In the late 17th century, Scotland embarked on the ambitious Darién Scheme, aiming to establish a trading colony in Central America. It didn't quite go to plan...
This failure had profound consequences, contributing to Scotland's union with England and forever changing the future of the British Isles.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Darién Scheme.
[00:00:28] It is a fascinating period of history, a supposedly genius idea to transform global trade and generate vast wealth and riches for Scotland, all by colonising a tiny part of Central America.
[00:00:43] As you might be able to imagine, it didn’t quite go to plan, and ended in the creation of modern Britain.
[00:00:51] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:58] The Pan-American highway is, by some standards, the longest road in the world.
[00:01:04] Starting at Prudhoe Bay, in Alaska, you can drive all the way down through Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and continue down through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and end up in Argentina, right at the very southern tip of South America.
[00:01:25] The total length is around 30,000 kilometres, and it’s probably more accurate to call it a large collection of roads rather than a single road, as there are multiple ways you can go.
[00:01:39] And another important clarification is that you can’t actually go all the way from the top to the bottom. There is a break, an area where the road comes to a halt, in modern-day Panama.
[00:01:54] This is the Darién Gap, the dense and inhospitable rainforest area in southeastern Panama and northwestern Colombia.
[00:02:05] To this day, there are no functional roads, and anyone wishing to cross it must make the treacherous journey on foot.
[00:02:16] But just over 300 years ago, an enterprising Scottish man called William Paterson had a plan for this area, a plan that he thought would make him, and his country, spectacularly wealthy.
[00:02:34] He had spent some time in the Caribbean and had got an idea.
[00:02:40] Ships transporting goods between Asia and Europe needed to sail all the way around Cape Horn, at the bottom of South America.
[00:02:51] Paterson had a plan to fix this.
[00:02:54] Instead of going all the way around, a ship could sail to modern-day Panama, unload its cargo, and this would be transported by land for the 50 kilometres or so to the other side, where it would be loaded onto another ship and continue its onward journey.
[00:03:15] It was a clever idea, on paper, at least.
[00:03:19] Why spend months battling storms and freezing temperatures around the southern tip of the continent when you could simply carry goods across a narrow strip of land?
[00:03:30] Now, you might be thinking, “Uhm, surely a better idea would have been to dig a canal?”, and of course, this is the solution that exists today: the Panama Canal.
[00:03:42] Quick side note: we also have an episode on the Panama Canal, in case you haven’t listened to that one already. It’s episode number 411.
[00:03:51] But let’s go back to the late 17th century, and this enterprising young Scottish merchant.
[00:03:59] Paterson’s plan was a land route.
[00:04:03] Back in the 1690s, pre the Industrial Revolution, the idea of a canal would have been unthinkable.
[00:04:12] There was dense jungle and mountainous ground; engineering a 50 km canal through all that would have been utterly impossible. The technology simply didn’t exist.
[00:04:25] Paterson was working within the realms of what he thought was possible.
[00:04:31] Goods would be hauled overland using pack animals, human labour, and possibly some sort of rudimentary road or track. It would be a kind of relay system for global trade, with New Caledonia, the name he gave to this planned Scottish colony, acting as the vital middleman.
[00:04:54] What’s more, with its strategic location in the West Indies, it could become a booming trading port.
[00:05:02] And if it worked, Scotland wouldn’t just become rich. It would become powerful, independent, and a major player in global trade.
[00:05:14] That was the dream.
[00:05:15] The reality, as we’ll discover, was something very different.
[00:05:20] Now, before we get into what actually happened and why, it’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on what was going on in Scotland and in Great Britain at this time, and how all this might have helped Paterson convince his countrymen to take a punt on this scheme halfway across the world.
[00:05:41] In the late 17th century, to put it plainly, things were not going particularly well in Scotland.
[00:05:50] At this point in history, Scotland was still an independent kingdom.
[00:05:55] But, it shared a monarch with England, following the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
[00:06:03] There was a curious situation in which both countries were ruled by the same king, William III, at that point in time.
[00:06:12] But the two countries remained politically and economically distinct.
[00:06:19] Scotland had its own parliament, its own legal system, and its foreign policy.
[00:06:26] Crucially, it was not part of England’s growing empire and was excluded from trading in English colonies, in order to protect the monopoly and increasing profits of the East India Company.
[00:06:40] So, while technically sovereign, Scotland found itself in a kind of geopolitical limbo: not fully in control of its own economic future, but also locked out of the prosperity enjoyed by other imperial powers.
[00:06:59] What’s more, in the 1690s, the country was reeling from a period of extreme hardship known as the Seven Ill Years.
[00:07:09] Crop failures had led to widespread famine, and tens of thousands of people died from starvation or disease.
[00:07:19] Between direct deaths from disease, indirect deaths from starvation and people who fled abroad, it’s estimated that Scotland lost 20% of its population in the 1690s alone.
[00:07:35] And there wasn’t much it could do to change its fate.
[00:07:38] Trade was dominated by its larger neighbour, England, which tightly controlled access to colonial markets. Scotland had no empire of its own, no access to the riches flowing in from the Americas, Africa, or Asia.
[00:07:54] And elsewhere in Europe, other colonial powers were expanding aggressively.
[00:08:00] The Spanish had long dominated Central and South America. The Dutch controlled major trading ports in Asia and the Caribbean.
[00:08:09] The French were pushing into North America. And England was consolidating its own colonial interests around the globe.
[00:08:18] These countries all had state-backed companies, like the Dutch East India Company, the English East India Company, as well as massive naval infrastructure to support their imperial ambitions.
[00:08:31] The Scots had none of this.
[00:08:35] The sense of frustration was deep.
[00:08:38] The country was politically free, but economically at the mercy of others. For many Scots, the idea of creating their own trade route, their own lucrative colonial outpost, was not just attractive — it felt like a matter of survival.
[00:08:57] William Paterson believed he had the answer: the creation of this land route over Darién.
[00:09:06] Now, importantly, most historians believe that he had never actually been to Darién, but had heard about it from a Welsh doctor and explorer.
[00:09:17] This doctor, a man called Lionel Wafer, had told Paterson about the lush forests and supposedly idyllic climate, and had also mentioned that the indigenous people there had been kind and welcoming.
[00:09:34] And, well, Paterson had decided that this was the place.
