviously been working in his Spanoglio and Caribbean. But they came to the Isthmus of Panama and established two towns, Santa Maria, and then Acla. And Acla was probably founded 1508, 1509. And it was at Acla that Vascoen de Nunez de Barboa had created his base camp to carry ships over the mountains and rebuild them on the Pacific coast. So carry them over how, sort of dismantling them like Lego and taking them bit by bit? They dismantled the ships on the beach at Akla. Right.

And then carried the ships over the mountains and reassembled them on the other side. That's amazing. Over a peak in Darian. Indeed. We should say what Darian is because we keep saying the Darians game and Darian, Darian, but we're talking. Darien is a place. Can you locate it for us on a map? Okay.

So you go down the Isthmus of Panama and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and turns right where it attaches itself to Colombia. So it's the bit that turns right. Okay. But it's the narrowest point in the whole Americas. That you can cross over. That's right. And I mean, often referred to as the armpit of the world because it's incredibly wet and smelly and stuffy. And it's the only bit where the Pan American Highway doesn't go through.

So right from the south to the north and there's this area of 100 miles, which is now rainforest, where you cannot go through. There's no way through. So South America and North America are disconnected through what's known as the Darien Gap. because it's just too difficult even today. But also politically, I think, that effectively the Panamanians don't want Colombian drug barons marching into Panama. Right. Well, yes. I mean, fair enough. But I mean, I think you've sort of answered this. When he was in England trying to convince people that this was a great trading opportunity, no one really listened to him or they saw him as a threat. Did the Scottish parliamentarians immediately believe in him?

Or is it on the say-so of the doctor who comes back promising milk and honey? They can have to stump up a lot. lot of cash for this to make this work. They stumped up £400,000. That's what the capitalisation of the company was, which in modern terms is about £67 million, £68 million. Which for a poor country like Scotland is a considerable chunk of the national economy. Yeah. Not just poor, but they've just suffered a famine, remember?

I mean, it's a terrible famine. People are really struggling. Financially, they've been very oppressed. They've had several decades of civil conflict preceding this. Indeed. Yeah. Glenn Coe was just a few years earlier. We won't mention Glenn Coe on this podcast, Mark Horton.

Oh, right. Sorry. So, Mark, before we dive in any further, just give us a picture of, well, really how poor Scotland is and how excluded it is from the burgeoning business of Empire. Why is there such an appetite in Edinburgh now to invest money in a scheme like this? Why do the Scots see this as such a golden opportunity? Scotland was really desperately poor in the late 17th century. And we know this even from excavations in Edinburgh High Street and so forth. We can see the utter poverty of this place. There's virtually no ceramic industry, for example. They're still living off wood and leather. Their trading ambitions are very limited. They try and trade with the Dutch. Trade with England is largely excluded and is really hard to conduct. And it's still very much a rural population. The highlands are still very, very poor and remote. There's very few indigenous industries, bad communications, poor roads. Very poor roads. It was a feudal society of a tribal society. And if we just look at the architecture, for example, in this period, there's very,

very little that actually survives. So, I mean, they're poor, but they have aspirations to be better, to be bigger. And when it comes to sort of entering the world market for trade, what is it that they're hoping to trade? I mean, what have they got to send out? An important point that as well as being ambitious, as you rightly say, Anita. They're also a sort of top-heavy with an over-educated elite that has no outlet for their energies and education. So you have a high premium on education in Scotland at this period. Adventurers with no adventure. Exactly, with many fine universities already well-founded for hundreds of years, but no major outlet for the energies in the way that England has. And that's why there were communities of sort of expatriate Scots all over England,

because that's where they could seek opportunities. And Holland and something like a third of the Scottish leader educated at Leiden at this period, aren't there? They go abroad as well. A lot of them are very multilingual, so they speak good French and good Dutch, of all things. But those are the ones who've gone away, but I'm still interested in it. If you're going to have Scottish trade, what is it that the Scots want to trade? What is it that they're offering the world? And what is it, you know, that they're looking, of course, spices, sugar, all of that good stuff, I'm sure.

