First Republic of Colombia

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The First Republic of Colombia (called Patria boba , foolish fatherland, by the Colombians themselves ) spans the period on the soil of the viceroyalty of New Granada from the first unrest in Cartagena de Indias in May 1810 to the Spanish invasion of Bogotá in May 1816. Different as in the other states that were liberated by Simón Bolívar , there is no consistent course of history over the whole country, or at least large parts of it. The diversity of the provinces also generated an abundance of different opinions, which had their justification for building the state, and ultimately fatal consequences in the simultaneous fight against the Spaniards and their native supporters.

Causes and Triggers

The background was the occupation of Spain by Napoleon ( Treaty of Fontainebleau ) in 1807 and the installation of his brother Joseph on the Bourbon throne. In Spain one reacted to the disempowerment at the national level with the formation of juntas , assemblies, of honorable representatives of the people, which should protect the Spanish interests at regional and local level. Against this background, the Spaniards themselves propagated the convening of government juntas in their colonies because there were also a few French troops there, but mainly their administrators. In the colonies that, at least since the "New India Laws" ( Leyes Nuevas de las Indias ) of Charles V of 1542, rose up against the motherland every few years because it issued restrictive economic and trade laws and above all treated its colonists in a second class way. The call to form a government was understood as an invitation to implement the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution .

Timid beginning

However, not to the same extent from all so-called patriots. Therefore, the declarations of independence were made provincially and spread over a period of several years - and for some not at all because they remained in the hands of the royalists. And even some of the declarations were initially half-measures because they declared themselves independent from French-occupied Spain, but at the same time swore (publicly) on Ferdinand VII , who took over the throne.

The uprising broke out in Bogotá on July 20, 1810. First the Spanish authorities were involved as instructed, but then presented to the viceroy with his royal certificate of discharge, which had been hidden from him. The announced successor never came and so the Creoles were able to seize power. At this point in time, popular support was not very high; the leading rebels would not have been able to push through an uprising, as the spread of propagandistic lies in order to at least halfway convince the population of the new government shows.

In addition to changes in the taxation of the haciendas, which were the economic backbone of the colonial areas, the Indians were exempted from tribute payments and legally equated. The liberation of slaves was discussed intensely, but only implemented in Antioquia , because there were provinces that consisted mainly of Indians and slaves. Trade, which until then had only been allowed with the colonial motherland, was released and the administration reorganized. However, as the present shows, it would have been better not to part with some of the originally Habsburg administrative regulations in the first exuberance. Newspapers were founded - and immediately used for propaganda purposes. The international contacts with the other liberated countries in the Spanish colonial areas of America were naturally good, but the Europeans and the USA held back in view of the unresolved power balance. With the Europeans there was also the unity against Napoleon and republics.

Inner conflict

The decision-making processes within the provinces, which stretched over many months, prevented a congress, which was established in Bogotá at the end of 1810, in which not all (liberated) provinces participated from the start. Bogotá traditionally claimed the leadership role that some other provinces questioned and, for example, the country's most important Caribbean port, Cartagena de Indias, would have liked to have been a leader itself. The differences of opinion, which lasted for more than a year, led in early 1812 to the move of the Congress of the Federation of the Provinces of New Granada from Bogotá (via Ibagué ) to Tunja on the northern Eastern Cordillera. The dispute between the two protagonists, the President of Cundinamarca (over the capital Bogotá), Antonio Nariño , and the President of the Federal Congress, Camilo Torres y Tenorio, intensified until the civil war within the patriots around the turn of the year 1812/1813. Centralism finally triumphed over federalism .

Although individual communities and provinces wanted to join the centralized capital, the military victor Nariño did not manage to establish the necessary national unity. On the contrary, the Federal Congress expanded its position of power, also by securing the support of Simón Bolívar, who had just been appointed Brigadier General of the New Renadin Union for his successful Magdalena campaign (on behalf of Cartagena) and was preparing Venezuela for his Second Republic to conquer. The continued disputes between the federalists and the centralists created unnecessary supply problems in the fight against the Spaniards.

War between royalists and separatists

Militarily, the country had not been brought under control of either party. On the north coast, only Cartagena in the west was in the hands of the separatists, who fought continually with the royalists from Santa Marta and Riohacha for supremacy on the lower Magdalena River . In the northeast, the border area with Venezuela in the Andean region was always in dire straits when the separatists in Venezuela were defeated and the Spaniards organized campaigns to New Granada. The biggest problem for the patriots for years was the south of the country, especially the church center Pasto in the then Popayán province . In other parts of the country, too, there were occasional fights between loyalists and separatists, but their importance was mostly limited locally. Where this was not the case, the Federal Congress intervened to the extent that it was able to do so.

North coast and lower Magdalena

Until Cartagena's absolute independence was finally declared, parts of the armed forces were used to fight the Spaniards in the dispute with the important river port of Mompós , which was unconditionally separated from Spain more quickly. With the help of some South American and European officers who had fled to the former main port for Spanish gold in the New World after the fall of the first Republic of Venezuela, the provincial junta organized campaigns to subdue the still resistant part of the surrounding area and against the royalists further east along the Coast, as well as on the lower Río Magdalena. The pacification of the surrounding area was successfully carried out, the Spaniards along the main waterway remained a constant threat. Bolívar's Magdalena campaign, which had also been among the refugees, only changed this for a short time. Until the arrival of the Spanish expedition army in 1815, the loyal royalists on the north-east coast of the country could never be permanently defeated.

