Central America · Conquest and the Spanish colonial era
New Granada
1810/1811–1821
"New Granada" here denotes the independence-era polities centered on present-day Colombia after the 1810 collapse of Spanish authority in the Viceroyalty of New Granada. Rival governments emerged: the federalist United Provinces of New Granada (formed 1811) and the centralist State of Cundinamarca led by Antonio Nariño, the translator of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
- Existed
- 1810/1811–1821
- Shown on the map
- 1811–1821
- Peak area
- 1.4M km²
- Region
- Central America
Overview
"New Granada" here denotes the independence-era polities centered on present-day Colombia after the 1810 collapse of Spanish authority in the Viceroyalty of New Granada. Rival governments emerged: the federalist United Provinces of New Granada (formed 1811) and the centralist State of Cundinamarca led by Antonio Nariño, the translator of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Their debilitating infighting — remembered as the "Patria Boba" ("Foolish Fatherland") — left the patriots vulnerable to the Spanish "Reconquista" of 1815–1816 under Pablo Morillo, who reimposed royal control amid harsh reprisals and executions.
Decline and legacy
Independence was ultimately secured by Simón Bolívar's audacious 1819 campaign, which crossed the flooded llanos and the frigid Andes to surprise the royalists, culminating in the decisive Battle of Boyacá (7 August 1819) and the liberation of Bogotá. Bolívar then founded Gran Colombia (the Republic of Colombia) uniting New Granada, Venezuela, and later Quito (Ecuador) and Panama, with its capital at Bogotá. New Granada was thus the territorial and institutional nucleus from which modern Colombia — and, via Gran Colombia's later dissolution, several neighboring states — descended. (Gran Colombia broke apart in 1830–1831.)
Common questions
- What was New Granada?
- "New Granada" here denotes the independence-era polities centered on present-day Colombia after the 1810 collapse of Spanish authority in the Viceroyalty of New Granada. Rival governments emerged: the federalist United Provinces of New Granada (formed 1811) and the centralist State of Cundinamarca led by Antonio Nariño, the translator of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
- When did New Granada exist?
- New Granada existed 1810/1811–1821. On this map it is drawn 1811–1821.
- How large was New Granada?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, New Granada covered about 1.4 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
- How did New Granada end?
- Independence was ultimately secured by Simón Bolívar's audacious 1819 campaign, which crossed the flooded llanos and the frigid Andes to surprise the royalists, culminating in the decisive Battle of Boyacá (7 August 1819) and the liberation of Bogotá. Bolívar then founded Gran Colombia (the Republic of Colombia) uniting New Granada, Venezuela, and later Quito (Ecuador) and Panama, with its capital at Bogotá.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity and for the key figures and events as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, EBSCO Research Starters and academic sources. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — New Granada en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Granada
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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