But what is it that they have to trade for it? Their concept was entrepreneurship. Their model was the Dutch. Which is going and take. We seize it. Yeah, we go in and take. The Dutch don't have any natural resources of their own. Right.

They make a bit of pottery and that's about it. And the Scots saw very much as entrepreneurs, as traders, acquiring goods from the East, in particular, spices and so forth and trading them in exchange for great wealth. Got it. In Scotland themselves, the raw materials and natural materials were very, very limited. A small coal industry and that's about it. That clarifies that beautifully. Okay, so you've got this scheme that is born, which now has potent backers, and you've got this army of ambitious and educated people.

Well, they were queuing up outside the company offices to subscribe their money. I think that the 17th, 18th century is often surrounded with hysteria. You know, we look at the tulip hysteria, for example, the South Sea bubble hysteria. A history is littered with hysterias. And I think that the investment in the Darwin scheme was all about, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, I put money in, you put money in. This is going to produce huge wealth for us all. Not only self-interest in making money, but also a nationalistic urge to do something good for Scotland. And I think it's important to note this point.

It isn't just the rich Scots who are pouring in fortunes. this is rather like the beginning of Mrs Thatcher privatising British Telecom. You get the very ordinary shopkeepers and the smallholders investing their five pounds or their bobbies and groutes and Merck's. But isn't it, William, just like the East India Company, we had, you know, the stable hand who might have had a couple of quid tucked away who would go and invest it. Anyone could make it. Anyone could be part of this big dream.

Fascinating. We need to take a break soon. half of the national capital that is available is invested in this scheme, which is an eye-watering amount for a country of modest means. Join us after the break where we see whether that money is put to good use. Welcome back. So the year is 1698. It's a lovely Scottish summer day in July, less likely to be reading than almost any other month of the year. And five ships are bobbing around, presumably the port of leaf, Mark Horton. Is that right? Indeed they are. And so in Leith Harbour, these five ships set off down the Firth of Fourth. And with them, they take the hopes and fortunes of Scotland. I have said one of my ancestors was on board one of those ships. And when they got as far as the Bass Rock, he jumped off and swam ashore. He realised things were going badly wrong even at that point.

Already. Hang on. So the Bass Rock, so for those who don't know, is an island that is made. up of entirely, well, seagull poo. I mean, to put it, there's no finer way of putting that. Gannet. Gannet, Poo. The Sula Bassanos. Yes, okay, so, I mean, do you know, because these five ships, I just like the names, The Unicorn, St. Andrew, Caledonia, those are the big ones, and the Endeavour, and the Dolphin.

So do you have any letters from your forebear as to why he thought, by the bass rock, this was not for him? Do you know why? I don't know the reason, but we do have the fact that he was very pleased to have made it ashore, and all his misgivings, as we'll sadly hear in the next few minutes, proved well-founded. Mark, what began to go wrong first? Well, the first problem was they had to sail around Scotland because they were leaving from the fourth, not the client. Yes, you'd have thought. You'd have thought they might have worked that one out.

So it took them two months to get round Scotland. These ships had 1,200 colonists, planters, sailors on board. So even before they got round Ireland, they had practically no food left and people already dying on board of scurvy and starvation before they even got to the West Indies. Why the heck didn't they leave from the Clyde? I mean, that's so stupid. Because the rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Even then. Fantastic.

Even then. So they'd already had deaths before they even arrived in the West Indies. The captain was a man called Pennycook. and he had instructions to go to any land that was not otherwise possessed by European nations, but he was also told to go to Golden Island and to find a suitable place to establish his colony there. Golden Eye was the Wendivu place for the pirates in 1680, so this was all they knew about the geography. This was 18 years earlier that the pirates had been there. 18 years ago.

And his fundamental mistake was he saw this amazing. amazing bay in front of him, now known as Punta Eskoses or Puerto Scorses. And he said, this is the place and he described it capable of holding a thousand ships at Bertham. But the problem with this particular bay was twofold, one of which it was pointing directly into the prevailing wind direction. So you couldn't actually get out in a square-sailed ship. A second there was a rock or two reefs in the middle of this bay, which meant that you couldn't really tack out of it easily. and the third is that there was no water in the place that they wanted to settle. All quite problematic.

