Last modified: 2003-09-06 by dov gutterman
Keywords: panama | darien | scotland |
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Scottish East India Company
by Zeljko Heimer, 3 September 2003
Scotland briefly had a disastrous colony on the Mosquito Coast of what is now Nicaragua. It
pretty nearly bankrupted the country and was one of the things
that precipitated union with England. Did this colony ever have
its own flag, or did it simply use the flag of Scotland or some
Scottish ensign?
James Dignan, 2 September 2003
There is a flag in FTTAAATW, p. 204 [smi75b], second row, first flag,
which was explained to me as the flag of the Scots adventure in
Central America. The flag is identified as "Pav:de la Compe
das Inde Oriente d'Eocssie."
Jim Ferrigan, 2 September 2003
Make that "Pavillon de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales
d'Ecosse" which translates as: "Scottish East India
Company". I have a feeling that refers to the East Indies
(Asia-Pacific), not the Caribbean.
Albert Kirsch, 2 September 2003
The flag looks like modern Kiribati
without the bird (of course, allow for the artistic differences).
Zeljko Heimer, 2 September 2003
The Scottish colony was at Darien (Panama) in 1699. Here is an
image of a flag from the
F.E.Hulme edition of Flags of the World which is similar to the
"Scottish East India Company" flag in FTTAAATW, p. 204
, second row. Described as the signal for 'engage the enemy' in
An Essay on Signals dated 1788.
David Prothero, 2 September 2003
That probably was the flag of the venture. As with many 17th
century colonial enterprises, the Scottish colony in Darien was
administered by a private company of investors, not the central
government. In this case the company was officially named the
Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies. It was
founded in June 1695. I don't think there was any other Scottish
company called "The East India Company", and it was
very likely the above company would have been often referred to
by that name. The idea behind the Darien colony was for it to
serve as a transhipment point for goods from the Far East to
Europe, eliminating the detour of having to round Cape Horn.
Ned Smith, 2 September 2003