[00:09:40] In fact, he had been talking about this for a long time, since the mid-1680s, but few had listened to him.
[00:09:50] However, by the late 1690s, people started to take him more seriously.
[00:09:57] Firstly, he was older and better connected, and had played a key role in the founding of the Bank of England, so he commanded more respect.
[00:10:09] And secondly, the mood in Scotland had changed.
[00:10:13] Years of famine, economic stagnation, and exclusion from lucrative colonial trade had created a desperate hunger for a bold solution.
[00:10:25] Paterson's plan, which had once been dismissed as fantasy, now seemed like a lifeline.
[00:10:33] He proposed the creation of a new trading company, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies. Of course, this company needed financial backing, but this proved to be easier than might have been expected.
[00:10:50] In an extraordinary show of national enthusiasm, roughly one-fifth of all the money circulating in Scotland at the time was invested in the company.
[00:11:03] From the wealthiest aristocrats to modest tradesmen, thousands of Scots bought shares, hoping to strike it rich.
[00:11:13] But this wasn’t just an economic project or financial speculation; it became a national cause, a symbol of pride and possibility.
[00:11:25] Scotland, it seemed, was ready to stake its future on this new company, Scotland’s answer to the East India Company.
[00:11:35] Importantly, this new company had a pretty wide remit; it was intended to go on a bunch of different missions, not just Darién.
[00:11:46] And so in July 1698, the first ships set sail.
[00:11:53] There were five in total, carrying around 1,200 settlers, along with supplies, weapons, tools, and, of course, trade goods, mirrors, combs, woollen hats, items they believed they could exchange with local Indigenous populations or passing merchants.
[00:12:14] The first mistake they made was to set off from Edinburgh, not Glasgow. Now, in case you need a reminder of Scottish geography, both Edinburgh and Glasgow are by the sea, but Edinburgh is on the east coast and Glasgow is on the west.
[00:12:35] Setting off from Edinburgh meant going all the way around the north of Scotland, an often brutal journey, and in this case, one that took 4 months just to get around the British Isles.
[00:12:49] Nevertheless, spirits were high. The settlers were optimistic. They believed they were sailing towards a new chapter in Scottish history.
[00:13:01] But when they arrived at their destination, the Bay of Darién, on the Caribbean coast, they found a land that was far less promising than the dream they had bought into.
[00:13:14] There was no natural harbour, the ground was waterlogged and uneven, and the jungle was thick, hot, and full of unusual creatures.
[00:13:28] Worse still, the rainy season had begun, and their food supplies were already deteriorating in the humid climate.
[00:13:38] Still, they named their settlement New Edinburgh, hoisted the Scottish flag, and tried to build a colony from the ground up.
[00:13:48] They built a fort, which they called St. Andrew, but the place they chose for this had no fresh water source.
[00:13:57] And this was just one failure among hundreds.
[00:14:01] The Scots were, to put it simply, woefully unprepared for Darién.
[00:14:08] They had brought the wrong kind of supplies, luxury goods they wanted to trade rather than survival essentials to keep them alive.
[00:14:17] The indigenous Kuna people, who had lived in the region for centuries, had little interest in any of the products the Scots planned to trade with them.
[00:14:26] There was some contact, and they did share some water and supplies, but there was not nearly enough to support the Scottish settlement.
[00:14:37] Presumably, some assumed that these strange-looking foreigners would leave, or that the jungle would do its work.
[00:14:46] They didn’t have to wait particularly long.
[00:14:49] Most of the men had no idea how to survive in this kind of climate, and had no useful skills for life in the jungle. They might have been able to survive a night outdoors in the Scottish highlands, but a Central American jungle is something slightly different.
[00:15:09] Disease quickly set in: malaria, dysentery, fever, and within a few months, hundreds were dead, with 10 dying every single day.
[00:15:23] And the overland trade route? The grand plan to carry goods across the isthmus?
[00:15:29] It never got off the ground; they never even started it.
[00:15:34] Merely surviving was enough of a challenge, and one that hundreds failed to complete; it soon became obvious that clearing a path through the jungle and building a road, well, that was completely out of the question.
[00:15:51] And there was another problem.
[00:15:53] This territory, this land, had also been claimed by Spain.
[00:16:00] Granted, Spain had shown little interest in it because of how inhospitable it was.
[00:16:06] But the Spanish did not take kindly to a group of Scots planting a flag in what they considered to be their backyard.
[00:16:16] Now, initially, there was no significant military action on the part of Spain, and even if there had been, it would have been no competition; a fully-fledged army against a dwindling number of sunburnt, sickly and starving Scottish traders.
[00:16:35] After all, the biggest enemy the Scots faced wasn’t Spain. It was the jungle.
[00:16:42] By the summer of 1699, just eight months after arriving, the jungle had proved victorious.
[00:16:51] Of the 1,200 settlers who had set off, only 300 survived.
[00:16:59] They decided to cut their losses and sail back home with their tails between their legs, with the ships carrying more coffins than live passengers.
[00:17:10] But the story does not end there.
[00:17:14] Back in Scotland, news of the failure was slow to arrive, and before it did, a second expedition of 1,000 more settlers had already set sail.
[00:17:29] It's difficult to overstate how tragic and almost surreal this was.
[00:17:36] The second group of settlers left Scotland believing they were going to reinforce a thriving colony. They brought ministers, schoolteachers, and musicians. They wrote letters full of hope and ambition. Some even saw it as a religious mission, a chance to build a godly society in a new world.
[00:18:00] When they arrived and found only ruins and graves, the shock must have been overwhelming.
[00:18:09] They tried to continue, but they were even worse prepared. After all, they thought they were going to join a bustling settlement rather than to have to start from scratch.
[00:18:23] And without fresh supplies, without leadership, and facing the same hostile conditions, it was only a matter of time before the same fate awaited them.
[00:18:35] Disease, hunger, and tropical hardships quickly took their toll.
[00:18:41] And the Spanish this time did decide that action was required.
[00:18:46] They blockaded the area, cutting off all potential routes for resupply.
[00:18:53] The Scots were given an ultimatum: surrender, or we’re coming to attack you.
[00:18:59] It can’t have been a particularly difficult decision.
[00:19:03] In March 1700, the remaining Scots surrendered, and fortunately, they were allowed to leave with their lives.
[00:19:13] It was a national disaster.
