Darién Scheme

The recent post which name-checked the Darién Gap reminded me of a key moment in British history that stands all but forgotten today—namely, the Darién scheme. This was Scotland’s one and only attempt to get a slice of the exploration pie (later on, many British explorers of Africa like Mungo Park and David Livingstone were of Scottish origin), but it ended up much as one would expect Highlanders going to sea would. Except much more ruinous.

Without going into the intricate theological and political tensions in the latter part of the 17th century: many Scots held loyalty to the deposed, and Scottish, James II. Since James VI of Scotland ascended to the throne of England upon the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the two kingdoms, still distinct at this point, had been led by one monarch (or Lord Protector, at times). While the Scottish Parliament and people continued to insist their kingdom’s independence, in reality, this was quite strained. Thanks to its lucrative overseas expeditions and good position, England was quickly rising to prominence and economic boom. Scotland, on the other hand, still consisted primarily of subsistence farmers and the like, not able to produce much or compete in the European economy.

So they decided to do something about it. In 1694, the Bank of England was established; the next year, a Bank of Scotland was created alongside it, with much the same goals but significantly less money. Around the same time, the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies was founded by William Paterson. Paterson, a Scot, had come up with the idea for the Bank of England, and was now eager to make Scotland economically prosperous by getting a piece of the overseas trade pie. The Company of Scotland was granted a trade monopoly in Asia, Africa, and America—the first two, permanently. Paterson had hoped on some support from the English, but they got indignant at their northern neighbors’ attempt to enter the trade world, and refused to provide funds. Furthermore, the English went beyond that, going to foreign bankers and threatening an effective embargo if they helped the Scots.

The Isthmus of Panama, then also known as the Isthmus of Darién.

Paterson now needed a different source of money for his sally into Darién. None of the hardships had deterred him, because he believed so strongly in the isthmus’s ability to do Scotland good. So he went to the Scottish public. They were all too willing to help, fueled by a desire to see their nation succeed and stick it to the English. Soon, a good £400,000 had been raised. For comparison’s sake, the Bank of Scotland had only a quarter of that when it begun, and that total was nearly half of all the money circulating in Scotland.

In July 1698, five ships set sail. Only Paterson and the commander of the expedition even knew the final destination; the other 1,200 settlers were informed while on board. The trip was supposed to last six months, but somehow they had only brought food for six. Much of the rest of the room was filled with goods intended to be traded with the local tribes. Seventy people died on the voyage alone, and when Darién was finally reached in October, it wasn’t quite the ideal place as had been expected. Instead, it was pretty much a worthless piece of land, full of mosquitoes that began to kill twelve settlers a day. To make matters worse, the Spanish once more staked their claim to the region, and got belligerent. The Native Americans were friendly and helped out the pitiful settlers, but had no use for the goods that were brought for trading, and these remained unsold. In July 1699, the survivors returned, beaten and discouraged.

Caledonia Bay

If only the rest of the nation could have been so. In November of that year, another six ships set out; a third fleet, soon after the second. Although this third fleet was better prepared, it was nonetheless unable to overcome the Spanish and the hostile land. In April 1700, this last fleet prepared to go home. Four ships set out, but two were sunk and the other two were seized in foreign ports.

All in all, over 2,000 Scots died, and the profitless scheme left the country in financial ruin. The Bank of Scotland couldn’t survive, and went bankrupt in 1704. King William, monarch over both England and Scotland, was annoyed. Scots blamed England for the obviously doomed failure, as they had withheld financial support. England now saw their northern neighbor as an economic rival to be destroyed, even though the Darién scheme had already destroyed the economy already. There seemed to be but one option left: the death of an independent Scotland. England offered about £400,000 in a union agreement, and the Scots were left with little choice. In 1707, the United Kingdom was established, with Scotland in a very much weakened position to England. Later Scottish attempts to restore the Stuart line to the throne were unsuccessful—the second Jacobite rebellion (“the Forty-Five”) ended with the disastrous Battle of Culloden, in which Highlanders fighting for their honor were massacred by English with guns.

So if you’re a fan of the United Kingdom, you may want to turn towards Panama in thanks the next time you sing God Save the Queen.

Much of this was adapted from Arthur Herman’s excellent book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World.

Cape to Cairo

The above cartoon, which was drawn by Edward Linley Sambourne and appeared in Punch magazine in December 1892, is a familiar illustration used as a representation of European colonialism in Africa. The cartoon itself is a visual pun: it depicts British diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes in a pose reminiscent of the Colossus of Rhodes of the ancient world, stringing a telegraph line from Cape Town to Cairo.

The popular Cape-to-Cairo concept Rhodes promoted envisioned a "red line" of British territories stretching north-south from Egypt to South Africa, but there was just one thing that stood in the way of realizing this goal: German East Africa, which is now Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.


