Scotland, Darien and the Atlantic World, 1698-1700

It broadens what we know about the Company of Scotland beyond British history and into its rightful place in the saga of the multinational, tumultuous seventeenth-century Atlantic world.



Julie Orr offers an in-depth analysis of the complex sociopolitics into which the Scots recklessly inserted themselves through their choice of Darien for settlement. Entanglement with slave-trading interests; the trial of five expedition participants in Spain; the dispatch of Admiral Benbow to the Caribbean with offers of assistance to Spanish governors; the activities of the Scottish spy Walter Herries; and the unintended diaspora of deserters, prisoners and survivors - all are afforded their rightful place in the story of Scotland's attempt to establish a trading colony on the isthmus of Panama.

Julie Orr is an independent scholar who acquired a PhD in history from the University of Dundee following a career in environmental health and science for a series of tribal, state and federal governments.