The Darien Adventure

[Monco]

Originally posted by Steaphan
Just one point I'd like to make about the Darien Scheme or rather self-appointed historians' portrayal of the Darien Scheme. It seems to me that just about every "failure" in our history, such as Culloden or the Darien scheme was "doomed" to failure already - according to our self-appointed historians. But success stories such as Bannockburn were "lucky".

Self-appointed historians? I don't see it as appropriate that the state should appoint them. But it is true - and I recall what my History tutor told me - that Scottish history wasn't very well written up until about 30 years ago, and we were told not to bother with books over 30 years old because they were inevitably written from a Whig perspective.

That has changed, and books being written now on Scottish history are written from different perspectives. So what you say about earlier works of historians does have some justice to it. But there have been a lot of good works in the last 10 years or so.