So how did Rhodes build his telegraph line? Well, I stumbled upon a New York Times article dated June 23, 1918, which revealed that Rhodes had negotiated directly with Kaiser Wilhelm II to obtain permission for his telegraph to pass through German East Africa. Apparently, Rhodes met with the Kaiser in Potsdam in 1899 and struck a bargain which allowed Germany a free hand in its interests in Mesopotamia in exchange for concessions for the Cape to Cairo line. The article claims that this meeting was a factor in Germany's decision to stay aloof of the Anti-British sentiment during the Second Boer War. (Read the full article here.)

The upshot of it all is that by 1899, Cecil Rhodes was not even a statesman any more. He had been the Prime Minister of Cape Colony in the 1890s but he resigned in the aftermath of the 1895 Jameson Raid fiasco. So how could a mere civilian have the nerve to negotiate with a foreign sovereign over matters of imperial import?

In any case, we know the Cape to Cairo dream never materialized. The concept lives on, however, in the Cape-Cairo Railroad and the Cairo-Cape Town Highway, both of which have uncompleted sections and "missing links" not unlike the Darién Gap of the Pan-American Highway.

EDIT:
The connected string of British possessions from Cape to Cairo finally came about in 1919, 17 years after Rhodes' death, when the UK was granted the Tanganyika portion of German East Africa by the Treaty of Versailles (Ruanda-Urundi went to Belgium).

Tsar Tank

It's big. It's armored. It's got cannons and machine guns. And it's . . . a motorized tricycle. Oh, call it the Tsar Tank.

Conventional history tells us the British invented tanks in WWI. They came up with the brilliant idea of putting metal armor on armed, all-terrain vehicles that could climb obstacles, cross trenches, and ultimately, break the stalemate on the Western Front. Other countries saw the potential of tanks and caught on, thus making the British tanks not only the first manifestation of the concept, but also the progenitor of all future tanks to come. Right?

Wrong. The clumsy, rhomboid tanks of the Mark series that lumbered across the fields of the Somme in June 1916 were anything but the history-making ace-in-the-hole. Their cross-country capabilities were overestimated, mechanical failures all too common, and their size made them vulnerable to light artillery, not to mention the Marks looked nothing like any of the successful tanks that came after. The true ancestor of all tanks is in fact the French Renault FT-17, which can easily be called the first modern tank. Its revolutionary design is immediately recognizable as the classic tank layout today: A fully rotating gun turret on top, tracks on bottom, engine in the back, and crew in the front. The only important thing the British Marks added to tank design was caterpillar tracks. And they weren't even unique in being the first to come up with the idea of an all-purpose armored vehicle.


Meet the Tsar Tank, which must be the most bizarre armored vehicle anyone has ever dreamed of. Also known as the Lebedenko Tank after its designer Nicholas Lebedenko, the Tsar tank represented Imperial Russia’s attempt to develop a fighting vehicle which combined mobility, protection, and firepower for the attacking side.

Lebedenko, who was an employed engineer designing artillery pieces for the Russian War Department at the time, came up with the idea in 1914. You could see the influence of Lebedenko’s job on his design: the Tsar Tank resembled a very large artillery carriage. Weighing some 60 tons, the tank featured a pair of 9-meter high front wheels and a T-shaped body which tapered down to a smaller double wheel in the rear, and could hold a crew of 10 men.



Each big wheel was driven by a 240-horsepower Maybach engine, which was estimated to allow the Tsar Tank to reach a top speed of 17 kilometers per hour. The armaments were to be placed on a centrally-located top turret, a smaller belly turret, as well as on the flanks of the body. Because of its extreme size, the Tsar Tank was planned to be transported to the front lines in pieces, then re-assembled when ready for action.

A small working model of the machine was made and demonstrated to Nicholas II, who was impressed by its performance when it was able to cross some small obstacles. He then approved of the project and personally sponsored it, thus giving the Tsar Tank its nickname.

The prototype was completed in July 1915, and the first tests took place in August before a military panel. The vehicle successfully crossed some solid ground, ran over a tree, but then suddenly stopped when its rear wheels got stuck in a ditch while it was in a soft patch of ground. The failure of the tank to free its rear wheels showed that the engines were not powerful enough. A follow-up plan to develop more powerful engines never materialized because the Russian army decided to discontinue the project. The tank, which had already consumed some quarter million rubles, was too expensive, claimed the army, and its huge spoked wheels were probably too vulnerable to artillery damage.

So what became of the Tsar Tank? It sat for years in that ditch, forgotten in the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War, before it was finally scrapped in 1923. Imagine how different the world of armored warfare would have been, had the Tsar Tank worked!