[00:19:16] The total cost of the Darién Scheme was enormous.
[00:19:19] The human cost was vast, with over 2,000 people estimated to have died.
[00:19:26] And the financial losses were devastating.
[00:19:30] Almost every Scottish noble family had invested, and many were ruined.
[00:19:37] Many ordinary Scottish families, tradespeople who had put everything they had into the company, were left destitute.
[00:19:46] By some estimates, between a quarter and half of all the money in circulation in Scotland at that time had been invested in the scheme and, puff, it was gone.
[00:20:00] The economy was shattered, public confidence was destroyed, and the dream of becoming a global trading power was dead.
[00:20:10] Ordinary people were devastated.
[00:20:13] Entire communities had pooled money to invest in the Company of Scotland. Families had lost sons, brothers, husbands. The failure was not just financial; it was deeply personal.
[00:20:28] There was public outrage, accusations of corruption, and cries for accountability.
[00:20:35] And yet, there is another part to this story, one that fuelled resentment and lasting bitterness in Scotland.
[00:20:43] Yes, the conditions were incredibly hostile, and the Scots were utterly unprepared.
[00:20:50] But there was another factor.
[00:20:53] England, partly not to annoy Spain and partly to protect the interests of its own East India Company, had quietly ordered its colonies not to offer any support to the Scottish expedition.
[00:21:08] Ports in Jamaica and Barbados were closed to them. English ships were forbidden from trading with the colony. Even supplies and medical aid were refused.
[00:21:21] Many Scots saw this as a betrayal; not just indifference, but active sabotage.
[00:21:28] The sense that England had abandoned the scheme, or even deliberately undermined it, this only deepened the wounds when it all fell apart.
[00:21:39] And to make matters worse, quiet, desperate calculations were being made in the background.
[00:21:47] Scotland was broke. Its political class was facing ruin.
[00:21:53] England offered it a lifeline.
[00:21:56] It would offer financial compensation for the losses, but part of this deal was that Scotland would sign the Acts of the Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain, and bringing Scotland and England together as one country.
[00:22:16] To many in Scotland, this was the only viable path forward, and in 1707, just a few years after the final failure in Panama, the Acts of Union were signed, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain.
[00:22:34] The result was a union forged not in triumph, but in the ashes of a national catastrophe.
[00:22:42] The Darién Scheme, for all its ambition and vision, did not just fail to create a colony.
[00:22:49] It played a not insignificant part in the end of Scotland’s independence and forced it into an alliance with its historical greatest enemy.
[00:23:01] So, to wrap things up, what can we take from this ill-fated attempt by Scotland to carve out its own Central American colony?
[00:23:11] Clearly, one obvious lesson might be “mind your own business and don’t try to colonise other people”.
[00:23:17] That is certainly a valid takeaway.
[00:23:20] The Darién Scheme was, after all, a colonial project, one that conveniently ignored the interests and sovereignty of the Indigenous peoples who already lived there.
[00:23:31] But perhaps there are other lessons too.
[00:23:35] One is the danger of unchecked optimism. The enthusiasm for the scheme in Scotland was so overwhelming, so total, that few people asked hard questions.
[00:23:49] There was little scrutiny, no serious contingency planning, and almost no real understanding of the land or people they were trying to settle among. The national mood swept away reason and caution.
[00:24:05] Another is the risk of putting all your hopes in a single, grand solution.
[00:24:11] For many Scots, this one project was meant to solve everything: to rescue the economy, to restore pride, to assert independence on the global stage.
[00:24:24] But when it failed, there was nothing to fall back on. The collapse of Darién took the entire country with it.
[00:24:33] And finally, perhaps there is the lesson that history is rarely clean or fair.
[00:24:39] The scheme’s failure wasn’t just caused by poor planning or disease. It was also undermined by geopolitical forces beyond Scotland’s control: by England’s refusal to support it, and by Spain’s determination to defend its empire. The Scots were caught in the middle of a much bigger game.
[00:25:00] So what started as a bold attempt to reshape the world ended in disaster. But it did reshape something — not global trade, but the political map of the British Isles.
[00:25:15] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on The Darien Scheme.
[00:25:20] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:25:24] We actually have lots of listeners from Colombia, and a fair few from Panama too, so particularly if this subject is close to home for you, I’d love to know what you thought.
[00:25:35] Did you know this story? How does it make you feel, and what do you think we can take from it?
[00:25:41] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:25:50] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:25:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Darién Scheme.
[00:00:28] It is a fascinating period of history, a supposedly genius idea to transform global trade and generate vast wealth and riches for Scotland, all by colonising a tiny part of Central America.
[00:00:43] As you might be able to imagine, it didn’t quite go to plan, and ended in the creation of modern Britain.
[00:00:51] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:58] The Pan-American highway is, by some standards, the longest road in the world.
[00:01:04] Starting at Prudhoe Bay, in Alaska, you can drive all the way down through Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and continue down through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and end up in Argentina, right at the very southern tip of South America.
[00:01:25] The total length is around 30,000 kilometres, and it’s probably more accurate to call it a large collection of roads rather than a single road, as there are multiple ways you can go.
[00:01:39] And another important clarification is that you can’t actually go all the way from the top to the bottom. There is a break, an area where the road comes to a halt, in modern-day Panama.
[00:01:54] This is the Darién Gap, the dense and inhospitable rainforest area in southeastern Panama and northwestern Colombia.
[00:02:05] To this day, there are no functional roads, and anyone wishing to cross it must make the treacherous journey on foot.
[00:02:16] But just over 300 years ago, an enterprising Scottish man called William Paterson had a plan for this area, a plan that he thought would make him, and his country, spectacularly wealthy.
[00:02:34] He had spent some time in the Caribbean and had got an idea.
[00:02:40] Ships transporting goods between Asia and Europe needed to sail all the way around Cape Horn, at the bottom of South America.
[00:02:51] Paterson had a plan to fix this.
[00:02:54] Instead of going all the way around, a ship could sail to modern-day Panama, unload its cargo, and this would be transported by land for the 50 kilometres or so to the other side, where it would be loaded onto another ship and continue its onward journey.
[00:03:15] It was a clever idea, on paper, at least.
[00:03:19] Why spend months battling storms and freezing temperatures around the southern tip of the continent when you could simply carry goods across a narrow strip of land?
