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Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 2809

“And Be A Nation Again” ?
by DAVE COULL

The vast majority of people in Scotland, no matter how little they may know about history, will need no citation for the title of this piece. It will be instantly recognisable to them as being from what has become, in the past twenty years or so, the most famous of all Scottish patriotic songs - “Flower of Scotland”. The reason that this line from a modern nationalistic song appears relevant to an essay about the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 is that to many people, then as now, it seemed that the choice lay between Union on the one hand and Independence on the other - with no real “halfway house”. The reason for expressing the quotation as a question is to emphasise that in the 1700s the Scots were facing a genuine dilemma.

The Treaty of Union of 1707 between Scotland and England is regarded very differently in these two countries. It scarcely disturbs the seamless flow of English History at all, but it looms very large indeed in Scottish History. This reflects the fact that, although in theory the Union abolished both the Scottish and the English parliaments, in practice Westminster carried on much as before. The fact that Westminster remains, even to this day, so clearly the English parliament, is one of the reasons why so many Scots nowadays demand a parliament of their own. “The Treaty of Union may claim the status of fundamental law in Britain, but the actual union that it achieved is much more fragile than it appears.” But, of course, Scotland had its own parliament; and, indeed, a handful of years before the Union that parliament was showing increasing independence. So what happened? It has been suggested that the economic consequences of the Darien disaster led in part to the Union of 1707. To what extent is this true?

In seeking to answer this question I have consulted numerous sources. However, I will not be attempting to summarise the many - and sometimes heated - arguments amongst historians about the Union of 1707. To attempt such summaries in a necessarily brief essay would be to do an injustice to the historians concerned. Although I may quote from various sources, the arguments put forward are essentially my own.

In order to set the scene for an examination of the extent to which the economic consequences of the Darien disaster led to the Union of 1707, we must first step back a century, to the Regal Union of 1603. Queen Elizabeth the First of England, the “Virgin Queen” after whom Virginia is called, had no children. Powerful men in the Kingdom wanted her to name King James the Sixth of Scotland as her successor. It is debatable whether she ever actually did so, but, in any case, he was the nearest Protestant claimant; so, when Elizabeth died, he was promptly invited to come to London and become King. James had been waiting for this summons, and set out at once. Although Scots had for centuries resisted the attempts of English kings to extend their rule over Scotland, this Union seemed acceptable because it was under a Scottish king. However, James the Sixth had long thought that his own claim to the throne of England was better than that of Elizabeth; he had long looked forward to the day when he could at last claim the English crown; and when the opportunity finally came, he had no problem whatsoever with putting the larger kingdom first.

It was a time of expanding horizons, but “Obsession with domestic problems combined with shortage of capital to bar Scotland from any immediate participation in the widening commercial opportunities which stemmed from the discovery of the sea route to the Far East and of the continent of America. When, by the early 1600s, she was somewhat better equipped, most of the accessible territories had been pre-empted by monopolistic imperial powers, whilst Scotland had lost her diplomatic independence.” This loss of diplomatic independence, and hence of independence in trade, cost Scotland dearly in the Seventeenth Century.
Scotland was not allowed to trade freely with the English colonies in America and elsewhere, yet got dragged into conflicts with other countries which were to some extent about England protecting its colonial trade. “After the Restoration, and particularly when Parliament acquired greater freedom after 1689, Scotland was actively launched on a ‘mercantilist’-type policy, fostering her own industries and seeking to expand overseas trade. But because of the conditions of the Union
of 1603 she was embroiled in England’s foreign disputes, but could neither - in compensation - count on either diplomatic or armed support for Scots enterprises overseas nor could she legally engage in English plantation trade.” (Under the Navigation Acts passed by the English parliament, Scotland, despite having the same monarch, and despite having to get involved in war with England’s enemies, was treated as a foreign country which was excluded from trading with England’s colonies in America.)

It was little wonder then that “There were few in Scotland who retained much faith in the regal union or in the way it worked. All thinking Scots had by the end of William’s reign more or less concluded that the existing connection between the two kingdoms was unsatisfactory and that it was slowly strangling the weaker partner. But what to do about it was the problem. There agreement ended and argument began...” In that argument, one alternative proposed was closer union; the other alternative proposed was that of greater independence.

