ABSTRACT
A handful of Scottish entrepreneurs dreamed that the trading entrepot would sit astride the flow of Spanish gold and silver from South America and allow Scotland to share in the riches of the New World. The Kingdom of Scotland in the 1690s was part of a political arrangement that had one crown shared by the Stuarts presiding over England and Scotland. Politically, Scotland was evolving past the turmoil that plagued Britain during the seventeenth century. Ambitious Scottish financiers and entrepreneurs like William Paterson and Andrew Fletcher thought of the Company of Scotland as an instrument by which the Scots would acquire their fair share of wealth through trade. The actual selling of shares was done from a subscription book. Unlike Amsterdam or London, Scotland lacked a stock market that centralized its financial activities. Relations between Scotland and England were not good in the aftermath of the Darien disaster.