It's slightly problematical. I mean, the last one, the most fundamental issue of all, did they not realise or did they just think, we'll deal with that tomorrow? Well, it was still raining when they arrived in November, so they presumably assumed it was going to carry on raining, not realising that the dry season was about to start in December. And they literally sailed into this bay and the trap was sprung. they couldn't actually get out of it. So they were stuck there and they couldn't find any alternative location. Everyone who listens to the show regularly will know that I'm very averse to quoting my Drupal forebears on the show.

They're everywhere, Mark. They're everywhere. They're absolutely everywhere. But I think this is a very good opportunity to quote the memoirs of the great Sir John Durempel, who in his memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland describes this bay. And he says on the other side of the harbour, there was a mountain a mile high, on which they placed a watchhouse, which in the rarefied air of the tropics, gave them an immense range of prospect to prevent all surprise. To this place, it was observed that the Highlanders often repaired to enjoy the cool air and to talk of their friends who they'd left behind. Now, just a minute, Sir John never went there. No, that's true.

So what the hell is he talking about? He invested, but he was never there to see friends chatting about back home. Well, this was an issue that Samuel Johnson had with Sir John Durimple's memoirs that were not necessarily grounded always in the research. But letters were sent home from quite early on in the piece. And so we've got these amazing descriptions of how incredible this place is with the fruits, the friendly native. and how there was gold in the hills just behind.

And this was a place capable of, you know, immense prosperity. There was even a paper read before the Royal Society in London describing how incredible this place was, a garden of Eden on earth. And it's now called New Caledonia. New Caledonia. They created a city called New Edinburgh. What else, exactly.

Indeed. And they built themselves a great fortress. called Fort St Andrew, which you excavated, Mark. Which we excavated. So there were some of problems with this. First of all, Fort St Andrew was on a little peninsula jutting out into this harbour. The other side, they couldn't actually establish a battery. So they couldn't actually stop ships sailing in on the other side of the reef.

So this presented a slight issue. They eventually found a water supply, but they could only get to that by boat, by rearing across the harbour and collecting the water from there. There was no water in the place that they established. New Edinburgh was without water. New Edinburgh was basically a swamp. And indeed, Patterson describes this as, you know, for two months we laboured here to create New Edinburgh, but experienced the schoolmaster of fools convinced our masters to move the settlement

into Fort St Andrew. Can I just say, I mean, this is more fire festival by the second. No water, too much water, lots of mosquitoes, general misery, being trapped, not being able to get out of here. Just to be devil's advocate here and defend the poor Scots from these English naysayers, exactly. The same was true of some of the greatest English settlements. If you hear the early accounts of the founding of Calcutta, for example. Alexander Hamilton, within a couple of years, says that men die there like carcasses of sheep. and it's not unknown for a new settlement in the tropics to be a death trap. Sure, but normally the thing that kills you is disease, not complete lack of water and complete lack of defences. I mean, there are two added factors of don't that are going on here that aren't common to lots of the other places. I mean, if you get an idea here that quite soon, they after arrived, about 10 people were dying per day, and it's described as flux and fever. Flux is dysentery, dysentery, malaria, yellow fever was probably taking them away at that rate.

Can you imagine the sheer psychological impact? And Patterson very shortly lost his own wife and his own servant. He survived. He was there. He put his mouth where his money was. He was out there. But, you know, people were dying all around him. They realized that they were under threat from the Spanish.

there was an unsuccessful attempt of a small expeditory force of the Spanish to dislodge them, so they realized they had to create a fortification. They actually told the Spanish that they were there, didn't they? They sailed down the coast and said, hi. Yes, yes. Come and have a haggis. Yes. And so they built this fort.

And this involved constructing a massively deep rock-cut ditch through the middle of the coral rock to cut off this little peninsula from the main part of the mainland. And you found this too, Buck. And we found this and excavated, of course, and constructing ramparts and bastions on which they mounted their cannons. But we have letters home describing the incredible hardship. A man called Captain Thomas Drummond, probably another one of your relatives, drove the poor colonists into massive hunger and thirst in constructing this enormous fortification. We're very primitive tools. In fact, we found many of the tools.

