Company of Scotland

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The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, also called the Scottish Darien Company, was an overseas trading company created by an act of the Parliament of Scotland in 1695. Financial and political troubles plagued its early years, but in July 1698 it launched its first expedition, led by William Paterson, who hoped to establish a colony in Darien (on the Isthmus of Panama), which could then be used as a trading point between Europe and the Far East.

Though five ships and 1,200 Scottish colonists landed successfully in Darien, the settlement was poorly provisioned and eventually abandoned. A second, larger expedition (launched before the fate of the first was known) took up the deserted settlement, but was quickly besieged by the Spanish. More than a thousand succumbed to hunger and disease, and in April 1700, two ships carried the few survivors home.

All told, the disastrous venture, dubbed the Darien Scheme, drained Scotland of more than a quarter of its liquid assets and may have played a key role in pushing the country to the eventual 1707 Act of Union which united Scotland and England.