The Darien Venture and Alexander Selkirk

The huge continent of South America, the islands of the Caribbean, and the region of Central America, were all viewed as legitimate prey by the great maritime powers of the 16th and 17th centuries.  Spain was successful in colonizing most of the region, which it did in remarkably short time in the wake of its explorers and adventurers such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Hernando Cortez, who with a few hundred soldiers, conquered and plundered the great Aztec empire.  The Portuguese followed, and also to a lesser degree, did the Dutch, French and English.  Today it is United States economic and military power that dictates what freedom and prosperity the peoples do or do not enjoy.

Scotland once attempted to invest in and develop a region of central America that could have become a trading centre similar to Singapore or Hong Kong, but with Scottish rather than English merchants controlling the business.   This was at the end of the 17th century when Scotland and England shared a common King, but remained separate kingdoms. The venture was known as the “Darien Scheme”, and it is sometimes dismissed as a sort of “South Sea Bubble”.  But it was nothing of the sort, and if allowed to proceed, could have developed into a profitable enterprise with long term political and economic benefits.  Its chief founder, a man of remarkable vision and imagination, who later founded the Bank of England, was William Paterson of Dumfries.  He envisaged a trading station on the Isthmus of Panama, that would be a conduit for growing trade between Europe and the Far East.  Darien, he declared, would be “the door of the seas; the key of the universe”; and affirmed the principle that “trade will increase trade; money will beget money”.  As others have noted, it was a Panama Canal project, 200 years ahead of its time. 

The venture was scuppered by London merchants, chiefly those of the East India Company, with the support of the crown.  They were terrified that their near monopoly of colonial trade with the east would be threatened, so they pulled every string possible to deny official recognition and support.   They blocked attempts to raise capital in London, and also on the Continent where Sir Paul Rycant, resident in Hamburg, spied on the efforts of the Darien directors and obstructed subscriptions to the project.  The whole sorry saga is well documented in a number of books, each with their own bias, depending on the authors’ English or Scottish viewpoint.  Spain’s hostility (encouraged by England’s ambassador to Spain) was another major factor, as it also wished to protect its near monopoly on trade with central and southern America.  The one friendly, supportive group the Scots had was the Indian leaders of the Darien peninsula tribes.  They included ‘captains’ Pedro, Diego, Andreas and Ambrosio. 

Attacks by Spanish ships on the fledgling Darien settlement were largely (but not wholly) successful, due to a prohibition on assistance from England’s plantations in north America, facilitated by England’s Secretary of State, James Vernon, a man of considerable resolution and cunning.   The climate and remoteness of the Darien peninsula also added to the difficulties faced by the settlement, though that influence has probably been overstated as similar climate and conditions prevailed in parts of India, West Africa, and the Malay peninsula where English trade flourished. 

The forces arrayed against the venture resulted in the destruction of the station and the death of many of the pioneers.  England had written the script and Spain completed the dirty work with King William’s blessing.  The cream of Scots merchants and civic leaders were involved in the Darien project.  Many knowledgeable Scots who were aware of the betrayal and interference, wondered why they maintained an allegiance to a Dutch King sitting on the English throne, lacking both understanding of and sympathy with, Scotland’s aspirations.  In addition to a wave of national fervour, the Scots had poured into the scheme, all the money the small country could spare.  Among the pioneers who perished there were two men from my locality, Alexander Kinnaird, Laird of Culbin, an early Jacobite and his son William.

  Many hundreds of similar brave and enterprising Scots died with them.  Scotland was bankrupted and shown in a most brutal way that it dare not assert an economic independence.  Forty-five years later, in even more brutal fashion, it was made clear to Scotland that it could not assert political independence either.  Seven years after the end of Darien, the Act of Union with England was signed, a scenario that King William and his advisers probably had in mind all along.       

Professor Paul Scott, in his book The Union of 1707 : Why and How, says that the Darien affair gave the English government an added reason to seek to abolish the Scottish  Parliament which had shown it could take initiatives damaging to English trade.  England also wanted to secure its northern border during the prolonged wars with France.  By offering, or appearing to offer the Darien shareholders some compensation, Scottish support for the Union could be bought.  On the Scots side, English hostility to Scottish economic development, increased distrust of their powerful southern neighbour.

Scottish involvement in the Americas thereafter became insignificant, except for the contribution of individuals within Canada and the United States.  So Scots adventure in South America is now pictured quaintly in Daniel Defoe’s account of the experiences of Robinson Crusoe.   The book is based on the factual experience of a Scottish seaman from Lower Largo in Fife, Alexander Selkirk (1676 – 1721), who was voluntarily marooned on one of the islands of Juan Fernandez 400 miles off the southern coast of what is now Chile.  Just four years after the end of the Darien venture, on his own initiative, Selkirk wisely left the unseaworthy privateer ship Cinque Ports in 1704 (which sank later).  The ship was under the command of Captain William Dampier, a noted mapmaker and greedy privateer, who was an incompetent and irresponsible seaman. 

Note 1 :  Selkirk’s experiences on the island, though harsh, were not too different from the somewhat glamourised account by Defoe.  He was rescued in 1709 by another British privateer, the Duke, having eluded capture by two Spanish ships that called at the island.   He acquired a ship of his own and eventually made it back home, married, and later became a lieutenant in the navy, dying at sea of fever in 1721.

Note 2 :  There are actually three islands in the Juan Fernandez archipelago; - Masatierra or ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as it is now known, the only one of the three that is inhabited; - tiny Santa Clara island; - and Masafuera or isla ‘Alejandro Selkirk’ which is where its namesake was a castaway.  It is slightly larger than Masatierra, with an area of 50 km2 (i.e. about 6 miles by 3 miles), and has the highest point of the the 3 isles, Los Inocentes, which rises to 1,319 metres.  Ships from Chile sailing to Easter Island, often call at the archipelago en route. 

Note 3 :   Dampier was later to be charged by his crew with “cowardice, brutality and drunkenness”, and lost his office as a result.  He died a pauper, in 1715.