Today (Monday) marks 310 years since the Acts of Union came into effect. That anniversary spotted, curiously, in today's (1st May) The Times 'Weather Eye' by Paul Simons.
It seems that the weather in the 1690s was 'horrendously cold, and Scotland was hit particularly hard.'
There had been a 'disastrous downturn in the climate'.
'The Cairngorms were permanently covered in snow, the seas were so cold that cod couldn't survive, and Eskimos even reached Aberdeen in kayaks, one of which is now on display in the University of Aberdeen Museum.' (Obviously the Eskimos had not encountered anybody with flat feet before embarking - more on that in a related post later).
'The staple crop of oats failed and people were reduced to eating nettles and grass... small wonder that this period was marked by trials of witches, who were blamed for the atrocious weather.'
Paul Simons' very interesting article concludes:
In one final act of desperation, the Scots tried to set up a colony in the Darien jungle of Panama - it was a total disaster that bankrupted the Scottish economy, and the only salvation was the Act of Union with England.'
I have sometimes wondered if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set his 'Lost World' on the same Darien Isthmus partly to reflect his personal/political leanings. Having twice run for Parliament in the early 1900s (in Edinburgh and again in the Borders) Conan Doyle's Unionist Party sympathies may have led him to consider Scotland's failed Darien efforts to be illustrative of a position less successful than that which benefitted from Union with Scotland's southern neighbour whose more successful East India Company venture the Darien scheme was never able to match.
A Weather-Eye on a Historical Moment
Today (Monday) marks 310 years since the Acts of Union came into effect. That anniversary spotted, curiously, in today's (1st May) The Times 'Weather Eye' by Paul Simons.
It seems that the weather in the 1690s was 'horrendously cold, and Scotland was hit particularly hard.'
There had been a 'disastrous downturn in the climate'.
'The Cairngorms were permanently covered in snow, the seas were so cold that cod couldn't survive, and Eskimos even reached Aberdeen in kayaks, one of which is now on display in the University of Aberdeen Museum.' (Obviously the Eskimos had not encountered anybody with flat feet before embarking - more on that in a related post later).
'The staple crop of oats failed and people were reduced to eating nettles and grass... small wonder that this period was marked by trials of witches, who were blamed for the atrocious weather.'
Paul Simons' very interesting article concludes:
In one final act of desperation, the Scots tried to set up a colony in the Darien jungle of Panama - it was a total disaster that bankrupted the Scottish economy, and the only salvation was the Act of Union with England.'
I have sometimes wondered if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set his 'Lost World' on the same Darien Isthmus partly to reflect his personal/political leanings. Having twice run for Parliament in the early 1900s (in Edinburgh and again in the Borders) Conan Doyle's Unionist Party sympathies may have led him to consider Scotland's failed Darien efforts to be illustrative of a position less successful than that which benefitted from Union with Scotland's southern neighbour whose more successful East India Company venture the Darien scheme was never able to match.