[00:03:30] Now, you might be thinking, “Uhm, surely a better idea would have been to dig a canal?”, and of course, this is the solution that exists today: the Panama Canal.
[00:03:42] Quick side note: we also have an episode on the Panama Canal, in case you haven’t listened to that one already. It’s episode number 411.
[00:03:51] But let’s go back to the late 17th century, and this enterprising young Scottish merchant.
[00:03:59] Paterson’s plan was a land route.
[00:04:03] Back in the 1690s, pre the Industrial Revolution, the idea of a canal would have been unthinkable.
[00:04:12] There was dense jungle and mountainous ground; engineering a 50 km canal through all that would have been utterly impossible. The technology simply didn’t exist.
[00:04:25] Paterson was working within the realms of what he thought was possible.
[00:04:31] Goods would be hauled overland using pack animals, human labour, and possibly some sort of rudimentary road or track. It would be a kind of relay system for global trade, with New Caledonia, the name he gave to this planned Scottish colony, acting as the vital middleman.
[00:04:54] What’s more, with its strategic location in the West Indies, it could become a booming trading port.
[00:05:02] And if it worked, Scotland wouldn’t just become rich. It would become powerful, independent, and a major player in global trade.
[00:05:14] That was the dream.
[00:05:15] The reality, as we’ll discover, was something very different.
[00:05:20] Now, before we get into what actually happened and why, it’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on what was going on in Scotland and in Great Britain at this time, and how all this might have helped Paterson convince his countrymen to take a punt on this scheme halfway across the world.
[00:05:41] In the late 17th century, to put it plainly, things were not going particularly well in Scotland.
[00:05:50] At this point in history, Scotland was still an independent kingdom.
[00:05:55] But, it shared a monarch with England, following the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
[00:06:03] There was a curious situation in which both countries were ruled by the same king, William III, at that point in time.
[00:06:12] But the two countries remained politically and economically distinct.
[00:06:19] Scotland had its own parliament, its own legal system, and its foreign policy.
[00:06:26] Crucially, it was not part of England’s growing empire and was excluded from trading in English colonies, in order to protect the monopoly and increasing profits of the East India Company.
[00:06:40] So, while technically sovereign, Scotland found itself in a kind of geopolitical limbo: not fully in control of its own economic future, but also locked out of the prosperity enjoyed by other imperial powers.
[00:06:59] What’s more, in the 1690s, the country was reeling from a period of extreme hardship known as the Seven Ill Years.
[00:07:09] Crop failures had led to widespread famine, and tens of thousands of people died from starvation or disease.
[00:07:19] Between direct deaths from disease, indirect deaths from starvation and people who fled abroad, it’s estimated that Scotland lost 20% of its population in the 1690s alone.
[00:07:35] And there wasn’t much it could do to change its fate.
[00:07:38] Trade was dominated by its larger neighbour, England, which tightly controlled access to colonial markets. Scotland had no empire of its own, no access to the riches flowing in from the Americas, Africa, or Asia.
[00:07:54] And elsewhere in Europe, other colonial powers were expanding aggressively.
[00:08:00] The Spanish had long dominated Central and South America. The Dutch controlled major trading ports in Asia and the Caribbean.
[00:08:09] The French were pushing into North America. And England was consolidating its own colonial interests around the globe.
[00:08:18] These countries all had state-backed companies, like the Dutch East India Company, the English East India Company, as well as massive naval infrastructure to support their imperial ambitions.
[00:08:31] The Scots had none of this.
[00:08:35] The sense of frustration was deep.
[00:08:38] The country was politically free, but economically at the mercy of others. For many Scots, the idea of creating their own trade route, their own lucrative colonial outpost, was not just attractive — it felt like a matter of survival.
[00:08:57] William Paterson believed he had the answer: the creation of this land route over Darién.
[00:09:06] Now, importantly, most historians believe that he had never actually been to Darién, but had heard about it from a Welsh doctor and explorer.
[00:09:17] This doctor, a man called Lionel Wafer, had told Paterson about the lush forests and supposedly idyllic climate, and had also mentioned that the indigenous people there had been kind and welcoming.
[00:09:34] And, well, Paterson had decided that this was the place.
[00:09:40] In fact, he had been talking about this for a long time, since the mid-1680s, but few had listened to him.
[00:09:50] However, by the late 1690s, people started to take him more seriously.
[00:09:57] Firstly, he was older and better connected, and had played a key role in the founding of the Bank of England, so he commanded more respect.
[00:10:09] And secondly, the mood in Scotland had changed.
[00:10:13] Years of famine, economic stagnation, and exclusion from lucrative colonial trade had created a desperate hunger for a bold solution.
[00:10:25] Paterson's plan, which had once been dismissed as fantasy, now seemed like a lifeline.
[00:10:33] He proposed the creation of a new trading company, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies. Of course, this company needed financial backing, but this proved to be easier than might have been expected.
[00:10:50] In an extraordinary show of national enthusiasm, roughly one-fifth of all the money circulating in Scotland at the time was invested in the company.
[00:11:03] From the wealthiest aristocrats to modest tradesmen, thousands of Scots bought shares, hoping to strike it rich.
[00:11:13] But this wasn’t just an economic project or financial speculation; it became a national cause, a symbol of pride and possibility.
[00:11:25] Scotland, it seemed, was ready to stake its future on this new company, Scotland’s answer to the East India Company.
[00:11:35] Importantly, this new company had a pretty wide remit; it was intended to go on a bunch of different missions, not just Darién.
[00:11:46] And so in July 1698, the first ships set sail.
[00:11:53] There were five in total, carrying around 1,200 settlers, along with supplies, weapons, tools, and, of course, trade goods, mirrors, combs, woollen hats, items they believed they could exchange with local Indigenous populations or passing merchants.
[00:12:14] The first mistake they made was to set off from Edinburgh, not Glasgow. Now, in case you need a reminder of Scottish geography, both Edinburgh and Glasgow are by the sea, but Edinburgh is on the east coast and Glasgow is on the west.
[00:12:35] Setting off from Edinburgh meant going all the way around the north of Scotland, an often brutal journey, and in this case, one that took 4 months just to get around the British Isles.
[00:12:49] Nevertheless, spirits were high. The settlers were optimistic. They believed they were sailing towards a new chapter in Scottish history.
