Disclosure : This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

The Darien Disaster

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.

Related Products:

Darien: A Journey in Search of Empire The Disaster Tourist Darien Gap – Travels in the Rainforest of Panama Darien Dogs Disaster at Sea Scotland – The Story of a Nation Parliament: the Biography: Volume 1: Ancesteral Voices Scotland: A Concise History The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists Scotland – A Traveller`s History Outside the Asylum: A Memoir of War, Disaster and Humanitarian Psychiatry Down With The Old Canoe: Cultural History Of The Titanic Disaster Denali`s Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America`s Wildest Peak Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World`s Greatest Nuclear Disaster All That is Solid: How the Great Housing Disaster Defines Our Times, and What We Can Do About it The Scots Magazine: Great Scottish Journeys Scotland`s Empire: The Origins of the Global Diaspora Crash Test Boat: How Yachting Monthly Took a 40ft Boat Through 8 Disaster Scenarios Scots Dictionary: The perfect wee guide to the Scots language (Collins Little Books) Last Man Off: A True Story of Disaster and Survival on the Antarctic Seas How Not to Travel the World: Adventures of a Disaster-Prone Backpacker The Making of Australia: From a Tiny Struggling Convict Settlement to the Remarkable Nation it is Today Scots: A Photohistory (Compact Edition) Independence: An Argument for Home Rule The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Scotland: Mapping the Nation Great Scots, a Very Peculiar History Charlie, Meg and Me: An Epic 530 Mile Walk Recreating Bonnie Prince Charlie`s Escape After the Disaster of Culloden Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan The Great Explosion: Gunpowder, the Great War, and a Disaster on the Kent Marshes In the Footsteps of William Wallace The Scottish Nation Trains, Planes, Ships and Cars A Kingdom of Their Own: The Family Karzai and the Afghan Disaster Shackleton`s Dream Scotland The Scots – Xenophobe Guide The Island That Disappeared: Old Providence and the Making of the Western World To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland`s Global Diaspora, 1750-2010 In the Footsteps of Robert the Bruce