We found the hatchets and the chisels. But again, this would have been no different from founding something on St. Lucia or any of the other Caribbean islands, presumably all of them had very rocky stars. Absolutely. I mean, 10% of these colonies ever survived. Well, one of the distinguishing things, though, a lot of colonies around this time are driven on religious fervour, persecution, trying to find a safer place. You know, there is no other alternative. This one is just entirely trade. We want to make money for Scotland. So I wonder if people are sort of, you know, losing heart very quickly because there's no God to guide them, if you like. I mean, do you get that sense as well? Yeah, the first column was there quite a short time.

They arrived in November and morale collapsed by about January, February, and they'd left by April. So they were there four months, and they realised everyone dying, that this was a completely mad idea, and they upsticks and left. And effectively, you know, Patterson was heartbroken about the failure of his scheme. But he agrees to leave too. Isn't that he's fighting to stay on and just one more month?

There's none of that going on. No, his morale, I think the morale of the colonists at this point is completely broken. Have they arrived in the monsoon? I mean, what's the kind of weather conditions? The dry season is between January and April. So I think two reasons why they left, one of which was that the rains have started in April. And this is a very wet place. It's five metres of rain a year.

So like stair rods every day, horrendous. But secondly, they'd learnt news of Governor Beeston, who was a governor of Jamaica's proclamation that no ship was going to trade with the Scots. Just typical of the English, typical. Generated by the English, apparently, the lobbying of East Indies company. And the proclamation meant that they had no hope of flourishing as a trading colony. This is like the Tom Hollander character in Pirates, the Caribbean. That's right. the wicked East India Company commander in Jamaica.

That's right. And of course, you know, America, the American colonies were one obvious trading partners, but they were forbidden to trade with them as well. So I think a combination of the torrential rain and news of this proclamation realized that the trading idea behind this was a complete non-starter. And also, did they not have, you know, the British Crown itself declaring them to be a roving, state and this to be a rogue plan and no one should help unless you want, you know, England to be angry with you. That's right. That doesn't help. You know, nobody's going to come and help them. The English crown is not happy. It's not amused by any of this. So actually woe betide anyone who comes to the aid of these poor people. That's absolutely the case. And I think

we should also point out that they have no food left by this point. There's not sort of fruit trees and sort of wild mangoes sort of growing up this peak. Well, not really. I mean, they brought no or very small quantity of seeds all had no idea what would actually grow in these tropical soils. Couldn't grow oats in Panama. And the Indians who were very friendly and saw the Scots as useful allies against their fight against the Spanish, of course, were quite small scale and really couldn't support a thousand people by any means. And so while they shared some of their food, they themselves rapidly ran out. So this presented a massive problem for the Scots.

They had no food, there was torrential rain, there was no prospect of trade. So they decided to get the hell out. But others come after. I mean, did they not hear? Did they not hear the news that this was actually quite a nightmare? So communication was somewhat limited. So there was a second expedition that set out to bring food and resupply the colony. And two ships had set out from lethal already with these new provisions.

And they arrived, again, still spurred. the Clyde in Glasgow and sailing all the way. Yes, that's quite. And they arrived in the harbour and just found what they described as the burnt-out remains of all the huts and so forth. So they sat at anchor working out what they should do with their supplies. And meanwhile, a cooper went down into the hold with a candle to a look at a leaking barrel. And the candle fell over and the brandy got ignited. and the ship then burnt completely to the water line.

It's called the Olive Branch, and we discovered the main to the Olive Branch in the harbour where it was at anchor. And so the other ship just obstinicks and went back, realising that its mission, the main supply ship had burnt out, and there was nothing to do but go home again. This is the most tragic story.