To some extent, the Scots parliament did in fact seek to achieve greater independence. Parliament ordered an enquiry into the Massacre of Glencoe, something King William the Third could have done without. The “Wool Act” encouraged export of that commodity, while the “Wine Act” of 1703 “was equivalent to a declaration of freedom to trade with France, with whom England was at war.” Furthermore, the “Act of Peace and War” asserted that, after Queen Anne’s death, no British monarch could declare war “without consent of the Scottish parliament, and no declaration of war without their consent was to be binding upon Scottish subjects”. War with France was unpopular in Scotland, not just for reasons of sentiment about the “Auld Alliance”, but because France was a major trading partner. “The French wars, which lasted from 1688 to 1697, and from 1701 until after the Union....were in most respects much more serious in their economic consequences than the Dutch wars....there was the virtual loss of an important market - direct trade to France.” The English Lord Treasurer (de facto “prime minister”) Godolphin wrote to his Scottish counterpart Seafield “ ‘if Scotland were in peace and consequently at liberty to trade with France, would not that immediately necessitate a war betwixt England and Scotland?’ ” Capping all this was an act which could have ended the Union of the Crowns - the Act of Security of 1703. This pronounced the Scots parliament “hereby Authorised and Impowered to Nominat and Declare the Successor to the Imperial Crown of this Realme...”

This, then, was the situation just a few years before Union: a Scottish parliament asserting its independence, and the English government - increasingly worried that the Scots would “rise and be a nation again” - issuing threats of reprisal. The atmosphere in Scotland at the time was one of crisis. A parallel which springs to mind (though of course not an exact parallel, but hopefully an illuminating one nevertheless) is with the Weimar Republic in Germany. In Weimar Germany, the Nazis and the Communists both appeared as credible alternatives, and it was possible for the same individuals to swing towards either national-socialism or Marxism. The one thing which was not credible was a continuation of the status quo. Similarly, in Scotland
in the 1700s the same individuals might consider either independence or closer union with England; again, the one possibility ruled out was continuation of the status quo. But - to what extent was this atmosphere of crisis due to the economic consequences of the Darien disaster?

The answer is that Darien certainly played a large part in bringing about this atmosphere of crisis. The failure of the Darien colony, and shortly afterwards the collapse of its sponsors the Company of Scotland (in which a very high proportion of the population of Scotland had invested so much both in terms of money and of hope) was indeed an unparalleled disaster. (It was a disaster, but it was not just misfortune, nor accident, nor bad luck. This writer has put forward before his view that “The Company of Scotland could have succeeded. The Darien scheme was brilliant and far-sighted and could have succeeded. That the Scheme did not in the end succeed was due to the wilful and deliberate destruction of the Company of Scotland, and thus of the economy of Scotland, by King William the Third and the East India Company.” )

Some have suggested that the scheme was flawed from the start: “The flaw in the scheme was the Scots’ inability to give military support to the Darien colonists; an intensely irritated William and an enraged London merchant community simply left the colonists to their fate...” I would maintain that the roles of the monarch and of the English merchants were more actively destructive than simply leaving
the Scots colonists to their fate ; but that is a side issue to the question before us, so let us not be tempted into pursuing it. We can all agree with John Robertson that “Nevertheless, the Scots’ commitment to the scheme was a strong indication that closer union of the British kingdoms would be hard to reconcile with an exclusively English empire of the sea.” We can also agree with Smout that the collapse of the Company of Scotland, “engineered, as many believed, by the malevolence of William III and his English ministers, awoke a fury of discontent against their political and economic inferiority. Although Darien did not ‘create’ a Union of Parliaments, it did more than anything else to provide an atmosphere in which the relative merits of the various schemes of constitutional alignment or separation would be hotly discussed.”

As Smout says, Darien “did more than anything else” to create this atmosphere. That is an assessment which would be difficult to quarrel with. Certainly, those of us studying history under the course heading “Scotland and the Americas” are clearly being invited to see Darien and westward enterprises generally as being of immense significance. However, it does have to be said that there were other factors.

For example, “The first of a series of four major harvest failures occurred in 1695.” Unlike Jacob in the Bible, the Scots authorities lacked any contingency plans for this. “As William Patterson acidly commented:
‘In Summer, 1695, they were very busie in giving rewards for having their Corn carried abroad, and a few Months after, as impatiently employed in buying it back again’ .”

There was, also, an unpopular war with France, and the very real possibility of war with England. “The English parliament were determined that the Scots should settle the succession on the Hanover line, and that they should be completely united with England. ‘If we do not go into the Succession or an Union very soon, Conquest will certainly be upon the very first Peace’, wrote Roxburgh at this time.” Roxburgh was right to be concerned about an English invasion. “At an early stage in the crisis,
on 17th July 1703, Godolphin sent a gentlemanly and polite, but unmistakable, threat of military force to Seafield.” In other words, the English government threatened the Scottish government with a war of conquest. England could feel more certain of military success than had sometimes been the case in the past, because greater wealth, arising in particular from the American colonies, had transformed English military and naval power. Nor did England confine itself to “gentlemanly and polite, but unmistakable, threats of military force”. Smooth but threatening words were backed up with action to show the English meant business. In 1706 three English regiments of foot were moved to the Scottish border. In December of that year these foot soldiers were reinforced on the border by 800 cavalry. In northern Ireland, five more regiments were made ready for the short sea crossing to Scotland.