[00:13:01] But when they arrived at their destination, the Bay of Darién, on the Caribbean coast, they found a land that was far less promising than the dream they had bought into.
[00:13:14] There was no natural harbour, the ground was waterlogged and uneven, and the jungle was thick, hot, and full of unusual creatures.
[00:13:28] Worse still, the rainy season had begun, and their food supplies were already deteriorating in the humid climate.
[00:13:38] Still, they named their settlement New Edinburgh, hoisted the Scottish flag, and tried to build a colony from the ground up.
[00:13:48] They built a fort, which they called St. Andrew, but the place they chose for this had no fresh water source.
[00:13:57] And this was just one failure among hundreds.
[00:14:01] The Scots were, to put it simply, woefully unprepared for Darién.
[00:14:08] They had brought the wrong kind of supplies, luxury goods they wanted to trade rather than survival essentials to keep them alive.
[00:14:17] The indigenous Kuna people, who had lived in the region for centuries, had little interest in any of the products the Scots planned to trade with them.
[00:14:26] There was some contact, and they did share some water and supplies, but there was not nearly enough to support the Scottish settlement.
[00:14:37] Presumably, some assumed that these strange-looking foreigners would leave, or that the jungle would do its work.
[00:14:46] They didn’t have to wait particularly long.
[00:14:49] Most of the men had no idea how to survive in this kind of climate, and had no useful skills for life in the jungle. They might have been able to survive a night outdoors in the Scottish highlands, but a Central American jungle is something slightly different.
[00:15:09] Disease quickly set in: malaria, dysentery, fever, and within a few months, hundreds were dead, with 10 dying every single day.
[00:15:23] And the overland trade route? The grand plan to carry goods across the isthmus?
[00:15:29] It never got off the ground; they never even started it.
[00:15:34] Merely surviving was enough of a challenge, and one that hundreds failed to complete; it soon became obvious that clearing a path through the jungle and building a road, well, that was completely out of the question.
[00:15:51] And there was another problem.
[00:15:53] This territory, this land, had also been claimed by Spain.
[00:16:00] Granted, Spain had shown little interest in it because of how inhospitable it was.
[00:16:06] But the Spanish did not take kindly to a group of Scots planting a flag in what they considered to be their backyard.
[00:16:16] Now, initially, there was no significant military action on the part of Spain, and even if there had been, it would have been no competition; a fully-fledged army against a dwindling number of sunburnt, sickly and starving Scottish traders.
[00:16:35] After all, the biggest enemy the Scots faced wasn’t Spain. It was the jungle.
[00:16:42] By the summer of 1699, just eight months after arriving, the jungle had proved victorious.
[00:16:51] Of the 1,200 settlers who had set off, only 300 survived.
[00:16:59] They decided to cut their losses and sail back home with their tails between their legs, with the ships carrying more coffins than live passengers.
[00:17:10] But the story does not end there.
[00:17:14] Back in Scotland, news of the failure was slow to arrive, and before it did, a second expedition of 1,000 more settlers had already set sail.
[00:17:29] It's difficult to overstate how tragic and almost surreal this was.
[00:17:36] The second group of settlers left Scotland believing they were going to reinforce a thriving colony. They brought ministers, schoolteachers, and musicians. They wrote letters full of hope and ambition. Some even saw it as a religious mission, a chance to build a godly society in a new world.
[00:18:00] When they arrived and found only ruins and graves, the shock must have been overwhelming.
[00:18:09] They tried to continue, but they were even worse prepared. After all, they thought they were going to join a bustling settlement rather than to have to start from scratch.
[00:18:23] And without fresh supplies, without leadership, and facing the same hostile conditions, it was only a matter of time before the same fate awaited them.
[00:18:35] Disease, hunger, and tropical hardships quickly took their toll.
[00:18:41] And the Spanish this time did decide that action was required.
[00:18:46] They blockaded the area, cutting off all potential routes for resupply.
[00:18:53] The Scots were given an ultimatum: surrender, or we’re coming to attack you.
[00:18:59] It can’t have been a particularly difficult decision.
[00:19:03] In March 1700, the remaining Scots surrendered, and fortunately, they were allowed to leave with their lives.
[00:19:13] It was a national disaster.
[00:19:16] The total cost of the Darién Scheme was enormous.
[00:19:19] The human cost was vast, with over 2,000 people estimated to have died.
[00:19:26] And the financial losses were devastating.
[00:19:30] Almost every Scottish noble family had invested, and many were ruined.
[00:19:37] Many ordinary Scottish families, tradespeople who had put everything they had into the company, were left destitute.
[00:19:46] By some estimates, between a quarter and half of all the money in circulation in Scotland at that time had been invested in the scheme and, puff, it was gone.
[00:20:00] The economy was shattered, public confidence was destroyed, and the dream of becoming a global trading power was dead.
[00:20:10] Ordinary people were devastated.
[00:20:13] Entire communities had pooled money to invest in the Company of Scotland. Families had lost sons, brothers, husbands. The failure was not just financial; it was deeply personal.
[00:20:28] There was public outrage, accusations of corruption, and cries for accountability.
[00:20:35] And yet, there is another part to this story, one that fuelled resentment and lasting bitterness in Scotland.
[00:20:43] Yes, the conditions were incredibly hostile, and the Scots were utterly unprepared.
[00:20:50] But there was another factor.
[00:20:53] England, partly not to annoy Spain and partly to protect the interests of its own East India Company, had quietly ordered its colonies not to offer any support to the Scottish expedition.
[00:21:08] Ports in Jamaica and Barbados were closed to them. English ships were forbidden from trading with the colony. Even supplies and medical aid were refused.
[00:21:21] Many Scots saw this as a betrayal; not just indifference, but active sabotage.
[00:21:28] The sense that England had abandoned the scheme, or even deliberately undermined it, this only deepened the wounds when it all fell apart.
[00:21:39] And to make matters worse, quiet, desperate calculations were being made in the background.
[00:21:47] Scotland was broke. Its political class was facing ruin.
[00:21:53] England offered it a lifeline.
[00:21:56] It would offer financial compensation for the losses, but part of this deal was that Scotland would sign the Acts of the Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain, and bringing Scotland and England together as one country.
[00:22:16] To many in Scotland, this was the only viable path forward, and in 1707, just a few years after the final failure in Panama, the Acts of Union were signed, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain.
