, Columnist
Nicola Sturgeon Has Only Made Scottish Independence Harder
Financial failure brought Scotland into United Kingdom. Only very broad success is likely to take them out.
What comes next?
Photographer: ANDY BUCHANAN/AFPThis article is for subscribers only.
The union between Scotland and England was partly born of catastrophic financial failure.
In the late 1690s, the Company of Scotland announced a scheme to set up a colony at Darien on the isthmus of Central America. This would, the directors believed, make Scotland an imperial power — and, given the levels of gold and silver Darien was blessed with, a very rich one at that. There was so much, said one writer at the time, that even Peruvian gold and silver reserves were “like a mouse to an elephant in comparison of the Mines of Darien.”