But despite economic disaster, famine, and English sabre-rattling, Unionism remained deeply unpopular in Scotland. However, very few people had any say in running the country. Members of Parliament represented the “elite”. These Members could be promised royal appointment to lucrative positions; or, more crudely, they could be promised money. The evidence that Members were “bought for English
gold” is overwhelming. “There is excellent evidence that the Queen’s Ministers in Scotland, hand-in-glove with the English administration, learnt far more of the arts of Parliamentary ‘management’ between 1703 and 1706, and did not hesitate to use bribery and threats to attach the wavering to their side.” Some commentators - one might even say, some apologists for the Union - take a relaxed view of this corruption: “It was an instance of early modern realpolitik , a practical agreement between unequal partners, born and made of political, economic and strategic necessity, which served the needs of the politicians of both countries at the time.” Others say “This is latter-day cant. It is naive in the extreme to regard management merely as a mechanism, and, as such, as innocent as a fly-wheel....”

When Union did come, the people of Scotland, who had had no say in the matter, showed what they thought of it. There was prolonged rioting in Edinburgh and Glasgow and disturbances in many other towns. Dozens of petitions and addresses poured in to the authorities from every part of Scotland - all of them against Union. There was not a single one in favour. Within a few years, many of those Members of the Scottish Parliament who had voted for the Union repented. “By 1713 the Scottish members of all parties determined to make an effort to dissolve the Union.....a motion for its dissolution in the House of Lords failed by four votes.”

The economic consequences of the Darien disaster certainly played an important part in bringing about a situation in which the status quo was seen as no longer an option, and in which the choices were seen as being between a Union which would please the English or a hazardous attempt to restore independence. However, besides Darien, other factors such as crop failure contributed to the feeling of economic catastrophe. For most of those Scots who reluctantly accepted it, the Union was not intended as a “Union for Empire” as suggested by John Robertson, not so much a way of gaining great riches, but rather more a way of seeking to escape from increasing impoverishment. But the factor which is too often overlooked is neither Darien nor crop failure, but the direct threat of war. The rulers of England had decided that Union was necessary for reasons of military and naval strategy. They were prepared to invade Scotland if they did not get what they wanted. So yes, the economic consequences of the Darien disaster contributed to the atmosphere of crisis which led to the Union of 1707 ; but famine, bribery, and an invasion army camped on the border, also had something to do with it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ferguson, William
Scotland’s Relations with England : A Survey to 1707
Edinburgh : John Donald Publishers Ltd., 1977.

Keith, Theodora
Commercial Relations of England and Scotland 1603-1707
Cambridge : University Press, 1910.

Levack, Brian P.
The Formation of the British State : England, Scotland and the Union 1603-1707
Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1987.

Lythe, S.G.E. and Butt, J.
An Economic History of Scotland 1100-1939
Glasgow and London : Blackie, 1975.

Parker, A. (ed.)
The People V King William III and the English East India Company
Dundee : “Scotland and the Americas” course, University of Dundee, 1997.

Robertson, John (ed.)
A Union for Empire : Political Thought and the British Union of 1707
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Scott, P.H.
1707 : The Union of Scotland and England
in Contemporary Documents with a Commentary
Edinburgh : Chambers, 1979.

Smout, T.C.
Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union 1660-1707
Edinburgh and London : Oliver & Boyd, 1963.

Luke P · Gaining a Reputation Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 218

Very interesting. I read somewhere that the debt incurred by Scotland over Darien was the exact amount paid by the English parliament to Scotland as union settlement.

I find it very doubtful that the Darien scheme could ever have worked, with or without English interference. Whilst strategically significant, Darien ranks amongst the world's most inhospitable, impregnable, intolerable corners. Even today, one's chances are poor. I believe the settlers died at a rate of 10 a day...

Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 2809

Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 2809

Luke P · Gaining a Reputation Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 218

Realpolitik is as old as history. Bank bailout - credit crunch - petrol prices - Biderbergs - no I think they're more blatant now!
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"Hath He not made us all in one island, compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" James VI/I

Luke P · Gaining a Reputation Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 218

Luke P · Gaining a Reputation Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 218

Why did the Bank of England not become the Bank of Britain after the union?
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"Hath He not made us all in one island, compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" James VI/I

Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 2809

Luke P · Gaining a Reputation Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 218

And yet the BOE is the central bank of the UK. The Bank of Scotland, other than issuing banknotes, has no such function.
_________________
"Hath He not made us all in one island, compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" James VI/I

Dave Coull · Independentista Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 2809

Luke P · Gaining a Reputation Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 218

They seem pretty obvious exceptions. It's never too late Smile

_________________
"Hath He not made us all in one island, compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" James VI/I