Chapter XII
Orbis Ad Bellum: A History of World Wars - Chapter 2: The War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1710) (4)
Following from the immediate armistice, the lasting peace was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht. True to British promises, the final settlement in Iberia largely reflected the practical situation that already existed.
Spain, even though it had never been a formal state, was dissolved. The Aragonese lands would stay under Joseph Ferdinand, along with the Italian possessions, as a satellite of the Hasburg Empire, with an undertaking that the ancient charters, privileges and institutions of the various communities and constituent parts would be respected. This undertaking has proved a bedrock of the modern constitution of Aragon and lead to the thoroughly decentralised nature of the Confederal Kingdom we see today.
Navarre would be ceded to Aragon as the one significant territorial change between the two crowns. Like its new fellow Aragon constituents, it also keenly felt its local, separate character, and thus had also turned against the Bourbon cause.
Phillipe, Duke of Anjou was recognised as the rightful claimant to the Crown of Castile, minus Navarre, and was duly invested as King later that year. There was a conspicuous lack of a mirroring obligation about any local charters there, accepting the inevitability that duly followed of sweeping decrees to further centralise the new, unitary Kingdom of Castile in the image of the French state.
Crucially, however, France and Castile were both sworn to never share a monarch - whilst it was accepted that half of Spain would fall into the French sphere a line was drawn at absolute French control. As Italy had stayed with the Hasburgs and Aragon had historically had less involvement in the New World anyway, the overseas Spanish Empire went in its entirety to Castile.
The most dramatic development came with the Spanish Netherlands. Whilst these too would be retained for Jospeh Ferdinand as sovereign territory of the Crown of Aragon, the failure of permitted Provinces defences there to resist the token French incursions gave cover to the British-Dutch for their particular demand. As per Britain's extracted concession from the Emperor as a condition to entering the war, the Aragonese Netherlands became a co-dominium of the United Provinces. Whilst they would stay inside the Holy Roman Empire, and the provincial Estates would swear loyalty to Jospeh Ferdinand, they would also send representatives to the Estates-General in Amsterdam. The Staadtholder would have premier rights to “advise” the Emperor on the appointment of the local Governor, as well as “co-ordinate” directly with them on military matters, essentially entirely handing over what in modern parlance would be defence policy for the area. Finally, lucrative economic concessions were granted in the Aragonese Netherlands to both the Provinces and to Britain.
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The Life and Reign of William of Orange - Chapter 9 (1)
As the war closed, William’s defining mission of securing his legacy and the realms he would bequeath to his son remained as strong as ever. The settlement agreed for the Netherlands was, predictably, still incomplete in his mind, but massively secured his position there. His supporters were jubilant, heaping enormous amounts of praise upon their paragon. In a telling move, all the gains for the United Provinces were attributed both to William, and in a line suggested from up high and duly circulated on, the link with Britain. Every effort began to be made to foster a sense amongst those that matters of the strategic need to keep the Netherlands and Britain close - to what extent William pursued this in a genuine belief that it was in the best interests of the nation he was fostering, and the provinces he directly led, rather than just a hope to keep all his realms together for his son, we can never know.
The Generalists, meanwhile, were the weakest they’d ever been. Most of their support from the commercial interests were either positively swayed by the strengthened security of the Provinces, or at least heavily distracted by all the new trade concessions they’d been granted in the new condominium to the south. The Orangists struck whilst the iron was hot, arguing that the new responsibilities in the Aragonese Netherlands necessitated a re-examination of how the Provinces were governed. The Estates-General were not equipped to provide the day-to-day oversight of the new, partial, territories, and the inevitable constant dealings with the Aragonese and Holy Roman courts. And the pro-tempore military leaders of the past possessed neither the permanence nor the authority required.
Thus a very long process of horse trading began, and so whilst this occurred, William turned to that other great portion of his legacy within Britain, and redoubling his efforts on the thorny question of Scotland…
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Modern Historical Review - Re-evaluating the Legacy of the Darien Scheme, Prof. Alastair D. Carmichael
Mention “Darien Scheme” to the average man on the street in Scotland and you will likely get a quizzical look in response. Bar a tiny handful of Romantic Nationalists who will descend into a frothing rage and start making angry exclamations about “the great English betrayal and subjugation!” few have likely ever heard of it. Certainly none would give you a cogent explanation of an enormous national endeavour in the 1690s to establish a Scottish colony in Central America that ultimately ended in failure and threatened to bring the entire Scottish economy down with it.
