How Scottish independence died in Panama

It was a ruinous central American adventure that forced the Scots to sign the Act of Union, writes mike power

With the Scottish National Party holding a seven per cent lead over Labour ahead of the May 3 parliamentary elections, many Scots see the polls as a chance to re-assert the country's independence.

The elections will take place two days after the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union that politically united Scotland and England. But few people know that Scotland was forced by economic necessity to sign that Act following a ruinous attempt to establish a trading colony at Darien in the inhospitable jungles of Panama.

The decision to set up a Scottish colony in the tropics was driven by domestic economic crisis. At the end of the 17th Century, Scotland was weary after years of war and famine, its trade damaged by England's