including headings New Granada, Bolivar and Gran Colombia, Gran Colombia, A republic of caudíllos, Mainly democracy, ...
Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan by birth and the central figure in the story of the independence movements of Latin America, is a young officer in Caracas in 1810. He is part of the conspiracy by which a junta ex...
The modern nations of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador are grouped together, from 1740, as the Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada with its capital at Bogotá.The second half of the 18th century is a time of...
On 19 April 1810 Venezuelan officers expel the Spanish governor from Caracas and form a junta to run the province. On May 25 a regional government takes over in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, on behalf of Ferdinand VII....
Caracas, the capital of the province of Venezuela, gives the lead in April 1810. But Bogotá, capital of the entire viceroyalty of New Granada is not far behind. On July 20 citizens throw out the Spanish officials...
A string of islands, between Florida and Venezuela, encloses the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The tightly clustered group at the southern end of this chain provides an easy sequence of stepping stones to the thr...
As yet the republic is little more than a notion, for Venezuela and Ecuador are still securely in Spanish hands. But the Liberator soon puts this right. In Venezuela on 24 June 1821 he wins a battle at Carabobo which yie...
As yet Gran Colombia is little more than a notion, for Venezuela and Ecuador are still securely in Spanish hands. But the Liberator soon puts this right. On 24 June 1821 he wins a battle at Carabobo which yields to him o...
The crisis of 1826 brings Bolívar back from Peru to Gran Colombia. He appeases Páez, allowing him a degree of autonomy in Venezuela, but in doing so he provokes opposition in Colombia - where he assumes dic...
The Atlantic ocean begins to acquire a western edge and a definable shape after the discovery of the Caribbean by Columbus in 1492, followed by the exploration of the coast of Venezuela by a Spaniard (Alonso de Ojeda) in...
By 1830 Bolívar is isolated, ineffective and increasingly ill. Santander has been exiled after the 1828 attempt on Bolívar's life (in which he was not directly implicated). And in 1829 Páez has launc...
Yet Peru is also a province of immense wealth and importance in the Spanish empire - a fact acknowledged in the second half of the 16th-century, when the viceroyalty of Peru adminsters the whole of Spanish south America...
In the 18th century these two viceroyalties seem unwieldy. They are split into four. New Spain keeps the West Indies and the mainland down to Panama (though the southern region, Guatemala, has semi-autonomy under a capta...
The Aztec kingdom in Mexico is conquered in 1521, followed by a campaign against the Maya in Yucatan. Central America, from Guatemala to Nicaragua, is brought under Spanish control between 1524 and 1526. In the southern...