[00:22:34] The result was a union forged not in triumph, but in the ashes of a national catastrophe.
[00:22:42] The Darién Scheme, for all its ambition and vision, did not just fail to create a colony.
[00:22:49] It played a not insignificant part in the end of Scotland’s independence and forced it into an alliance with its historical greatest enemy.
[00:23:01] So, to wrap things up, what can we take from this ill-fated attempt by Scotland to carve out its own Central American colony?
[00:23:11] Clearly, one obvious lesson might be “mind your own business and don’t try to colonise other people”.
[00:23:17] That is certainly a valid takeaway.
[00:23:20] The Darién Scheme was, after all, a colonial project, one that conveniently ignored the interests and sovereignty of the Indigenous peoples who already lived there.
[00:23:31] But perhaps there are other lessons too.
[00:23:35] One is the danger of unchecked optimism. The enthusiasm for the scheme in Scotland was so overwhelming, so total, that few people asked hard questions.
[00:23:49] There was little scrutiny, no serious contingency planning, and almost no real understanding of the land or people they were trying to settle among. The national mood swept away reason and caution.
[00:24:05] Another is the risk of putting all your hopes in a single, grand solution.
[00:24:11] For many Scots, this one project was meant to solve everything: to rescue the economy, to restore pride, to assert independence on the global stage.
[00:24:24] But when it failed, there was nothing to fall back on. The collapse of Darién took the entire country with it.
[00:24:33] And finally, perhaps there is the lesson that history is rarely clean or fair.
[00:24:39] The scheme’s failure wasn’t just caused by poor planning or disease. It was also undermined by geopolitical forces beyond Scotland’s control: by England’s refusal to support it, and by Spain’s determination to defend its empire. The Scots were caught in the middle of a much bigger game.
[00:25:00] So what started as a bold attempt to reshape the world ended in disaster. But it did reshape something — not global trade, but the political map of the British Isles.
[00:25:15] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on The Darien Scheme.
[00:25:20] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:25:24] We actually have lots of listeners from Colombia, and a fair few from Panama too, so particularly if this subject is close to home for you, I’d love to know what you thought.
[00:25:35] Did you know this story? How does it make you feel, and what do you think we can take from it?
[00:25:41] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:25:50] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:25:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Darién Scheme.
[00:00:28] It is a fascinating period of history, a supposedly genius idea to transform global trade and generate vast wealth and riches for Scotland, all by colonising a tiny part of Central America.
[00:00:43] As you might be able to imagine, it didn’t quite go to plan, and ended in the creation of modern Britain.
[00:00:51] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:58] The Pan-American highway is, by some standards, the longest road in the world.
[00:01:04] Starting at Prudhoe Bay, in Alaska, you can drive all the way down through Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and continue down through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and end up in Argentina, right at the very southern tip of South America.
[00:01:25] The total length is around 30,000 kilometres, and it’s probably more accurate to call it a large collection of roads rather than a single road, as there are multiple ways you can go.
[00:01:39] And another important clarification is that you can’t actually go all the way from the top to the bottom. There is a break, an area where the road comes to a halt, in modern-day Panama.
[00:01:54] This is the Darién Gap, the dense and inhospitable rainforest area in southeastern Panama and northwestern Colombia.
[00:02:05] To this day, there are no functional roads, and anyone wishing to cross it must make the treacherous journey on foot.
[00:02:16] But just over 300 years ago, an enterprising Scottish man called William Paterson had a plan for this area, a plan that he thought would make him, and his country, spectacularly wealthy.
[00:02:34] He had spent some time in the Caribbean and had got an idea.
[00:02:40] Ships transporting goods between Asia and Europe needed to sail all the way around Cape Horn, at the bottom of South America.
[00:02:51] Paterson had a plan to fix this.
[00:02:54] Instead of going all the way around, a ship could sail to modern-day Panama, unload its cargo, and this would be transported by land for the 50 kilometres or so to the other side, where it would be loaded onto another ship and continue its onward journey.
[00:03:15] It was a clever idea, on paper, at least.
[00:03:19] Why spend months battling storms and freezing temperatures around the southern tip of the continent when you could simply carry goods across a narrow strip of land?
[00:03:30] Now, you might be thinking, “Uhm, surely a better idea would have been to dig a canal?”, and of course, this is the solution that exists today: the Panama Canal.
[00:03:42] Quick side note: we also have an episode on the Panama Canal, in case you haven’t listened to that one already. It’s episode number 411.
[00:03:51] But let’s go back to the late 17th century, and this enterprising young Scottish merchant.
[00:03:59] Paterson’s plan was a land route.
[00:04:03] Back in the 1690s, pre the Industrial Revolution, the idea of a canal would have been unthinkable.
[00:04:12] There was dense jungle and mountainous ground; engineering a 50 km canal through all that would have been utterly impossible. The technology simply didn’t exist.
[00:04:25] Paterson was working within the realms of what he thought was possible.
[00:04:31] Goods would be hauled overland using pack animals, human labour, and possibly some sort of rudimentary road or track. It would be a kind of relay system for global trade, with New Caledonia, the name he gave to this planned Scottish colony, acting as the vital middleman.
[00:04:54] What’s more, with its strategic location in the West Indies, it could become a booming trading port.
[00:05:02] And if it worked, Scotland wouldn’t just become rich. It would become powerful, independent, and a major player in global trade.
[00:05:14] That was the dream.
[00:05:15] The reality, as we’ll discover, was something very different.
[00:05:20] Now, before we get into what actually happened and why, it’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on what was going on in Scotland and in Great Britain at this time, and how all this might have helped Paterson convince his countrymen to take a punt on this scheme halfway across the world.
[00:05:41] In the late 17th century, to put it plainly, things were not going particularly well in Scotland.
[00:05:50] At this point in history, Scotland was still an independent kingdom.
[00:05:55] But, it shared a monarch with England, following the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
[00:06:03] There was a curious situation in which both countries were ruled by the same king, William III, at that point in time.
[00:06:12] But the two countries remained politically and economically distinct.
[00:06:19] Scotland had its own parliament, its own legal system, and its foreign policy.
[00:06:26] Crucially, it was not part of England’s growing empire and was excluded from trading in English colonies, in order to protect the monopoly and increasing profits of the East India Company.
[00:06:40] So, while technically sovereign, Scotland found itself in a kind of geopolitical limbo: not fully in control of its own economic future, but also locked out of the prosperity enjoyed by other imperial powers.
