{"id":90,"date":"2010-04-01T00:17:06","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T07:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scotshonor.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2010-04-01T09:30:05","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T16:30:05","slug":"surving-stupidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scotshonor.com\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"Surviving Stupidity"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Paterson is probably the Scottish equivalent of Barack Obama.\u00a0 He was a trader in the West Indies and he later founded the Bank of England.\u00a0 One would think that the man who founded the Bank of England would be someone to admire, but it might be hard to convince a Scotsman, based on the damage he did to their country.\u00a0\u00a0 You see, William Paterson convinced a majority of the citizens of Scotland to do something so stupid that it literally bankrupted the country.\u00a0 The time was 1695, and even though Scotland was in dire economic straits at home, the citizens scraped together \u20a4400,000 in order to fund a colony, so that Scotland could begin building an Empire.\u00a0 Since all of the good locations for a colony were long gone, Scotland was left with some rather undesirable options.\u00a0 They seriously considered garden spots like Greenland and Africa before William Paterson intervened to convince them of the ideal spot:\u00a0 Darien.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hmmm.\u00a0 Having a little trouble placing Darien on the map, are we?\u00a0 Well, Darien is now known as Panama.\u00a0 This was the ideal spot, in the brilliant mind of Mr. Paterson, because even then people knew the value of the Isthmus of Panama.\u00a0 Scotland would control the trade between the Atlantic and the Pacific.\u00a0 What could possibly go wrong?\u00a0 It was hard to believe that someone else hadn\u2019t already grabbed up this gem.\u00a0 Okay, technically the Spanish had grabbed it up, but they didn\u2019t have anyone actually living there.\u00a0 So, in 1698, the Scottish people rejoiced as they sent off 1,200 people in five ships to establish the Scottish Empire.\u00a0 A few minor problems developed.\u00a0 One problem is that the Scots are used to a climate that is cold and rainy.\u00a0 Panama is certainly rainy, but not exactly cold.\u00a0 Tropical jungle, or as they say in Scotland, bloody\u00a0swamp, \u00a0is probably a better description.\u00a0 The Scots soon learned about several tropical diseases that made them hunger after kilt wearing weather.\u00a0 Then there was this little problem that Spain had a lot more ships and troops, and they were not very welcoming to this colony on their territory.\u00a0 But perhaps the final straw was that King William, who had Scottish roots, ordered the English to avoid trading with Darien, for fear of offending Spain.\u00a0 The Scots literally found themselves starving, waist deep in mud, tormented by mosquitos,\u00a0 deathly ill from malaria and yellow fever, unable to trade anything with anyone, all the while being constantly shot at by the annoyed Spanish.\u00a0 Nice!<\/p>\n

The colony was a complete and total failure, with the few survivors surrendering to the Spanish army in an act of desperation.\u00a0 Of course, the people in Scotland did not know that, so they blissfully sent another expedition with another 1,200 Scots.\u00a0 If anything, these people had it even worse, and they never actually got to go ashore at Darien.\u00a0 The few survivors of the\u00a0disastrous sea voyage promptly surrendered to the Spanish Navy waiting for them.\u00a0 \u00a0Historical records show that approximately 2,400 Scots traveled to Darien.\u00a0 The best estimate is that about 30 of them somehow managed to return.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But, the story does not end there.\u00a0 Bankrupt Scotland agreed to sign the Act of Union.\u00a0 For their part of the deal, England paid back the people who had invested in Darien everything they had lost, with 5% interest.\u00a0 The Scots may have been incredibly stupid in trying to establish Darien, but they clearly learned their lesson.\u00a0 This money was later used to found the Royal Bank of Scotland and the rest is history.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

[copy of the announcement of the Equivalency Fund, reimbursing those had had invested in Darien]<\/p>\n

I guess the point is that the United States is not the first country to commit economic suicide by following the leadership of someone who was absolutely clueless.\u00a0 \u00a0We can, at least, take comfort that others have been just as stupid as those who voted for the brilliant leadership of Pelosi, Obama and Reid.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the price of stupidity in 2010 is likely to be similar to that experienced by the Scots in 1698, but we, hopefully, won\u2019t lose as many lives.\u00a0 Who knows, maybe we can find someone, say the Chinese, to fund our stupidity so that we can prosper in the future.<\/p>\n

[Pictures and historical records from:]<\/strong><\/p>\n

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
\nSPECIAL COLLECTIONS DEPARTMENT<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Book of the Month<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

May 2005<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Darien Scheme <\/strong><\/p>\n

Darien<\/em><\/strong> letters : from the Spencer Collection Glasgow University Library. <\/em><\/strong>Glasgow<\/strong> : 1971 Sp Coll Spencer Add. q2<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cundall, Frank.<\/strong> <\/strong>\u00a0The Darien Venture. <\/em><\/strong>New York<\/strong> : 1926 Sp Coll Spencer 63<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Prebble, John.\u00a0 The Darien disaster. <\/em>\u00a0London : 1968 Economics P486.D6 PRE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Taylor, Benjamin. The Darien Expedition<\/em>. [Paisley] : [1892] Sp Coll Spencer 71<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Paterson is probably the Scottish equivalent of Barack Obama.\u00a0 He was a trader in the West Indies and he later founded the Bank of England.\u00a0 One would think that the man who founded the Bank of England would be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nSurviving Stupidity - SCOTS HONOR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scotshonor.com\/?p=90\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Surviving Stupidity - 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