THE disastrous Darien scheme, a Scottish colony in Panama in the late 1690s whose failure almost crashed Scotland’s economy, played an important role in bringing about the Act of Union in 1707.
As part of the United Kingdom, many more Scots would settle in North America, particularly in Canada and what would later become the United States.
But Darien was not the only early Scottish attempt at colonising the Americas. There were several other, often more successful, Scottish settlements in North America in the century before the Act of Union. By 1600, Scots were already trading with early colonies in America, with a Dundee ship, the Gift of God, travelling between Portugal and Newfoundland.