[00:06:59] What’s more, in the 1690s, the country was reeling from a period of extreme hardship known as the Seven Ill Years.
[00:07:09] Crop failures had led to widespread famine, and tens of thousands of people died from starvation or disease.
[00:07:19] Between direct deaths from disease, indirect deaths from starvation and people who fled abroad, it’s estimated that Scotland lost 20% of its population in the 1690s alone.
[00:07:35] And there wasn’t much it could do to change its fate.
[00:07:38] Trade was dominated by its larger neighbour, England, which tightly controlled access to colonial markets. Scotland had no empire of its own, no access to the riches flowing in from the Americas, Africa, or Asia.
[00:07:54] And elsewhere in Europe, other colonial powers were expanding aggressively.
[00:08:00] The Spanish had long dominated Central and South America. The Dutch controlled major trading ports in Asia and the Caribbean.
[00:08:09] The French were pushing into North America. And England was consolidating its own colonial interests around the globe.
[00:08:18] These countries all had state-backed companies, like the Dutch East India Company, the English East India Company, as well as massive naval infrastructure to support their imperial ambitions.
[00:08:31] The Scots had none of this.
[00:08:35] The sense of frustration was deep.
[00:08:38] The country was politically free, but economically at the mercy of others. For many Scots, the idea of creating their own trade route, their own lucrative colonial outpost, was not just attractive — it felt like a matter of survival.
[00:08:57] William Paterson believed he had the answer: the creation of this land route over Darién.
[00:09:06] Now, importantly, most historians believe that he had never actually been to Darién, but had heard about it from a Welsh doctor and explorer.
[00:09:17] This doctor, a man called Lionel Wafer, had told Paterson about the lush forests and supposedly idyllic climate, and had also mentioned that the indigenous people there had been kind and welcoming.
[00:09:34] And, well, Paterson had decided that this was the place.
[00:09:40] In fact, he had been talking about this for a long time, since the mid-1680s, but few had listened to him.
[00:09:50] However, by the late 1690s, people started to take him more seriously.
[00:09:57] Firstly, he was older and better connected, and had played a key role in the founding of the Bank of England, so he commanded more respect.
[00:10:09] And secondly, the mood in Scotland had changed.
[00:10:13] Years of famine, economic stagnation, and exclusion from lucrative colonial trade had created a desperate hunger for a bold solution.
[00:10:25] Paterson's plan, which had once been dismissed as fantasy, now seemed like a lifeline.
[00:10:33] He proposed the creation of a new trading company, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies. Of course, this company needed financial backing, but this proved to be easier than might have been expected.
[00:10:50] In an extraordinary show of national enthusiasm, roughly one-fifth of all the money circulating in Scotland at the time was invested in the company.
[00:11:03] From the wealthiest aristocrats to modest tradesmen, thousands of Scots bought shares, hoping to strike it rich.
[00:11:13] But this wasn’t just an economic project or financial speculation; it became a national cause, a symbol of pride and possibility.
[00:11:25] Scotland, it seemed, was ready to stake its future on this new company, Scotland’s answer to the East India Company.
[00:11:35] Importantly, this new company had a pretty wide remit; it was intended to go on a bunch of different missions, not just Darién.
[00:11:46] And so in July 1698, the first ships set sail.
[00:11:53] There were five in total, carrying around 1,200 settlers, along with supplies, weapons, tools, and, of course, trade goods, mirrors, combs, woollen hats, items they believed they could exchange with local Indigenous populations or passing merchants.
[00:12:14] The first mistake they made was to set off from Edinburgh, not Glasgow. Now, in case you need a reminder of Scottish geography, both Edinburgh and Glasgow are by the sea, but Edinburgh is on the east coast and Glasgow is on the west.
[00:12:35] Setting off from Edinburgh meant going all the way around the north of Scotland, an often brutal journey, and in this case, one that took 4 months just to get around the British Isles.
[00:12:49] Nevertheless, spirits were high. The settlers were optimistic. They believed they were sailing towards a new chapter in Scottish history.
[00:13:01] But when they arrived at their destination, the Bay of Darién, on the Caribbean coast, they found a land that was far less promising than the dream they had bought into.
[00:13:14] There was no natural harbour, the ground was waterlogged and uneven, and the jungle was thick, hot, and full of unusual creatures.
[00:13:28] Worse still, the rainy season had begun, and their food supplies were already deteriorating in the humid climate.
[00:13:38] Still, they named their settlement New Edinburgh, hoisted the Scottish flag, and tried to build a colony from the ground up.
[00:13:48] They built a fort, which they called St. Andrew, but the place they chose for this had no fresh water source.
[00:13:57] And this was just one failure among hundreds.
[00:14:01] The Scots were, to put it simply, woefully unprepared for Darién.
[00:14:08] They had brought the wrong kind of supplies, luxury goods they wanted to trade rather than survival essentials to keep them alive.
[00:14:17] The indigenous Kuna people, who had lived in the region for centuries, had little interest in any of the products the Scots planned to trade with them.
[00:14:26] There was some contact, and they did share some water and supplies, but there was not nearly enough to support the Scottish settlement.
[00:14:37] Presumably, some assumed that these strange-looking foreigners would leave, or that the jungle would do its work.
[00:14:46] They didn’t have to wait particularly long.
[00:14:49] Most of the men had no idea how to survive in this kind of climate, and had no useful skills for life in the jungle. They might have been able to survive a night outdoors in the Scottish highlands, but a Central American jungle is something slightly different.
[00:15:09] Disease quickly set in: malaria, dysentery, fever, and within a few months, hundreds were dead, with 10 dying every single day.
[00:15:23] And the overland trade route? The grand plan to carry goods across the isthmus?
[00:15:29] It never got off the ground; they never even started it.
[00:15:34] Merely surviving was enough of a challenge, and one that hundreds failed to complete; it soon became obvious that clearing a path through the jungle and building a road, well, that was completely out of the question.
[00:15:51] And there was another problem.
[00:15:53] This territory, this land, had also been claimed by Spain.
[00:16:00] Granted, Spain had shown little interest in it because of how inhospitable it was.
[00:16:06] But the Spanish did not take kindly to a group of Scots planting a flag in what they considered to be their backyard.
