Gran Colombia
Gran Colombia (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈɡɾaŋ koˈlombja] , "Great Colombia"), or Greater Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: República de Colombia), was a state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central America from 1819 to 1831. It included present-day Colombia, mainland Ecuador (i.e. excluding the Galápagos Islands), Panama, and Venezuela, along with parts of northern Peru, northwestern Brazil, and claimed the Essequibo region. The terms Gran Colombia and Greater Colombia are used historiographically to distinguish it from the current Republic of Colombia,[4] which is also the official name of the former state.
Republic of Colombia
(Gran Colombia)República de Colombia (Spanish)
(Gran Colombia)
Roman Catholicism (official)
December 17,[1] 1819
August 30, 1821
1828–1829
November 19, 1831
3,064,800[2] km2 (1,183,300 sq mi)
2,583,799[3]
0.84/km2 (2.2/sq mi)
Piastra
However, international recognition of the legitimacy of the Gran Colombian state ran afoul of European opposition to the independence of states in the Americas. Austria, France, and Russia only recognized independence in the Americas if the new states accepted monarchs from European dynasties. In addition, Colombia and the international powers disagreed over the extension of the Colombian territory and its boundaries.[5]
Gran Colombia was proclaimed through the Fundamental Law of the Republic of Colombia, issued during the Congress of Angostura (1819), but did not come into being until the Congress of Cúcuta (1821) promulgated the Constitution of Cúcuta.
Gran Colombia was constituted as a unitary centralist state.[6] Its existence was marked by a struggle between those who supported a centralized government with a strong presidency and those who supported a decentralized, federal form of government. At the same time, another political division emerged between those who supported the Constitution of Cúcuta and two groups who sought to do away with the Constitution, either in favor of breaking up the country into smaller republics or maintaining the union but creating an even stronger presidency. The faction that favored constitutional rule coalesced around Vice-President Francisco de Paula Santander, while those who supported the creation of a stronger presidency were led by President Simón Bolívar. The two of them had been allies in the war against Spanish rule, but by 1825, their differences had become public and were an important part of the political instability from that year onward.
Gran Colombia was dissolved in 1831 due to the political differences that existed between supporters of federalism and centralism, as well as regional tensions among the peoples that made up the republic. It broke into the successor states of Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela; Panama was separated from Colombia in 1903. Since Gran Colombia's territory corresponded more or less to the original jurisdiction of the former Viceroyalty of New Granada, it also claimed the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, the Mosquito Coast, as well as most of Esequiba.
Etymology[edit]
Its proclaimed name was the Republic of Colombia.[7] Historians have adopted the term "Gran Colombia" to distinguish this republic from the present-day Republic of Colombia, which began using the name in 1863, although many use Colombia where the confusion would not arise.[8]
The name "Colombia" is the Spanish version of the eighteenth-century Neo-Latin word "Columbia" which derives from the family name of the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus. It was the term preferred by the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda as a reference to the New World, especially to all American territories and colonies under Spanish rule. He used an improvised, quasi-Greek adjectival version of the name, "Colombia", to mean papers and things "relating to Colombia", as the title of the archive of his revolutionary activities.[9]
Simón Bolívar and other Spanish American revolutionaries also used the word "Colombia" in the continental sense. The 1819 proclamation of a country with the name "Colombia" by the Congress of Angostura gave the term a specific geographic and political reference.
Government[edit]
Before a new constitution could be written by the 1821 Congress of Cúcuta, the 1819 Congress of Angostura appointed Bolívar and Santander president and vice president, respectively. Under the Constitution of Cúcuta, the country was divided into twelve departments each governed by an intendant. Departments were further divided into thirty-six provinces, each headed by a governor, who had overlapping powers with the intendant. Military affairs at the department level were overseen by a commandant general, who could also be the intendant. All three offices were appointed by the central government. The central government, which temporarily was to reside in Bogotá, consisted of a presidency, a bicameral congress, and a high court (the Alta Corte).
The president was the head of the executive branch of both the central and local governments. The president could be granted extraordinary powers in military fronts, such as the area that became Ecuador. The vice-president assumed the presidency in case of the absence, death, demotion, or illness of the president. Since President Bolívar was absent from Gran Colombia for the early years of its existence, executive power was wielded by the vice president, Santander. The vote was given to persons who owned 100 pesos in landed property or had an equivalent income from a profession. Elections were indirect.[20][21]