Post on 16-Dec-2015
Britain in the 1690s – the making of a world power
• Increased taxation agreed between king and parliament.
• Professionalisation/ modernisation of government machinery.
• Aim is to serve European, not imperial goals – keep Britain as active partner within the Grand Alliance.
• Domestic tension - question of the royal succession.
The Darien design – key themes
• Not seen as frivolous or doomed to failure in contemporary opinion – taken seriously.
• Exposes limitations on Scottish independence – danger of antagonising English colonial interests.
• Clashes with European priorities of William III. • Raises new questions over the future of Anglo-
Scottish relations.
Scotland in the 1690s – politics and religion
• Radical settlement in 1689 – separate and independent terms reached with William III.
• But questions over how free and sovereign Scotland really is when kings reside in England.
• Religious divisions – radical Presbyterian settlement destroys Episcopalian Church.
• Political and military conflict over the Revolution 1689-82: Episcopalians becoming Jacobites.
Scotland in the 1690s – society and economics
• Heavily rural, subsistence economy vulnerable to agricultural downturns.
• Succession of famines 1690-96. • Exacerbated by:- Economic effects of 1689-92 civil conflict.- Taxation levied for war in Europe. - Effect of protectionist tariffs imposed in
Europe/English Navigation Acts.
Mercantilism – key tenets
• National power created by taxable national wealth, not quality of armies or size of territories.
• Wealth created by trade.• Trade/wealth in the world is finite. • Trade therefore a zero-sum game - expansion
of one nation’s resources always comes at the expense of another.
C17th Scotland - thwarted imperialism
• Collapse of schemes in Nova Scotia (1632) and Carolina (1686) .
• Navigation Acts aim to keep American Empire exclusively English.
• Scottish expansion largely into Northern Europe (‘forgotten diaspora’ in Sweden/Poland) and Ulster.
• National identity therefore less Atlanticist than that of England in 1689.
Creation of the Company of Scotland
• Original focus on Africa and India rather than America.• Mobilise in London (1695) - attract merchants excluded
by monopolies of English joint-stock companies.• Early membership not just Scottish – English, Dutch,
Sephardi Jewish directors. • 1696 – forced to move base from London to Edinburgh
after exposure by Westminster Parliament.• Patriotic campaign for subscriptions – first colony to
be christened Caledonia.
The shift to the Americas
• Isthmus of Panama weak link in the Spanish Empire.
• Spain seen as exhausted and declining power.• Darien to be the focal point of a new empire:
capture of trade over conquest of territory (long theme in English imperial thinking).
Darien – reasons for failure
• Opposition from Spain and the Papacy - formal protests sent to London.
• William III – pre-eminence of European over imperial affairs.
• Opposition from the English colonial lobby – merchants, planters, governors: Darien seen as rival attraction for traders and settlers.
• Extent of opposition confirms that Darien seen as a very serious proposition in its own time.
Darien - the fall-out
• National humiliation for Scotland.• Loss of £400,000 – 25 per cent of Scottish liquid
capital. • Seen as betrayal by William III and invasion of
Scottish sovereignty by the English. • Contemporaries fear re-run of Scottish rebellion
against Charles I.• Stark choice for Scotland: to push for greater
independence from England - or closer union?