In historical circles two key points of consensus are that the scheme was likely doomed to failure from the start, and that it was they key determinant in the political union of Scotland and England into the Kingdom of Great Britain. But are these the case?
On the first point, a common refrain (and subsequent point of interpretation) is the strong vision of the colony. The central design was to establish an overland route on the Panama isthmus, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Certainly, given the Panama and Nicaraguan canals that cross the continent today, the original planners had correctly identified a key facilitator of trade. In the typical style of RomNat literature, this vision is heralded above all other things - it was guaranteed to be successful if done correctly.
Most tend to describe it instead as “an idea ahead of its time”. Typical evidence of this is the state of engineering at the time and the chronic problems with disease that thwarted the first expedition, and likely would have thwarted the second had human affairs not intervened first. I would personally point to the problems afflicting the efforts to build the Panama Canal. We all just see the successful completion that still lives with us today, but that was so nearly not the case. Yes, the project being attempted was much more ambitious, but it had the boon of the industrial revolution to engineering and civil construction - more tellingly even with 200 years of medical advancements it was still plagued by the exact same disease problems and very nearly collapsed as a result. On this point alone it is difficult to see how the Darien scheme could have successfully conquered such a huge impediment.
Contemporary map of New Caledonia - the main settlement and outpost of the Darien Scheme. Source: Wiki Commons
Nonetheless, let us also examine the question of “English sabotage”. It is definitely the case that the scheme enjoyed no support from the English state, and huge opposition from England’s entrenched commercial interests. In particular, the East India Company was very successful in deterring English and Dutch investors, claiming the legal grants to the Scotland Company behind the scheme gave it no authority to raise subscribers outside of Scotland itself. Whilst this adds to the sabotage narrative, the scheme ultimately found no issue financing itself. The issue was more that this came entirely from Scotland itself, to the tune of about 20% of all money circulating at the time, which left the nation extremely vulnerable when the initiative did fail with no returns to show for its investors.
Whilst true, this does somewhat ignore the economic and dogmatic context of the time. Mercantilism was by far and away the dominant explanation of how and why the economy and trade operated the way it did. And it was essentially the “fixed pie” fallacy writ large. Under it’s tenants there was a fixed amount of trade and commerce, and thus any desire to acquire more had to be just that - acquired, i.e. sources from someone else. In these kind of circumstances, one might perhaps understand how English commercial interests would react especially poorly, and react so strongly, to the Scottish efforts.
The most visceral feature of the so-called betrayal, however, is the failure of William to provide anything in the vein of diplomatic or military support against Spanish interference or aggression towards the colony. But arguments as to whether this was realistic, or would have made a difference, are unconvincing. The Darien settlements were a speck of Saltire Blue in a sea of Spanish territory - all the lands surrounding it, and indeed the settlement itself, were claimed by Spain. More importantly, they were under effective Spanish control. State support against this was deemed unwise by William and his counsellors on several points.
The first was that war with France was a constant question. Even if Britain wasn’t currently at war, it would likely happen soon enough. In the course of the Darien Scheme the UK was either at war in an alliance with Spain, or was anticipating the Spanish Succession Crisis, and either way couldn’t afford to sour diplomatic ties or do anything that might push Spain into the arms of the French Kingdom.
The second was that given the strong effective control by Spain, meaningful support would have been a huge undertaking for a country with depleted military and financial resources and either preoccupied with large scale conflicts or looking to recover and regroup from one. Given the dim prospects the colonies had produced in their history, and in their judgement insufficient credible evidence of future success, they weren’t going to throw good money after bad and incur the various costs involved in doing so for no perceived benefits.
Turning to the question of political union, one can view the aftermath of the Scheme’s collapse either as a seismic shift in the thinking of the Scottish establishment, or an acceleration of a variety of forces gradually enticing Scotland to join with England. Supporting the former view, the economic ramifications of the scheme’s collapse were enormous. An outsized proportion of Scottish money and wealth was tied up with the Company of Scotland, and the debt it incurred as the Scheme and its subsequent desperate attempts at recovery became a huge millstone around the nation’s neck.
