A date to celebrate the birth of our great nation.
HR
Category: History Page 1 of 2
Several factors took place for the American to be able to withstand the British Army, including the support of a nation that wanted somewhat of a payback from Great Britain: the Kingdom of France. Despite being on the verge of bankruptcy before the Seven Years’ War and deeply falling into a severe deficit after losing the major conflict, King Louis XVI spent a considerable amount of french resources to provide aid and assistance to the American Colonies.
Similarly to the blunder King George II had made a few years earlier, King Louis XVI also thought it was a good idea to impose taxes to solve his mishaps. In his case, he placed a heavy burden on the Third Estate of the country, which represented 98% of the population.
The French Revolution.
Fed up with centuries of humiliation, starvation, cruelty, oppression and inequality, the angry people of Paris charged against the Monarchy, the Nobility and the Clergy. Long story short, they dethroned the Monarchy and imposed a new government, hundreds of thousands -including King Louis XVI- were decapitated, a new measurement system was created, and a new leader in the form of a General with hunger of conquering Europe crowned himself as Emperor of France in 1804.
Napoleon Bonaparte rose through the ranks during the French Revolution to become the sole ruler of France. By 1804 he had probably decided to set on his way to conquer all of Europe. Among his first conquests, was the ill-prepared Kingdom of Spain, who fell to Napoleon’s more powerful army. After the victory, Napoleon placed his brother Joseph as King, which led to a series of internal revolts in Spain.
New of Spain’s internal troubles, reached Venezuela, and… backed with:
- The quick distribution of mass communication thanks to the Invention of the Printed Press
- The Age of Enlightenment
- The worldwide turn oil left after the Seven Years’ War
- Unfair heavily taxes and policies on Venezuela’s colonists
- The inspiration of the United States’ independence, defeating the mighty British Empire
- The inspiration of the people overthrowing the monarchy in the French Revolution
…resulted in the beginning of the War of the Independence of Venezuela.
It’s 1776 and we have a broke Great Britain Kingdom after winning the Seven Years’ War imposing heavy taxes and policies on their Thirteen American Colonies. The Colonists don’t like this one bit and being fed up with the whole situation, start throwing out the I-word: Independence.
Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, George Washington and many others among the most educated, well-positioned and respected men in the colonies then decided to reunite and put together what would be the Declaration of Independence. On July 4 it took effect and there was no looking back. It was war against the most powerful nation on Earth: Great Britain.
Most scholars agree on the American Revolutionary Wars taking place from 1775 until 1783, and while the Americans scored less victories than the British, it was the magnitude of their victories and the weight that the Americans were willing to stand for themselves and face death rather than to be surmised to keep living under the rule of the British Empire, what gave them the leverage to emerge victorious. After the decisive American victory in the Battle of York, the British lost interest in winning the war, and signed a peace treaty that would recognize the United States of America as an independent and sovereign nation.
When news of the American Independence reached Venezuela, their population began to wonder: “Hey, if the American Colonies could defeat the British, maybe we could defeat the Spaniards?” Hence, the American Revolutionary Wars and the Independence of the United States is largely recognized as the second direct cause of Venezuela’s Independence.
The third and final cause will be the final consequence of the Domino Effect that occurred in Europe and that had began with the Invention of the Printed Press. Tune in for my next entry to find out what it is…
Up until this point we have a chain of events that indirectly led to Venezuela’s War of Independence: The Invention of the Printed Press led to the Age of Enlightenment, which led to the Seven Years’ War, which resulted in Great Britain emerging as winner and sole power of Europe over France, the sore loser. But where does the Kingdom of Spain -Colonizer of Venezuela- fit into all of that?
Taxes.
The glorious achievement of Great Britain winning the war came with a small side consequence: the country was broke. King George II then thought of no better idea than to impose Taxes to its new colonies in America, to help pay for the war effort put into arguably defending the colonies themselves against the French.
I guess the Taxes would have gone unnoticed, had they not been part of a series of absurd policies that left the American Colonies quite uncomfortable, such as the ban on foreign trade and no right for seats in the British Parliament.
While Spain wasn’t directly involved in the Seven Years’ War, they suffered indirect consequences of the turnaround that occurred in Europe. Therefore, Spain had their fair amount of economic struggles and emulating King George’s policies, they too decided to impose heavy taxes in their American Colonies.
