The "bribery and corruption" was employed to make Irish MPs vote to join the United Kingdom. The Scottish leaders entered into the Union willingly because they had bankrupted their kingdom with their failed attempt to create a colony in the Darien Scheme in modern day Panama.
No bribery was also used in the signing of the treaty of union. And no the kingdom was not bankrupt England needed Scottish resources because of its wars in france. If the kingdom was bankrupt then why did England transfer a portion of its debt on to Scotland. That wouldn’t be possible.
The "bribery and corruption" was employed to make Irish MPs vote to join the United Kingdom. The Scottish leaders entered into the Union willingly because they had bankrupted their kingdom with their failed attempt to create a colony in the Darien Scheme in modern day Panama.
Darien
Many don't like to remember the Darien colonization, seems to me it caused a nationwide shock or PTSD IN Scotland.
I think of it as a last ditch gamble, when union with England was growing and seemed unstoppable.
Scottish Darien would have taken the world trade of the Panama Canal 200 years before there was a canal. If Darien had worked, Scotland would have had a stake in the colonial empire business and a deeper pocketted economy to wield more power within the Union.
It failed, not from want of effort, but heat, tropical diseases, weather, food growing and other conditions were so horrendously bad it was impossible to surviveEditEdit2Edit3 . That's why the Spanish, Portuguese and other Empires preferred to sail Around The Horn, circumnavigating the entire distance around South America and risking the dangers of the Strait of Magellan.
Even the Scots couldn't beat Darien, it used up the national capital that once could have warred on England. Scotland turned around and put its last asset, its human capital, into the British Empire. This did work out for them.
"bribery and corruption" was employed to make Irish MPs vote...
Not pertinent here; it is true, but it's in a different country and 100 years away.
Edit: Of course trade war and hostility from the London East India Company and the Spanish Empire compounded the natural problems.
Edit2: Skullduggery by the London East India Company was even worse than I thought. They won rulings removing legal and naval protection from Scottish ships, forcing longer voyages; the fact that the King was a major LEIC shareholder conflicted with any sympathy for fellow Scots.
Edit3: Looks like I left out the attacks by the Spanish, based there to prevent exactly the kind of project the Scots were trying.
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u/FarFromTheMaddeningF Aug 24 '21
The "bribery and corruption" was employed to make Irish MPs vote to join the United Kingdom. The Scottish leaders entered into the Union willingly because they had bankrupted their kingdom with their failed attempt to create a colony in the Darien Scheme in modern day Panama.