Viceroyalty of New Granada

The Viceroyalty of New Granada was the Spanish colonial government of northern South America, covering roughly today's Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama. Created in 1717, suppressed in 1723 and re-established in 1739, it lasted until the wars of independence, and its capital was Santa Fe de Bogotá.

Spanish conquistadors reached the Caribbean coast of today's Colombia in the early sixteenth century, founding Santa Marta in 1525 and Cartagena in 1533. In 1536–1538, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada led an expedition up the Magdalena river to the highlands, conquering the Muisca, a farming people with a sophisticated culture, whose rulers' ceremony of covering themselves in gold dust and making offerings in Lake Guatavita gave rise to the legend of El Dorado. Quesada founded Santa Fe de Bogotá in 1538 and named the region the New Kingdom of Granada. An audiencia, a high court, was established in Bogotá in 1550, under the Viceroyalty of Peru.

The region's economy depended on gold mining, especially in the Pacific lowlands of the Chocó and in Antioquia, worked mainly by enslaved Africans. Cartagena was the main port for the slave trade in South America and the departure point for the treasure fleets; it was heavily fortified with walls and the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. Escaped slaves formed communities, palenques; San Basilio de Palenque, founded in the seventeenth century, still preserves its own language and culture. The Jesuit priest Peter Claver ministered to enslaved Africans arriving at Cartagena and was later canonised.

As part of the Bourbon reforms, which aimed to tighten control and increase revenues, Spain created the Viceroyalty of New Granada in 1717, separating it from Peru. After a brief suppression, it was re-established in 1739, including the audiencias of Bogotá, Quito and Panama, and, for some purposes, Venezuela. In 1741 a huge British fleet under Admiral Edward Vernon besieged Cartagena, but the defenders, led by Blas de Lezo, repelled the attack.

In 1783 the Spanish botanist and priest José Celestino Mutis began the Royal Botanical Expedition of New Granada, which documented thousands of plants with detailed illustrations. The German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt visited in 1801. In 1781 new taxes provoked the Revolt of the Comuneros, which began in Socorro and gathered thousands of people, including Indigenous people, who marched on Bogotá. The authorities agreed to concessions, then broke them and executed the leader, José Antonio Galán. In 1794 Antonio Nariño translated and printed the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and was imprisoned.

After Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808, juntas formed in Quito in 1809 and in Caracas and Bogotá in 1810, at first in the name of Ferdinand VII. Venezuela declared independence in 1811, and Cartagena in 1811. The period from 1810 to 1816, called the Patria Boba, "foolish fatherland", saw conflict between federalists and centralists. In 1815–1816, a Spanish army under Pablo Morillo reconquered New Granada and executed many patriots.

Simón Bolívar led the struggle in Venezuela. In 1819 he crossed the Andes with his army and defeated the royalists at the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819, taking Bogotá. He founded the Republic of Colombia, now called Gran Colombia, uniting Venezuela, New Granada and, after 1822, Ecuador and Panama. Gran Colombia dissolved in 1830 into Venezuela, Ecuador and New Granada, later Colombia. Panama separated from Colombia in 1903, with American support.

Our maps show the Viceroyalty of New Granada on the 1783, 1800 and 1815 maps. Its largest outline, about 3.1 million square kilometres on the 1783 map, covers today's Colombia and Venezuela, with parts in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Guyana. Bogotá, Caracas and Quito lie inside it. On the 1878 map the region is divided between Colombia and its neighbours.