Northern Eastern Cordillera

In the north of the Eastern Cordillera, the separatists were first heavily involved in the dispute between federalism and centralism before they could turn to the actual enemy. A first campaign by the Spanish had already led to the defeat of the New Granada patriots. With his offensive, which began from Cúcuta , they prevented Bolívar from further incursions into the border province of Pamplona , but in the same year a guerrilla loyal to the king emerged, which brought Francisco de Paula Santander , who had taken over the security of the border region, into such distress that the province had too little to oppose the decisive campaign of Sebastian de la Calzada after the fall of the Second Republic in Venezuela. With difficulty and some severe defeats it was possible to stop the Spaniards, but the troops urgently needed in other parts of the country were tied up here.

Popayán Province

The fighting between the provinces of Popayán and Neiva began early, and after the partial conquest of Popayán by patriots from the province, they became an aid to arms. Only when a strong expedition from Bogotá had defeated the Spanish governor, at least the capital was in the hands of the separatists from March 1811. At the end of the year, fighting with the Spaniards flared up, especially in the south of the province. Pasto was unwavering in his allegiance to Spain and a series of expeditions were launched to incorporate the city into the liberated province.

One of these early campaigns, this one had come from Ecuador, brought the short-term possession of the city, but the President of Popayán himself gave the royalists the opportunity to end their rule. Despite a successful liberation campaign, he was executed by the Spaniards. After further unsuccessful attempts and the fall of Ecuador, the president of the Cundinamarca, Antonio Nariño, who had come from Bogotá with an army, also failed in 1814 . He fell into the hands of the Spaniards who held him in custody on the Iberian Peninsula until 1820. The President of the Royal Court of Justice in Quito now sent expeditions to the south of New Granada, which made the creation of a liberated Popayán province practically impossible. On the last of these campaigns, the Southern Division of the New Grenadine Union destroyed itself, while the Spanish expeditionary army invaded the country from the north.

Continued strife among the patriots

With the failure of the leading centralist Nariño, the League of Provinces gained in weight, but it was not until Bolívar, who had fled to New Granada again after the loss of his Second Republic, militarily pacified the followers of Nariño in Bogotá around the turn of the year 1814/1815. The long overdue campaign to smash the Spaniards in Santa Marta and Riohacha fell victim to disputes with Cartagena, which refused to provide its fleet for support. On behalf of the Federation of Provinces, Bolívar now waged civil war against Cartagena, while the Spanish were able to celebrate military successes on the lower Magdalena. With Bolívar's departure, the differences of opinion among the separatists did not end, and the establishment of a defense against the Spaniards now liberated from Napoleon only took place in Caratgena, even quite late.

The bloody end of freedom

Ferdinand VII had set an expedition fleet with over 12,000 soldiers on the march at the beginning of 1815 to secure his rights in the colonies. In August 1815 the expedition leader Pablo Morillo reached Cartagena with his army and his fleet, supported by the conqueror of Bolívar in Venezuela, Francisco Tomás Morales. The city was besieged by land and sea for over three months. When Morillo moved into the city without anyone having surrendered after the largely unsuccessful mass exodus of the separatists across the sea, hundreds lay starving in the streets. The war had cost the lives of two thirds of the population of the port, which had 16,000 residents before the war. A third of Morillo's ten thousand besiegers were also dead, but most of them died of disease.

This expensive victory was the prelude to the reconquest of the whole country. The royalists invading from Venezuela on the northern Eastern Cordillera defeated the separatists independently and paved this part of the way for Morillo's reconquest. The last government fled south in the face of the advancing Spaniards, insisted on the attack on the almost three times as strong army of the Spaniards from Ecuador, and thus destroyed itself. Freedom lived only in the wide grassy plains of Casanare on the border with Venezuela also not unclouded, away. Only a small part of the Republicans managed to escape there.

Morillo, who went down in history as the Pacificador , peace- maker , cracked down on with brutal severity and relentlessly persecuted anyone suspected of having been separatist. The Spaniards themselves recorded 7,000 executed death sentences. The number of patriots who died in the fighting and who were murdered without trial after the defeat even exceeded this number. Expropriations and imprisonment or forced labor were the order of the day. The wives of the leading patriots were resettled in loyal parishes across the country after their husbands were executed from Bogotá. Until the conquest of Bolívar, which broke the rule of the colonial rulers in New Granada with the Battle of Boyacá on August 7th, the balance of power did not change.

rating

The rigid attitude of the Spaniards, especially of Ferdinand VII., With regard to their colonies and their brutal crackdown, prevented an amicable agreement from which both sides could have benefited. The disagreement among the separatists, which produced a lack of effectiveness in the struggle against the Spaniards, ultimately led to the loss of freedom in all forms. This is all the more regrettable as New Granada, provided that the royalist troops were swiftly and resolutely crushed, could have raised the potential to support the Venezuelans and to relieve the Ecuadorians, who were recaptured as early as 1812.

literature

Web links

I have the history of the first republic in Colombia over the years 1810-1816 in chapters 2.4., 3.4., 4.2. and 5.2. with four spatially structured sub-chapters each, to which there are further eleven in-depth texts with details.