February 16, 1707

[Martin Antonenko]

Unity through bribery!


On February 16, 1707 the Scottish Parliament approves ...



... with 110 : 69 votes the "Act of Union", the union with the Kingdom of England ...:



A triumphant success for the creation of the United Kingdom ...?

No - because the result of the vote came about through simple bribery!

It all started with the idea of the Scottish financial expert William Paterson...



... which now seems a bit weird ...

Paterson, who founded the "Bank of England" in London and made a fortune in England, founded the trading company "Company of Scotland" in London on November 13, 1695 (here the company's coat of arms) ...



... and started collecting money from investors.

A Scottish (!) colony should be founded with the money - at the end of the world, so to speak, namely in the province of Darién in Panama ...:







On July 18, 1698, the first five ships with colonists left Leith for the colony called "New Caledonia" ...



... on November 2nd, 1698 they reached the coast of Darién.

As a base, the colonists first set up Fort St. Andrews on the Gulf of Darién ...:





Then they began to clear the jungle and create fields for the planned New Edinburgh settlement ...:






**continued next post**

 

[Martin Antonenko]

Part II


But the company ended in disaster!

The new colony looked very tempting on the map, but unfortunately nobody had bothered to take a look at the place in person beforehand:

"New Caledonia" was infested with mosquitoes and malaria (which is why the natives avoided the area like the plague!) ...







... the soil was not very fertile, supplies that had been brought to rot in the tropical rain and the humid and hot climate bothered the 1,200 settlers.

They were starving. More and more sick. After all, there were up to ten dead every day ...:



New Edinburgh was finally abandoned and they retired to the fort ...:





On November 30, 1699 (nothing was known about the catastrophic conditions in the homeland) a second fleet brought another 1,140 settlers. They only increased the heap of the poor!

In order to have a roof over their heads at all, they were forced to rebuild New Edinburgh, otherwise nothing changed: they went hungry, got sick - and died.



Then Spanish colonists who claimed the area as part of the Real Audiencia de Panamá attacked the "intruders" and besieged Fort St. Andrews. In March 1700 the last Scottish settlers surrendered to the Spaniards; at least they had something to eat for her.

That meant the end of the lofty plans of "New Calodonia"! The "Company of Scotland" was bankrupt (of the subscribed (i.e. firmly committed by the investors) 400,000 pounds, only 153,448 pounds had actually been paid in, the Scottish state had to step in (which brought the treasury to the brink of ruin!) And one A lot of people lost a lot of money.

Now came Queen Anne of England ...



... into the game, who negotiated the "Act of Union" with the Scots in 1706/1707 ...:



And the impending Scottish bankruptcy as a result of the "New Caledona" madness was exactly the point where they could use the lever!

The Unification Act was supplemented by the passage that England would take over all Scottish national debts and compensate investors.

So the Queen bought a willing majority in the Parliament, because there were also many people who had lost a lot of money through the "Darién Project" and were now hoping for compensation ...:



That was it, the great Scottish-English Association - not a noble idea or something, but a haggling over money.

And I'm just wondering what Prime Minister Johnson's going to loosen up when the next referendum in Scotland comes ...

 

[Nap]

WOW??

That's a history lesson fir sure ....love the old maps

Cheers

Nap

 

[Airkid]

The Union will be history soon if wee Nicola has her way. Then my missus will need a passport to visit her rellies in Glasgow

Phil

 

[Old Pete]

Put about as a popular union when in fact they had to call out the town guard to protect them as the people wanted to lynch them.Queen Anne was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland the last queen of England was Elisabeth the First.Happly very few of them got paid they were conned to