All these brave Scots pioneers thwarted. And meanwhile, a third expedition had meanwhile set out this time from Glasgow. go. And this was even better provision with 1,400 colonists and their own ship, which they'd built specifically for the colony rather than just buying secondhand ships from the Dutch. And they set out, again, thinking that they were there to resupply and support a flourishing colony, not to find basically a scorched earth place with nothing left. They arrived in early 1700, desperate because there was nothing there for them to do. So they did their best of it. Maybe the second or the third

colony is the most tragic of all, because on that, of the whole internal discipline rapidly broke down. You found a diary, as I remember Mark, of one of the, was it the minister? Yes, the Reverend Francis Borland. And he was preaching the Old Testament at these colonists and eventually got locked up by that. That's right. And there was also a bit of a scallywag there called Walter Harries. who then wrote a total denunciation of the whole management of the colony, he managed to escape as well. So we've got these very good eyewitness accounts of the horrors of that third colony. I mean, it must have been awful.

And we're talking men, women, and children? Yes. I mean, are we talking about the colonists took the entire families over, so you would have had young children who are often the first to die in these places. Can I also ask you about leather cannons? Now, tell me about leather. Because those two words should not be together in my head. But Darien puts them together and tell me how.

That's right. So they came up with an idea that these leather cannons were going to be really much lighter firearms that could be easily transported. This is another very great Scots invention, much underrated by the English. And I could say apropos this, and what's fascinating for me is archaeology digging the site

is all the receipts for everything that was bought in all the expeditions survive intact. So we know absolutely the woolen goods, the Bibles, the leather cannons, the clay pipes, the brandy, glass beads called mungy-mongy for trading with the Native Americans. Everything is documented down to the last trade item. It's the most amazing little insight. So the Scots were better inventory keepers than colonists. Well, and also inventors of cannon, because I do want to circle back to the leather cannons. I mean, everything about that idea seems like a bad idea. Does leather not burn and explode when you've got a highly combustible material that is shooting out a massive cannonball?

How could these things ever be thought to be used? Well, they were very naive. That is the point, that this is cutting edge. This is experimental stuff, you know. And they hadn't a lot of experience of colonisation. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. So you had to try out leather The canon, absolutely. And the idea that they could sell woolen goods to the Indians. In a hot climate. I know, bless their hearts, actually. You just think, oh dear, what were you thinking?

Very fashionable woolen jumpers. Just what you need in the Panama Isthmus. The other interesting thing they brought, they thought the natives would be interested is toilet paper. Sorry, I'm just shaking my head. Did you dig up any of the toilet paper? There's large quantities of toilet paper were brought out for the Native Americans. Wow.

But Mark, before that, there is actually a siege, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. So one of the heroes or villains of Glencoe, a man called Captain Alexander Campbell. The Campbell's, we should quickly say that our sister podcast, the rest is politics, is manned by one of these self-same Campbell's, Alastair Campbell. Whether he's directly involved in Glencoe, we're not sure. So Alexander Campbell arrived in the colony, realized that this was a complete disaster area, and tried to sort it all out.

And he took a bunch of soldiers or people who were there, who were semi-armed, as well as the local Indians, and they marched upon a Spanish stronghold called Tubercanti and besieged it and managed to get the Spanish to surrender. That's a great achievement of Scots colonialism. A great achievement. And indeed a medal was later struck to commemorate this great Scottish victory in the mountains of Panama.

Quite right. But didn't actually help at all. And the Spanish became increasingly convinced that they had to dislodge the Scots and launched several expeditions, one from the Caribbean itself. And then they were also planning a second expedition that was going to come from Spain, if the first expedition, the failed. We're talking out a massive combined naval and military operation. The naval ships came in, they landed the soldiers. What date is this, Mark? This is in April 1700. So the third colony. The third colony. And they besieged the colony. We have a contemporary map that shows all the Spanish siege works and so forth around the colony. And they were lobbying large amounts of armaments, which we found in the excavations. We found large amounts of musket balls that had impact.

And after basically a few days of this, the Scottish decided the game was up. And they then undertook terms of surrender, which involved them being towed out of their harbour by the Spanish. Because they had to be towed, because they couldn't get out themselves. They were too weak and immoralised and couldn't get out of the harbour themselves. And the Spanish themselves were so keen to get shot of them. They didn't want them to have to hang around. This is so tragic. Toed out and sent on their way.

