The story of one of Scotland’s biggest fiascos – the failure of the Darian scheme to found a Scottish colony in central America – is to take centre stage at this year’s Edinburgh Inter-national Festival.
The 17th-century scheme, led by William Paterson, to found a colony on the isthmus of Panama not only lost a significant portion of Scotland’s wealth, but also cost 2,000 lives, and is believed to have led directly to the 1707 Treaty of Union with England.
