Gran Colombia
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Gran Colombia (Spanish for Great Colombia) is a name used today for a nation that encompassed a great part of the territory of northern South America and a small part of southern North America during the period 1819-1831.
This short-lived republic in South America encompassed the territories of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama, as well as small slices of Costa Rica, Peru, Brazil, and Guyana. Its territory corresponded more or less to the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Granada.
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The official name at the time was the Republic of Colombia ("Gran Colombia". Encyclopædia Britannica. 6 June 2007. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9037644.), as it is today; historians have adopted the term "Gran Colombia" to distinguish the Republic before 1831 (with its more extensive land area) from that of the present-day Republic of Colombia.
The name "Colombia" comes from the name of Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón in Spanish, Cristoforo Colombo in Italian) and was conceived by the revolutionary Francisco de Miranda as a reference to the New World, especially to all American territories and colonies under Spanish and Portuguese rule.
The Republic of Gran Colombia comprised more or less the former territories of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, which it claimed under the legal principle of uti possidetis.
Simón Bolívar, the Liberator of Spanish South America, and other revolutionaries in the First Venezuelan Republic occasionally used the term Colombia as a reference to all of Spanish America, until the proclamation of a republic under that name in 1819 at the Congress of Angostura.
It was initially conceived at that Congress as a Federal republic, made up of three departments with capitals in the cities of Bogotá (Department of Cundinamarca), Caracas (Department of Venezuela), and Quito (Department of Quito). In that year, not all the provinces of the former viceroyalty were free yet.
The constitution of the new republic was drafted in 1821 at the Congress of Cúcuta, establishing its capital in Bogotá. A great degree of centralization was established there, since several convinced federalists now came to believe that it would be necessary in order to better manage a unified war effort, at least for the time being.
A new territorial division (Venezuela, Cundinamarca, and Quito were split into various smaller departments) was conceived. Simón Bolívar was elected the president and Francisco de Paula Santander the vice-president.
In the first years of existence, Gran Colombia helped other provinces still at war with Spain to become independent - Panama came to the federation in 1821 and so did the remaining provinces of Quito and Venezuela.
The independence of Peru was consolidated later in 1824 through Gran Colombia's aid. Bolívar and Santander were re-elected in 1826.
As the war against Spain came to an end, federalist and regionalist sentiments began to arise once again. Permanent calls for modifications of the political division (along with related economic and commercial disputes) during the existence of Gran Colombia, as a result of local confrontations between the regions, led to local changes and compromises.
These changes never fully pleased contemporaries and little permanent consolidation was achieved, showing the instability of the state's structure.
Bolívar dreamt of uniting Latin America but was unable to achieve this during the struggle for independence. The Republic of Gran Colombia was his initial attempt at creating a single Latin American state.
Other regional and South American politicians, however, objected to his idea, and Bolívar, disgruntled, resigned from the project in 1828 and from his presidency in early 1830.
Internal political strife between the different regions intensified after Bolívar's resignation and continued even as General Rafael Urdaneta temporarily took power in Bogotá, attempting to use his authority to ostensibly restore order and give the presidency back to Bolívar.
The federation finally dissolved during the rest of 1830 and was formally abolished in 1831, as Venezuela, Ecuador and New Granada came to exist as independent states.
The dissolution of Gran Colombia characterized the failure of Bolívar's dream. The Department of Cundinamarca (as established in Angostura) became a new country, the Republic of New Granada. In 1863, New Granada changed its name officially to United States of Colombia, and in 1886 adopted its present day name: Republic of Colombia. Panama remained as a province of this country until 1903, when – with backing from the United States of America in exchange for allowing the US to build the Panama Canal – it became independent.
With the exception of Panama (which as mentioned only achieved independence later), the countries that were created have similar flags, reminiscent of the flag of Gran Colombia:
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| Colombia | Ecuador | Venezuela |
See United Provinces of Central America, Nordic countries, and Arab nationalism for more examples of regions whose nations possess similar flags because of historical connections.
Under the Constitution of 1821, the President was the head of the executive power. and its time in office was the lifetime of the incumbent. The executive power had also Vice-presidents that assumed the presidency in case of death, demotion, or illness of the President. Before the approval of the Constitution of 1821 by the Congress of Villa del Rosario, the President de Facto was Simon Bolívar, and the Vice-president Francisco de Paula Santander, because the Congress of Angostura provisionally gave them that title until a new Constitution was written.
- Simón Bolívar (17 December 1819 - 4 May 1830) (President-Libertator from 19 August 1828)
- Domingo Caycedo (4 May - 13 June 1830) (1st time, acting)
- Joaquín de Mosquera (13 June - 5 September 1830)
- Rafael Urdaneta (5 September 1830 - 3 May 1831) (acting)
- Domingo Caycedo (3 May - 21 November 1831) (2nd time, acting)
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- United Provinces of Central America - another federal state on the American continent that underwent a similar fate.
- Peru-Bolivian Confederation
- Flag of Gran Colombia
- Flags of The World, Gran Colombia
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