By contrast, it did take some time for Union to take place despite the immediate aftershocks of news of the final abandonment of the settlements reached Edinburgh - namely 1700 to 1710. Whilst the war had something to do with this, it remains the case that Scotland continued to operate on, heavily dented but still a going concern. In that sense, the failure was not an existential crisis. It might be better characterised as a wake up call on concerns which, whilst now worse, were pre-existent. The whole point of the Scheme in the first place was to try and correct a relative decline and imbalance compared to England, where they had no substantive trade with the growing new markets of the Indies, Asia and Africa, and many goods once produced much more plentifully within Scotland itself now had to be imported from England or elsewhere.
The Union was therefore an alternative path to prosperity, which had already been advocated for in some quarters and became more persuasive, and which those who can be bothered to engage with the RomNat fringes continue to make the case for. Namely, that rather than try to take share away from England and develop alternatives, it should join with it and receive a proportionate share of joint endeavours. As part of a single kingdom they would be able to access resources unavailable to them otherwise that then leverage Scotland’s existing natural strengths.
Of course, this characterisation does gloss over the internal power dynamics and structures at the time. The political union is often likened to a hostile corporate takeover, which is accurate bar one important reversal. In your standard corporate takeover, the outside firm bypasses the management and, one way or another, tries to effectively go round them and deal directly with the shareholders. Whilst England was still very much an outside power trying to incorporate Scotland into itself, it was the management - the elites represented in the Estates were the ones agreeing to the merger. It was the “shareholders”, the mass citizenry that were bypassed, and were furious as a result. Mass protests erupted in Edinburgh at the consideration of the Act of Union in the Scottish Parliament, and many parliamentarians were recorded at the time as seriously fearing for their lives, such was the ferocity on display.
The irony of that cannot be understated, given modern attitudes. On the odd occasion where anyone can be bothered to poll it, support for the Union, and opposition to an independent Scotland, whether inside or outside of the Concert, are vanishingly small. Even with our proportional voting systems, the Nationalists in whatever their current part form is, have still failed, despite their constant promises of “this time, we swear”, to materialise parliamentary representation. The obligatory speeches and addresses and parliamentary debates to accompany the Union bank holiday all contain the common narrative of, to quote from First Minister Hamish Alexander on the 300th anniversary of the Act, the “great partnership between Scotland and the other nations of Britain - truly one of the most enduring and most successful the world has ever seen”.
In that sense, the legacy of the Scheme is best spoken to by the very thing we began with. The Scheme is virtually unheard of in Scotland. It is but a footnote, quickly forgotten, in the history curriculum in the wider story of the development of the Kingdom. It has no popular legacy to speak of, and when it comes to that great potential political legacy of the Union itself, the Scheme is not the cause but the symptom - an illustration of broader political and economic forces that eventually culminated in the joining. And thus this essay will befall the same fate as all materials on the great Darien Scheme - a feature of an academic journal that will be seen by we subsection of those academics who actually study these things, and otherwise make no impact in the great public conscience whatsoever.
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A People’s History of the Constitution of Britain - Chapter 5
Given that the first instance of devolution didn’t take place in the UK until the best part of two centuries later, it’s ironic that it’s history begins at the very formation of the UK itself. And it’s absolutely typical of the historic elite of the country, and the old structures of governance, that a bodge absolutely born of the moment would create a precedent and inspiration that would ease meaningful progress later.
It has to be remembered that unlike our modern, consensual union of peoples, the Act of Union was agreed by a tiny elite, who had the electoral support of a franchise barely any wider, and designed entirely in the interest of the said same. From the Scottish half of that equation it was about a desperate attempt to maintain their personal economic prospects in the face of a general, seemingly unarrestable decline - but from a position of such seeming weakness they played their hand cannily. For them political union was the great concession, and they knew it was the ultimate prize for their English counterparts. Counterparts who also bluntly had little care for the demanded concessions - there was absolutely zero appetite for any great internal revolt. William’s age, weariness of his Jacobite issues and two intensive, demanding wars in the past two decades removed any potential appetite for anything but the most tranquil of joining (violent protests in Edinburgh aside). It was the perfect breeding ground for a deal - the appetite was there, and all the priorities of one side were trivial points for concession from the other.