At this point in time (the years 1760-1770) the American British Colonies were a bit more structured than its Spaniard counterparts. Therefore the American Colonists were pondering whether how worth was it to pay for taxes and obey a monarch that didn’t give you any say on the laws that governed your own land.
In consequence, the “Shot that was heard around the world” happened, and so the American Revolutionary War began…
Today I am going to talk about the third and last indirect cause of Venezuela’s Independence. The whole idea of listing six causes in six entries, is for the reader to see the “Domino Effect” that occurs from the first until the last one.
As the Age of Enlightenment unfolded throughout Europe spreading knowledge, new schools of thought and the initial bases for the industrial revolution, tensions between the two great super powers of the Old Continent had reached a peak. The fact that expansionism in colonies in America and Africa was also part of the equation (IE. The French-Indian Wars), eventually led to Great Britain and its allies (Prussia and Hanover), go into war against France and its allies (Russia, Saxony, Sweden and Austria) in what would be the largest major conflict up to date in the world.
The Seven Years’ War
Largely overlooked for many years, only recently has The Seven Years’ War been able to attain the importance it deserved in history books, with some scholars even informally labeling it as “World War Zero” or “The First Actual World War”, due to the number of key players involved in the conflict, as well as the amount of fronts and theaters where it was fought.
Regarding Venezuela’s implication as a consequence to the Seven Years’ Wars, there are three things that are of importance to consider:
- The overall result: Great Britain emerging as winner and France as loser.
- The impact of the result in Europe: what happened to both Great Britain and France, after the war.
- The impact of the result in America: what would happen in the theater where the war was fought, that is… The American Colonies.
All of these three elements are going to lead to the three direct causes of Venezuela’s Independence, which I will start listing in the following entry.
After the invention of the Printed Press, the structure of society in Europe was altered for years to come. As I stated in my previous entry, information would now spread easily, faster and more efficiently throughout the continent, resulting in a dramatic increase of literacy in the population. Science emerged as a true game player when it came to knowledge and overall, people began to think and therefore exist.
The Age of Enlightenment
With a wider availability of literature, new schools of thought surged across Europe. Up until the Fifteenth Century, I’m quite sure you would have labeled someone as a “Leader”, if that person had military experience or any sort of involvement with the Clergy or the Monarchy. Now, there was a new type of leaders: there were “Intellectual Leaders”.
Rene Descartes, John Stuart Mill, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and many others were early pioneers of what would be called the “Scientific Revolution”. New ideas centered around reason and evidence, as well as progress, liberty, toleration, constitution and the separation of Church and State.
People began to ask, to wonder, to find out and ask the why of things. One of the earliest questions that was poised by the Age of Enlightenment was the actual necessity of a King in a Monarchy. Why do we need a King? Who put him there? Why is it that only his descendants have the right to govern? Why is the reasoning behind the Church? The more time passed, the more people moved towards progress and logic, leaving behind the blind faith and beliefs in the unknown.
Following the Age of Enlightenment, the structural society solidified the power of the two greatest Monarchies in Europe: England and France as superpowers of the world, and it wouldn’t take too long before both of them would want to figure out which of the two was the most powerful nation on Earth.
Today’s entry will be the first of a six part series of posts in which I will identify and explain the causes that sparked the War of Venezuela’s Independence.
The intent is for each part to be a trigger for the following one, culminating with the actual beginning of the War of Independence. The six part series will be divided in three indirect causes and three direct causes. On this initial entry I will begin with the first of the three indirect causes.
The Invention of the Press.
Many inventions have substantially affected and changed humanity ever since we have been populating the Earth. Few however, have had the impact of the Printing Press.
I’ve always believed that it is important to study history keeping the perspective of the time in which the events unfolded are told, in order to understand the magnitude and especially the long term impact of the event in humanity. When talking about the invention of the Printed Press, we have to imagine Europe being a continent of monarchies, coming out of a feudal system, with a very low percentage of the population being educated and able to read or write. Knowledge was a privilege and ideas were floating in the air, nowhere to be kept on record and distributed to the people. All of this changed en 1440 with the introduction of a fast and efficient method to reproduce written content.
The invention of the Printed Press therefore implied a larger, faster, quicker and better distribution of knowledge throughout Europe. New authors came along, new perspectives, new points of view and overall, it opened the pathway for mass communication and for thinkers to actually spread their different schools of thought to the population. It was a very big deal, one of the greatest moments in the history of mankind and the originator of what would happen next, which is what I label as the second indirect cause of Venezuela’s War of Independence, which we will take a look at in my following entry.
