Early Spanish Rule, 1525-1717 Grand Colombia, 1819-1830







Viceroyalty of New Granada, 1718-1810/19



A.) New Granada 1717-1789

By 1714, the King PHILIP V. of the new Bourbon Dynasty had reestablished royal authority over Spain and now was able to focus his attention to the vast colonial Empire. The Bourbon administration pursued many reforms, one of them being the reorganization of South America's administration.
The Presidencia of Santa Fe de Bogota was elevated into a Viceroyalty. It's seat remained in Santa Fe de Bogota; in the north, the Audiencia de Panama, in the south, the Presidencia de Quito, in the east the Captaincy of Venezuela were added.



Such as the Greater Viceroyalty of Peru had been before, the new Viceroyalty of New Granada was vast in size, the communications with outlying areas were poor and these areas, such as the Captaincy of Venezuela and the Presidency of Quito (Ecuador) enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. The Dutch had established themselves firmly at Curaçao and the coast of Guyana; the Spanish accepted their presence. The Viceroyalty expanded into the Amazon jungles, establishing the town of Tabatinga on the upper Amazon in 1780 - the reason why Colombia today owns a stretch of land reaching the river.
New Granada's economy continued to be complementary to that of Spain, serving the needs of the mother country, supplying raw materials and providing a market for goods manufactured in Spain. Import tariffs were high, a mercantilist tool to discourage trade with other countries. The economy was primarily based on cheap labour, provided by exploited Amerindians and imported negro slaves. The harsh conditions under which these slaves had to work repeatedly caused slave rebellions. Runaway slaves established mountain towns called Palenques, illegal settlements outside of Spanish control.
In 1765-1766, Quito saw a rebellion against increased taxation; in 1781 the Comunero revolt, also caused by taxation, began in Socorro (Colombia, Dept. Santander). The rigidity of the official economic policy resulted in illegal activities such as smuggling. The Dutch, who in the 1670es seized to extend their colonial Empire and were content with peaceful trade, were the main partners in this business.


A.) New Granada 1789-1819

The French Revolution lead to the Coalition Wars. Spain soon became a French ally. As a consequence, the superior British navy both severed Spain's communication with it's American colonies and attacked where it pleased. The British navy took Trinidad in 1797 and held on to it; Spain ceded it in the Peace of Amiens in 1802.
Spanish America was left on it's own for decades. In 1811/1812, Creole Councils had been formed in most of the provinces of New Granada, advocating to declare independence from Spain. They were split in two camps, one advocating a centralist unified state with capital in Bogota, the other a federalist state with provincial autonomy. As they did not reach a compromise, various provinces one by one declared their independence from Spain, beginning in 1812. Meanwhile, in Spain the Bourbon dynasty had reestablished itself and sent an expedition to New Granada with the task to retake the colony. The independence movement was threatened; there were many who defected the cause because of a pardon granted to those who renewed their allegiance to the king. In 1817, with much of Venezuela in the hands of the Spanish and Bogota hard pressed, Simon Bolivar returned from exile (he went to in 1815) and reorganized the forces of the independents. In 1819 the Spanish were defeated in the decisive Battle of Boyaca, and independence was now a fact.






EXTERNAL
FILES 		Country Study : Colombia, from Library of Congress
Colombian History, from the Univ. of the Andes
Articles from Infoplease : Colombia, New Granada
Article from the Catholic Encyclopedia : Bogota
DOCUMENTS Map : Nouveau Royaume de Grenade, Nouvelle Andalousie et Guyanne, from Bonne, Atlas Encyclopedique, 1787-88
REFERENCE John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire. A Concise History of Latin America, N.Y. : W.W. Norton 2002



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2001, last revised on October 30th 2005

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