So they limp back to Scotland? No, no, no. No such luck. No. Where did they go? What happens? They go to Charleston. Right. South Carolina. And they're anchoring off Charleston Harbour where there is then a hurricane. Oh, no. That then effectively destroys the remaining fleet. And Mark, I think you found the diary or the letters of this poor minister who'd be locked up in prison for preaching too much Old Testament brimstone at the colonists.

His Bible survives in Charleston, is that right? That's right. And he snipped ashore. before the Howard construct. So that's why we have his testament. And he was very down on the whole thing by this point. It's fair to say. Well, you would be. Yeah.

You would be. So he was one of the very few survivors of the colony. Only one ship if all these expeditions actually reached Scotland again. And that was the Caledonia. I think of 12 ships that set out all were shipwrecked or lost in one form or another. And only one ever would turn back to Scotland. There's the misery of those who've waived people off and hoping that they'll make a better life for themselves.

But there's also going to be an enormous impact on Scotland, which has invested so heavily. It's put everything on red or everything on black, if you like, on the roulette table. What happens as a result of this failed expedition? When this one poor ship limps home and everyone realised they've lost all their money? That's right. It's across society. It's not just the people who are very rich,

but as we commented earlier, it goes right down to the shopkeepers, the stable hands and everybody. So there is an inquiry. Patterson is hauled to behold the directors. Patterson makes it back. He's made it back from the first expedition. He's made it back from the first expedition. And he is then questioned extensively.

Is he a broken man by this point? He's a broken man. He's lost his family. The man who came up with the idea of the Bank of England, this brilliant scheme is now on the skids. Everyone in Scotland hates him. He's lost the woman he loves. He's lost all the friends that he made, you know.

That's right. And given the scale of the whole. hostility towards it. English East Indies ship called the Worcester docks in Leith. And the mob, as it were capture the captain and his sailing master. And he's tried for treason against Scotland because of the anonymity of the English towards East Indies company. Because the English should let the Scots just die like rushing sheep. Rushing sheep. And these two people are actually executed in the toll booth in Scotland. So this is not a good moment for Anglo-Scott's relationships.

Indeed not. They do also try to have a little bit of money left in the bank. So they say, well, let's go and try the Indian Ocean, shall we? They carried on being optimistic. And they sent a couple of ships into the Indian Ocean. We're basically doing piratical activities. They were duly lost. There's a Scots pirate colony in Madagascar at some point, isn't it?

That's right. They went past that. I think it was called the Speedy Galley, I think, the ship that they sent out. The Speedy Galley. And I think by 1705, 1704, 1705, the penny had dropped, that they'd lost everything and that Scotland was effectively bankrupt. So this is 1704. This is three years before what we know will be the next page of the story, the Act of Union. And this presumably is the product of a mass demoralisation.

in Scotland. The Scots suddenly think, we can't do this. We need a big brother to look after us, yeah. Yeah, we can't survive in the world by ourselves. We can't be a new Dutch. But equally, it also leads to the very popular Scott sentiment that the last thing you want to do is a lie with the English. Yes. But isn't there an interesting thing that happens in that the English are very cany about this and they say to the big Darian investors that, you know what, if you just come along and back the idea of a union, we will compensate you. I mean, is there some kind of quid pro quo that goes on? So that was called the equivalent and a clause the active union, which I'm sure you're returning to some other time. We are next episode. Absolutely. With the great Murray Pittock.

But if I may dwell on clause 15 of the equivalent, this was effectively repaying all the stockholders. Oh, no wonder they went for it. They went for it. And not only did they repay them, of course, the full sum had not been drawn down by the company. So while capitalisation was four, 500,000, they'd only drawn down 250,000 of that money. So there's still money in the bank? But the English either unaware or realised that this was a good bribe. And so they effectively reimburse the stockholders the full sum, the full 400,000 pounds. which meant that they received a 45% increase in their original investment.

