Mosquito coast

This article deals with the former British protectorate in Central America. For the 1981 novel, see La Costa de los Mosquitos. For the 1986 film, see The Mosquito Coast (film)

The Mosquito Coast, or Mosquitia, officially the Kingdom of Mosquitia, was a state located in Central America that existed from 1633 to 1861. The kingdom was ruled by a single dynasty during the more than two hundred years that it existed: the House of Ta Uplika, which saw around 9 monarchs reign.

The state received its first political recognition when the native chief's son was sent to London with Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, in 1633 and was invited to the royal court of King Charles I of England. From then on, the English and later the British, and eventually the natives themselves, began to refer to chiefs by the title of king.

The relationship with the English began when the Providencia Island Company, commissioned in 1629, established the Providencia Island Colony in 1630, a few miles off the coast of Mosquitia. In 1633, the company commissioned Samuel Ax and Sussex Camock to visit the mainland and "endear themselves to the Indians and their commanders and [...] be friendly and cause no jealousy."

Etymology

Of the many ethnic groups that inhabited the country, the Miskitos were the best known and for them the country was named. The name Mosquitia first appeared on a 1787 map by William Faden that included an inset of "Mosquitia or the Mosquito Coast with the eastern part of the Yucatán to 20 degrees north latitude". Before this and even after, the country was generally referred to as the Mosquito Coast, Mosquito Kingdom, or simply Mosquito. But the name Mosquitia was officially adapted in the Constitution of September 10, 1846, in which the name of the country was written as "Kingdom of Mosquitia".

The name includes the Latin -ia at the end, meaning earth; collectively, Mosquit (ia) means "Land of the Mosquitians".

History

More than a dozen ethnic groups belonging to the Misumalpa and Chibcha language families coexisted in the area before the arrival of European explorers. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle was the norm in their communities, which also engaged in trade. They all lived in networks of extended families, called kaimkas in the Miskito language. They were unaware of the Western concept of private property, that is, property rights to land. The structure of their society was basically egalitarian, but they also implanted a form of leadership that met their needs. Each kaimka had a chief chosen from among the oldest and most reputable. In times of war and anguish, the kaimkas elected a chief among the various chiefs to lead the group. And before European contact, this position became permanent and hereditary.

According to oral history, the first chief said to have held this position on a permanent and hereditary basis before European contact was Buppan Kum Kukras. But the first chief on record to hold office during the time of European contact is called Ta Uplika by the Miskito people, although the Puritans and Englishmen who first wrote of this chief did not mention a name given to him by himself. boss; they simply refer to him as the king or the boss. This chief's son was sent to London in 1633, where he was invited to the royal court of King Charles I of England, and where he reportedly lived for three years, thus forming an alliance and gaining political recognition for his country.. He later became known as Oldman. It is from Oldman's reign that the line of kings became clearer and better recorded.

Once Oldman returned from England, he renounced "his authority and power over [his people] and (with them) unanimously declared themselves subjects of his [...] Majesty of Great Britain". The truth is that this was the first time that Mosquitia was placed under English protection, since Mosquitia itself was still governed by Oldman and his bosses.

The Mosquitia became a dominant force in the Americas and a balance of power between the English and Spanish empires.

The Moskitian nation and the external conflicts of the sixteenth-XIX century.

In 1740, King Edward of Mosquitia and the British Crown sealed a formal treaty of friendship and alliance, followed by the appointment of a British Resident Superintendent in 1749, formalizing the protectorate established over the kingdom during the reign of his great-grandfather, Oldman. During this time, the British settled in different places in Mosquitia, including Bluefieds, but the main settlement was in Black River.

Following the London Convention of 1786 that ended the Anglo-Spanish War, the British agreed to evacuate Mosquitia in exchange for more territory in the Yucatan Peninsula, which would later become the territory of Belize. On the other hand, Spain agreed that it would not commit any act of hostility against the natives of Mosquitia for the help they had given the British during the war; in this way, the United Kingdom continued to keep Mosquitia under its protection.

From then on, Spain tried to gain control of the country. On November 30, 1803, he issued a decree granting the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada military authority to subdue the people of Mosquitia and colonize the country. When the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada was not able to complete the task, another decree was issued on November 13, 1806, whereby power was transferred back to the Captaincy General of Guatemala, but this was also unsuccessful, so Mosquitia retained its independence and sovereignty, and remained an independent country for six more decades. But before these royal orders were issued, all Spanish presence in Mosquitia was banished in the late 1800s by an army led by King George II of Mosquitia. A few years after these attempts to conquer Mosquitia, the Spanish Empire itself began to crumble in the Americas during the Spanish-American Wars of Independence.

After the fall of the Spanish Empire, Mosquitia would still face new challenges with the rise of US imperialism. Following the Mexican-American War and the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the United States tried to find a quicker route to its western shores, and in 1849 sent Ephraim George Squier as special chargé d'affaires to all the Central American states and He granted him powers to sign various treaties with them, including one that provided for the construction of a canal through Nicaragua by an American company. The route the Americans wanted was the one that crossed the San Juan River, the mouth of the lake. Nicaragua, both claimed by Nicaragua as territory inherited from Spain. But since Mosquitia was under British protection and more than half of that river fell into the Mosquitia frontier, claimed by both Mosquitia and the British, any construction of a canal or railway had to include dealing with Mosquitia and, consequently, with the British. But what some Americans wanted was complete control of the river, and consequently of the canal or railway when it was built. After months of correspondence between the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the conditions for the construction of the canal or railway were established in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, in which both parties agreed not to extend their control or influence to any part of the Central American region and that the canal would be open to all the nations of the world. However, on July 13, 1854, the United States sent one of its sloops of war, the USS Cyane, which bombarded Greytown, located at the mouth of the San Juan River, after local authorities tried to tax the steamers. Americans passing through the port and holding an American prisoner for the alleged murder of a local.

Geographic description and population

Mosquitia, being both a political and a geographical expression, extends from Punta Castilla in the north, inclusive, to the Chiriquí River in the south, and along the top of the mountain range that forms its natural boundary towards the west. This extension of territory, although occupied by the different ethnic groups of Mosquitia throughout the colonial era, and claimed as theirs by the Mosquito State and the United Kingdom, was nevertheless disputed by Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and even Colombia, all of them backed by the United States of America. For those Latin American states and the United States, the territory did not extend further south than Punta Gorda. This claim was backed by the United States after the discovery of gold in California, and in order to travel faster, they wanted to build an interoceanic canal or railway through Central America, mainly Nicaragua. This became one of the biggest territorial disputes in the time between Mosquitia and the United Kingdom on the one hand, and the United States and those Latin American states on the other. The tension eased when the United Kingdom and the United States signed the Clayton-Bulwer treaty in 1850, which stipulated that neither contracting party would attempt to control the interoceanic canal or the railroad, nor would they attempt to gain further territorial control in the region.