[00:16:16] Now, initially, there was no significant military action on the part of Spain, and even if there had been, it would have been no competition; a fully-fledged army against a dwindling number of sunburnt, sickly and starving Scottish traders.
[00:16:35] After all, the biggest enemy the Scots faced wasn’t Spain. It was the jungle.
[00:16:42] By the summer of 1699, just eight months after arriving, the jungle had proved victorious.
[00:16:51] Of the 1,200 settlers who had set off, only 300 survived.
[00:16:59] They decided to cut their losses and sail back home with their tails between their legs, with the ships carrying more coffins than live passengers.
[00:17:10] But the story does not end there.
[00:17:14] Back in Scotland, news of the failure was slow to arrive, and before it did, a second expedition of 1,000 more settlers had already set sail.
[00:17:29] It's difficult to overstate how tragic and almost surreal this was.
[00:17:36] The second group of settlers left Scotland believing they were going to reinforce a thriving colony. They brought ministers, schoolteachers, and musicians. They wrote letters full of hope and ambition. Some even saw it as a religious mission, a chance to build a godly society in a new world.
[00:18:00] When they arrived and found only ruins and graves, the shock must have been overwhelming.
[00:18:09] They tried to continue, but they were even worse prepared. After all, they thought they were going to join a bustling settlement rather than to have to start from scratch.
[00:18:23] And without fresh supplies, without leadership, and facing the same hostile conditions, it was only a matter of time before the same fate awaited them.
[00:18:35] Disease, hunger, and tropical hardships quickly took their toll.
[00:18:41] And the Spanish this time did decide that action was required.
[00:18:46] They blockaded the area, cutting off all potential routes for resupply.
[00:18:53] The Scots were given an ultimatum: surrender, or we’re coming to attack you.
[00:18:59] It can’t have been a particularly difficult decision.
[00:19:03] In March 1700, the remaining Scots surrendered, and fortunately, they were allowed to leave with their lives.
[00:19:13] It was a national disaster.
[00:19:16] The total cost of the Darién Scheme was enormous.
[00:19:19] The human cost was vast, with over 2,000 people estimated to have died.
[00:19:26] And the financial losses were devastating.
[00:19:30] Almost every Scottish noble family had invested, and many were ruined.
[00:19:37] Many ordinary Scottish families, tradespeople who had put everything they had into the company, were left destitute.
[00:19:46] By some estimates, between a quarter and half of all the money in circulation in Scotland at that time had been invested in the scheme and, puff, it was gone.
[00:20:00] The economy was shattered, public confidence was destroyed, and the dream of becoming a global trading power was dead.
[00:20:10] Ordinary people were devastated.
[00:20:13] Entire communities had pooled money to invest in the Company of Scotland. Families had lost sons, brothers, husbands. The failure was not just financial; it was deeply personal.
[00:20:28] There was public outrage, accusations of corruption, and cries for accountability.
[00:20:35] And yet, there is another part to this story, one that fuelled resentment and lasting bitterness in Scotland.
[00:20:43] Yes, the conditions were incredibly hostile, and the Scots were utterly unprepared.
[00:20:50] But there was another factor.
[00:20:53] England, partly not to annoy Spain and partly to protect the interests of its own East India Company, had quietly ordered its colonies not to offer any support to the Scottish expedition.
[00:21:08] Ports in Jamaica and Barbados were closed to them. English ships were forbidden from trading with the colony. Even supplies and medical aid were refused.
[00:21:21] Many Scots saw this as a betrayal; not just indifference, but active sabotage.
[00:21:28] The sense that England had abandoned the scheme, or even deliberately undermined it, this only deepened the wounds when it all fell apart.
[00:21:39] And to make matters worse, quiet, desperate calculations were being made in the background.
[00:21:47] Scotland was broke. Its political class was facing ruin.
[00:21:53] England offered it a lifeline.
[00:21:56] It would offer financial compensation for the losses, but part of this deal was that Scotland would sign the Acts of the Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain, and bringing Scotland and England together as one country.
[00:22:16] To many in Scotland, this was the only viable path forward, and in 1707, just a few years after the final failure in Panama, the Acts of Union were signed, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain.
[00:22:34] The result was a union forged not in triumph, but in the ashes of a national catastrophe.
[00:22:42] The Darién Scheme, for all its ambition and vision, did not just fail to create a colony.
[00:22:49] It played a not insignificant part in the end of Scotland’s independence and forced it into an alliance with its historical greatest enemy.
[00:23:01] So, to wrap things up, what can we take from this ill-fated attempt by Scotland to carve out its own Central American colony?
[00:23:11] Clearly, one obvious lesson might be “mind your own business and don’t try to colonise other people”.
[00:23:17] That is certainly a valid takeaway.
[00:23:20] The Darién Scheme was, after all, a colonial project, one that conveniently ignored the interests and sovereignty of the Indigenous peoples who already lived there.
[00:23:31] But perhaps there are other lessons too.
[00:23:35] One is the danger of unchecked optimism. The enthusiasm for the scheme in Scotland was so overwhelming, so total, that few people asked hard questions.
[00:23:49] There was little scrutiny, no serious contingency planning, and almost no real understanding of the land or people they were trying to settle among. The national mood swept away reason and caution.
[00:24:05] Another is the risk of putting all your hopes in a single, grand solution.
[00:24:11] For many Scots, this one project was meant to solve everything: to rescue the economy, to restore pride, to assert independence on the global stage.
[00:24:24] But when it failed, there was nothing to fall back on. The collapse of Darién took the entire country with it.
[00:24:33] And finally, perhaps there is the lesson that history is rarely clean or fair.
[00:24:39] The scheme’s failure wasn’t just caused by poor planning or disease. It was also undermined by geopolitical forces beyond Scotland’s control: by England’s refusal to support it, and by Spain’s determination to defend its empire. The Scots were caught in the middle of a much bigger game.
[00:25:00] So what started as a bold attempt to reshape the world ended in disaster. But it did reshape something — not global trade, but the political map of the British Isles.
[00:25:15] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on The Darien Scheme.
[00:25:20] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:25:24] We actually have lots of listeners from Colombia, and a fair few from Panama too, so particularly if this subject is close to home for you, I’d love to know what you thought.
[00:25:35] Did you know this story? How does it make you feel, and what do you think we can take from it?
[00:25:41] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:25:50] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:25:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
