as "Great Britain". Nevertheless, Acts of Parliament attempting to unite the two countries failed in 1606, 1667, and 1689. Beginning in 1698, the Company of Scotland sponsored the Darien scheme, an ill-fated attempt to establish a Scottish trading colony in the Isthmus of Panama, collecting from Scots investments equal to one-quarter of all the money circulating in Scotland at the time. In the face of opposition by English commercial interests, the Company of Scotland also raised subscriptions in Amsterdam, Hamburg, and London for its scheme. For his part, King William III of England and II of Scotland had given only lukewarm support to the Scottish colonial endeavour. England was at war with France, and hence did not want to offend Spain, which claimed the territory as part of New Granada. England was also under pressure from the London-based East India Company, which was anxious to maintain its monopoly over English foreign trade. It therefore forced the English and Dutch investors to withdraw. Next, the East India Company threatened legal action, on the grounds that the Scots had no authority from the king to raise funds outside the king's realm, and obliged the promoters to refund subscriptions to the Hamburg investors. This left no source of finance but Scotland itself. The colonisation ended in a military confrontation with the Spanish in 1700, but most colonists died of tropical diseases. This was an economic disaster for the Scottish ruling class investors and diminished the resistance of the Scottish political establishment to the idea of political union with England. It ultimately supported the union, despite some popular opposition and anti-union riots in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and elsewhere. Deeper political integration had been a key policy of Queen Anne ever since she had acceded to the thrones of the three kingdoms in 1702. Under the aegis of the Queen and her ministers in both kingdoms, in 1705 the parliaments of England and Scotland agreed to participate in fresh negotiations for a treaty of union. Treaty negotiations It was agreed that England and Scotland would each appoint thirty-one commissioners to conduct the negotiations. The Scottish Parliament then began to arrange an election of the commissioners to negotiate on behalf of Scotland, but in September 1705, the leader of the Country Party, the Duke of Hamilton, who had previously attempted to obstruct the negotiation of a treaty, proposed that the Scottish commissioners should be nominated by the