I mean, Mark, what strikes me listening to all this is that today, you know, we're so inured to the idea of Great Britain, whether you like the idea or not, whether the union flag makes your heart pump. It is the reality of the next 200 years. And two world wars are fought under this flag. The whole of the British Empire is built under this flag. All subsequent history is formed by this union, and yet it comes out of this ludicrous scheme, which you have excavated, which is the biggest fiasco ever, the thing that propels the Scots into it. Would you say there's a direct correlation that if Darien hadn't happened and if so much money

hadn't been lost, that the active union may not have happened? And we can play this game. Shall we play this game? What if? What if? What if it had worked? Would there have been an active union at all? Well, it depends.

I think Scottish historians would say, yes, there would have had to be. well, Scottish historian's writing in the 70s and 80s would have said so, that Darien played a very small part in the active union, that there were many other reasons why the active union happened, and it wasn't really due to Darien. I think, however, the more we understand Darian and the consequences of it, it really was a critical role in, as it were, creating that lack of confidence that the decision makers in Scotland realised that Scotland could not go it alone

in the new industrial colonial economy of the 18th century. So if it hadn't happened in 1707, it would have happened in 1750 or whenever. And what happens subsequently is that, of course, that the Scots are offered as part of the terms of the Act of Union, direct access and privileged access to the East Indy Company in particular. And some of the signatories of the Active Union are given the powers of patronage. to appoint their neighbours and their friends and their children and their grandchildren into the East India Company. And very quickly, within 20 or 30 years, you find the Scots proportionally heavily outnumbering the English in this most successful, although most ruthless, of colonies. Well, listen, Mark, it's been an absolute delight talking to you.

Honestly, such a period of history, people will know nothing about. And thank you for digging it up for us. Can I make one more point before we finish? Well, yes, of course, always. think we should, as it were, not dish William Patterson too much. It was a visionary scheme in many ways. It was a visionary scheme. Effectively, he saw the way we could bring all the wealth of the Indus, China, Southeast Asia, to cross the Pacific, to cross the Panama Isthmus rather than do the long way round. Where the Panama Canal will be built in centuries to come. Yeah, and the exact

point is that the Panama Canal, of course, achieve that dream of Patterson in the early 20th century. Yeah, okay. No, look, I'll give him that. I'll give him that. But also, don't take willy jumpers to a hot country and maybe take some scenes and maybe check that there's some water. Don't take leather cannon. Don't take leather cannon. I mean, I see your point. And I will give him the respect for that, because you're quite right. That is a visionary expedition per se. But it's just the way it went about. Sounds to be slightly baffling. Does Patterson die in poverty and depression? Yes, and he's buried in sweetheart Ami in Dunfries and an unmarked grave. Oh, well, he doesn't do too badly at the end then. It's one of the prettiest Abbees in Scotland.

Robert Bruce's heart is also buried there. That's right. So there's a little plaque on the wall that says, William Patterson, high near of the Darwin scheme, lies buried in unknown grave near here. But unknown like Mozart, a common grave. I know, common grave. Look, will you come back? You're a man bursting with amazing stories. I mean, I just get like a, I'm not an archaeologist, but if I scratch your surface, I think lots of treasures will fall out, Mark. That's my feeling.

We need to hear, Mark, about your excavations of Roanoke, which we've discussed in our American. Don't blow it, Darunpur, because he's just told me something before we came on, which we've got to do in a tripod about. And then, William, I need to take you to Zanzibar. I know Zanzibar, and I've been to your Kismkazi Mosque. I remember you sent me off that 20 years ago. A wonderful sight. I'll let Sensei and pupil. catch up. But look, if you want to hear the next episode of actually what happens after this,

this disastrous economic hit that takes place and why the act of union happens and why Scotland loses her independence, that's going to be our next episode of Empire. If you are a member of our club, you can hear it right now and members of the club. You know what you've done and what other people have to do. You can sign up at Empirepoduk.com. That's Empirepodukuk.com. And you'll get it right now. We should also say there are other wonderful goodies that come with this membership. You get our spectacular newsletter in which we're very, very proud. Plus you get early access to our live shows which sell out these days very, very quickly.

So many, many goodies to be offered. Until the next time we meet. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. A goodbye from me, William Duremberg.