Overview

In 1698, Scotland bet everything on a strip of jungle in Panama-and lost a nation. The Darien Scheme was supposed to make Scotland rich beyond imagination. William Paterson, the visionary founder of the Bank of England, promised investors that a Scottish colony on the Isthmus of Panama would become ""the door of the seas, and the key of the universe""-a trading empire to rival anything in Europe. Scots from every walk of life-nobles and farmers, ministers and widows-poured a staggering one-fifth of their nation's wealth into the venture. Over 2,500 colonists sailed for the New World with dreams of glory and fortune. What they found instead was a fever-haunted jungle, Spanish hostility, English betrayal, and a catastrophe so complete it would reshape the map of Britain forever. Within a year, 2,000 of them were dead. The rest fled in despair. Scotland was bankrupt. CALEDONIA'S RUIN 1695-1707 tells the gripping true story of one of history's most devastating financial disasters-a tale of visionary ambition, national pride, tropical disease, political treachery, and the terrible human cost of a dream that died in the jungle. Drawing on original documents from the Company of Scotland archives and the harrowing journals of survivors, this meticulously researched narrative reveals how a failed colony in Panama led directly to the Act of Union in 1707, forging the United Kingdom and changing the course of British history. A masterwork of narrative history that reads like a thriller.

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