Stern and wild: a new Caledonia proved beyond the Scottish settlers in Panama. Pic: ©Manuel Harlan
If you thought Argentina, 1978 was bad you should have seen Panama, 1698. That was the year a fleet of ships sailed from Edinburgh to establish a Scottish colony at Darien, on the isthmus of Panama, hoping to build a road from the Atlantic to the Pacific enabling the world’s trade to pass across it.
The man behind the scheme was William Paterson. A visionary, but also a speculator, he had already founded the Bank of England. Now, despite King William III’s insistence that no English money should be subscribed to the plan, he raised £400,000 in investments in the Company of Scotland from within the country, a staggering sum. Wealth follows wealth, he urged; money makes money, and almost everyone in Scotland believed him.
As Alastair Beaton’s new play for the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) subtly points out, the parallels with recent speculative bubbles bursting, poor risk management, overseas adventures (RBS’s take over of a Dutch bank was one of the causes of its demise) are not hard to seek.
Without benefit of any advance information, the Scots colonists set up camp on a malaria infested swamp. The King prevented any kind of English trading or support for New Edinburgh, (all those Loyal lodges might care to reflect on how royally King Billy shafted Scotland at every opportunity), and the whole thing was a complete disaster. Investors lost everything, in many cases including their lives.
All this is nicely enough told in Anthony Neilson’s production, presented at one remove as a deliberately stagey play with the excellent Paul Higgins (the even more vicious spin doctor from The Thick of It and In the Loop) as Paterson.
But there’s an awful lot of telling and, as a result, not very much drama. What might have been a fantastic scene where Paterson, who survived the adventure unlike several hundred others, goes to persuade King William to compensate the shareholders in return for their support in the forthcoming Treaty of Union, is underdeveloped. Again, the modern parallels with the way banks, including RBS, were bailed out, hardly need to be underlined.
The final tableau, where the stage and auditorium are covered in worthless paper money as the names of the dead are read out and Scotland is bounced into the Union is hauntingly beautiful. As a history lesson, it’s fascinating. As a drama, it is not quite all there.
Caledonia, Kings Theatre, Edinburgh until August 26. Expected to tour later though no dates have been announced.