By 1721, the new Viceroyalty of New Grenada was established and given jurisdiction over the territories that today constitute Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama, and Venezuela then became a Province.
During this time, trade emerged as one of the main drivers of the Venezuelan economy, being managed by the Guipuzcoan Company, which held a monopoly on all trade. Foreign commerce opened and all of a sudden, Caracas became a powerhouse city in south America, having commercial relations with England, France and the Netherlands. Venezuela’s main advantage was geographical, being close to colonies of those European Kingdoms.
As the 13 North American Colonies declared their independence on July 4, 1776, Venezuela -still under the rule of the Kingdom of Spain- became a Captaincy General, which was an administrative district that gave the territory more autonomy to reorganize its powers. Some scholars consider the Captaincy General of Venezuela as another Viceroyalty, similar to New Granada (Colombia). The new entity had six provinces: Caracas, Maracaibo, Cumana, Guayana, Trinidad and Margarita.
It wouldn’t take too long for the Captaincy General of Venezuela to follow the steps of the North American 13 Colonies, and shortly after being established, the first movements to declare its independence took place.
In my next entry, I will discuss the causes that led to Venezuela’s independence.
Not much can be said about Venezuela’s history between the early years of 1600 and the mid 1700s. It seems that this is where the differences of the British and the Spanish Colonies begin.
Most scholars agree that Venezuela was not considered as key place and that its importance as a Colony of Spain was displaced by the more important Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru. Approximately 2,000 people lived in the country, with an economy that was based on livestock and goldmines, in somewhat of a feudal system.
By the end of the 1600s, there was an established higher education school named “School Seminary of Saint Rose de Lima”. Given that there was no university in the country and that for people living in the country who wanted to get a college degree, the only choices were the universities in Bogota (Colombia), Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and Mexico, the Rector of the Seminar made a formal request to the King of Spain for the creation of a University in Venezuela. This led to a royal decree that resulted in Venezuela’s first university, established on December 22, 1721: Universidad Real y Pontificia de Caracas, which centuries later would become the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) and offered degrees in Theology, Philosophy, Canon Law and Medicine. The Real y Pontificia would be Venezuela’s only university until 1810, when the Universidad de Los Andes was founded in Merida.
In my book I will touch base on the importance of higher education as part of a successful system, and of course, on the importance of the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and Venezuela’s other universities.
In today’s entry I am going to briefly talk about three of the first relevant characters that belong in Venezuela’s history: Guaicaipuro, Francisco Fajardo and Diego de Losada.
Guaicaipuro was an indian Chief of the Caracas and Los Teques tribes, who led the resistance against Spanish colonization in the Valley of Caracas, commanding other Chiefs such as Naiguata, Chacao, Guaicamacuto and his own son Baruta.
Guaicaipuro was the first Chief that attacked the Spaniards who mined gold mines in the territory of what today is Los Teques, and afterwards led another attack where he killed the Province Governor’s (Juan Rodriguez Suarez) sons.
These victories made him rise to become the leader of all tribes that lived in Caracas and Los Teques, which resulted in the Spaniards abstaining from settling in the area for over five years.
Next we have Francisco Fajardo, who was a Spanish explorer who led several expeditions that attempted to settle in the Valley of Caracas between 1555 and 1562.
Fajardo was one of the first colonizer who was a “mestizo”, meaning he was the son of a white Spanish man and a waikeri indian woman. Fajardo used this to his advantage to blend in the local tribes of the Valley. Eventually, in 1564 he was defeated by Guaicaipuro and had to retreat to Cumana city, where he was arrested and executed by Alonso Cobos for unknown reasons.
Caracas’ main highway, which covers and connects the entire city, is named after Francisco Fajardo.
Finally, we have Spaniard conqueror Diego de Losada, who founded Santiago de Leon de Caracas in 1567.
Worried by the constant attacks of Guaicaipuro, Losada ordered his men to capture and/or kill Guaicaipuro, a feat they achieved in 1568. This allowed the spaniards to stay in a permanent settlement in the valley Caracas and Los Teques.
Caracas -Venezuela’s current capital city- would not become the capital for many years. However, eventually it would be come the center of attention and most important place in the country.