So it was in this proud new, unitary state, in the age where established churches were still very much the thing and there was more than a little recent history of little tolerance of other religions whatsoever, that Scotland wasn’t subjected to the Church of England, and would maintain it’s own legal system and jurisdiction.
It was on this point where our precedents began. A separate legal system mandated separate Acts of Parliament to cover Scotland alone. And these were not just formalities, but had to contend with a vastly different legal order. In a bizarre state of affairs Scotland, having been the one part of the British mainland that wasn’t touched by Roman rule, was also the only part to substantially adopt it, and had many civil law aspects jumbled in with the more prevalent common law.
This hardly matched up with the new Parliament of Great Britain, which despite as today it’s disproportionate number of lawyers, had but a tiny number of Soctish members. The necessary expertise was few and far between. So it quickly became the case that on matters of implementation, rather than the broad sweeps of policy, the Commons would look to a special advisory committee composed of all Scottish MPs. It is unsurprising that those MPs took to meeting a great deal outside of formal committee sessions. And so too when these meetings took place outside of London, back in the days when a session of Parliament was an event that one would have to travel for, rather than today’s legislature that sits for most of the year and rightly expects its members to be based out of the capital. Edinburhg was still the Scottish capital, so it made plenty of sense to do so there, with the added bonus that they just so happened to know of excellent venues for parliamentarians that happened to not be in use by anyone else. And thus almost entirely accidentally, the Scottish Parliament was established (as an entity within a non-sovereign Scotland) many, many decade before the fact…
Reproduced cartoon from the time of the Act of Union. Source: Wiki Commons
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The Life and Reign of William of Orange - Chapter 9 (2)
When the ink dried on the final settlement, William was again in a position of having supreme ambition met unrealised, but this time he was even closer to his ultimate goal, and it could be considered nothing short of an enormous personal victory. The Generalists had never been able to mount an effective counter to the Orangists’ central proposition, and so all the concessions they did eventually win were pure damage limitation.
There would be a strong, single, permanent executive figure who would be enshrined as Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch forces, and would be pre-eminent in setting foreign policy. They would not be a hereditary monarch - the Estates fiercely insisting that as with the provincial Stadtholders, they would select this new executive, who would serve for life.
But there was no question who would be this new executive - the process to induct William was but a formality, and it was given the appropriately grand, more-monarchical-but-still-not-quite name of ‘Regent of the Netherlands’. But in a telling further parallel to the Statdholders, they also proactively named William’s successor to the definitely not hereditary position - his son, William, Prince of Wales.
It was a bittersweet irony that he would not get to enjoy this new position, both in terms of the office and in terms of his elevated standing, for longer. Come his installation he was already 60, an excellent number of years for anyone in that age. The establishing of the new world order on the continent required greater personal travel by the King himself, which increasingly did not agree with his health. It is on one of these cross Channel voyages that he is believed to have the caught a fatal case of pneumonia. Feeling ill, he was rushed to one of the more tranquil members of the royal estates, and naturally attended to by the finest physicians in the land. But it was all for naught, and on February 6th, 1711 the word was sent out to lower all flags to half mast - the King was dead, long live the King.
In his wake he left the House of Orange in the most prestigious position it had never owned, a somewhat miraculous heir to continue it, and a brand new partnership of states. A partnership that was quickly proving itself to be a new, powerful player in European and world affairs, had under William become much institutionally stronger, and would plant the seed for so much more to come. It is quite possibly William’s strongest legacy today, and why, quite rightly, when one strolls down Parliament Square today, they will see his statue right alongside the likes of FvR, Franklin, Grisholm, and of course his own son, all collectively dubbed with the most appropriate of epithets - Founding Figures of the Concert.
Statue of William III in Parliament Square. Source: Wiki Commons
- - - End of Part I - - -
. But it's here now, and in partial compensation, this one is massive - 2-3 times longer than my typical update, and closes off Part I. To anyone still around, hope you enjoy and it's at least a little bit worht the wait.
