South America
Venezuela
Friday, December 20, 1895, The World, Published by the Press Publishing Company, New York
VENEZUELA AND BRITISH GUIANA
If it is considered strange that the question of the Venezuela boundary should involve a dispute between Great Britain and the United States, it is equally strange that the contention should not be between Venezuela and British Guiana. These are really the interested parties, yet no mention is made of British Guiana in the affair for the Reason that British Guiana has no existence except as a part of the British colonial system a euphemism for the most sordid record of land-grabbing in history.
That the boundary question should be a question between Venezuela and Great Britain, not between Venezuela and British Guiana, is a circumstance which shows the true relations of the rival claimants.
British Guiana is not an independent power; it is not a colony in the true sense of the word: it is a piece ot landed property. Its area of 109,000 square miles nearly equals the area of the United Kingdom, but of its population of 278,000 (in 1891), only 2,633 were Europeans. It had 100,000 Africans, 105,000 East Indians mainly coolies the rest being chiefly South American Indians. It is a huge plantation, managed by an overseer called a Governor, who receives a salary of 5,000 a year and who is assisted by a council of fifteen members, seven of whom are appointive and eight elected by the 2,500 qualified electors. But the name of British Guiana is a mere geographical expression.
 
Amerique: |
Venezuela, on the other hand, is an independent, self-sustaining, self-governing republic. Its constitution is modeled after our own. It has eight independent States and a federal district. It has a Congress of two houses a Senate and a House of Representatives. A Federal Council appointed by Congress, chooses its President, who is also President of the Republic and who can serve but one term. The separate States have their Legislatures, as in this country. The frequent revolutions and changes of government since the overthrow of the Spanish domination prove that while Venezuela has the form it is lacking in some of the essential characteristics of a republic. This is easy to understand when we know-that it is a tropical country, that its area of some 600,000 square miles Is occupied by only 2,300,000 inhabitants, and that of these, only one percent are of pure European race.
In spite of a compulsory education law, illiteracy is the rule in Venezuela. It has a nominal army, and, not even a nominal navy. Its public debt is owed entirely in Europe. Its revenue, chiefly from import duties, merely suffices for its current expenses. Its foreign trade is chiefly with Great Britain and this country, its exports being chiefly coffee, cocoa and hides. It has practically no resources. In the future, it may be a real power, capable of some assertion of its rights. At present, while it is nominally an independent republic, it is in reality like British Guiana only a geographical expression, with its geographical limits unfortunately only vaguely defined. The idea of the United States going to war with Great Britain over a boundary dispute involving Venezuela and British Guiana is the most fantastic of any that has ever been used to evoke a "brilliant foreign policy."
 
Pirate/Privateer Captain Henry Morgan attacking the Spanish Fleet off the Port of Maracaibo, Venezuela |
Puerto Cabello
The Port of Puerto Cabello has been important throughout Venezuela's history. It was a smuggling center, the victim if many pirate attacks, and an important battlefield in Venezuela's struggle for independence. It was also the birthplace of the world-famous Simon Bolivar who contributed enormously to the independence of several South American countries (Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia).
During the 17th Century, buccaneers made a target of the Port of Puerto Cabello, and Dutch smugglers used the port as a market for their goods. For a time, the Port of Puerto Cabello was under the control of the Dutch. The deep-water harbor at the Port of Puerto Cabello made it a natural center for commerce and trade and an export point for products from the agriculturally rich Valencia Basin. In 1730, Spain took control of the Port of Puerto Cabello after the Royal Guipuzcoana Company, which had a monopoly on Venezuelan trade, had built wharves, warehouses, and forts at the Port of Puerto Cabello to protect the harbor. By the 1770s, the Port of Puerto Cabello was the most fortified town on the coast of Venezuela. It was so fortified, in fact, that it was the last Spanish stronghold to fall during the country's war for independence in 1823.
August 3, 1868, Daily Alta California, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Venezuela and West Indies
New York, August 2d. The news from Porto Cabello is that the adherents of the deposed President number 1,500, supported by a flotilla of five small vessels. Langarge is blockaded by another portion of the fleet. The new President has marched on Porto Cabello and is determined to crush all opposition to his administration. Advices from St. Domingo state that 1,500 of President Baez's troops were badly beaten by the Revolutionist, and their commander, General Bringham, killed.
Port Sucre
Founded in 1515 by Franciscan monks, Cumana was named Nueva Toledo in 1521 after being re-established several times when the indigenous people attacked the fledgling village. The city was rebuilt again in 1569 by Diego Fernandez de Serpa. Today, the city boasts that it is the oldest European settlement in South America. Drawn by the pearl fisheries at the island of Cubagua and near Cumana, the Spanish used the local indigenous Guaiqueri as divers and fishermen. The early settlement was plagued by privateers and earthquakes, but it thrived on trade with Spain and neighboring settlements during the colonial period. Unfortunately, little of the 16th Century settlement survived the earthquakes.
The Lost Fleet : The Discovery of a Sunken Armada from the Golden Age of Piracy
Barry Clifford.
On January 2, 1678, a fleet of French ships sank off the Venezuelan coast. This proved disastrous for French naval power in the region, and sparked the rise of a golden age of piracy. Tracing the lives of fabled pirates like the Chevalier de Grammont, Nikolaas Van Hoorn, Thomas Paine, and Jean Comte d'Estrees, "The Lost Fleet" portrays a dark age, when the outcasts of European society formed a democracy of buccaneers, settling on a string of islands off the African coast. From there, the pirates haunted the world's oceans, wreaking havoc on the settlements along the Spanish mainland and -- often enlisted by French and English governments -- sacking ships, ports, and coastal towns. More than three hundred years later, writer, explorer, and deep-sea diver Barry Clifford follows the pirates' destructive wake back to Venezuela. With the help of a lost map, drawn by the captain of the lost French fleet, Clifford locates the site of the disaster and wreckage of the once-mighty armada.
1899. World's Fleet. Boston Daily Globe
Lloyds Register of Shipping gives the entire fleet of the world as 28,180 steamers and sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 27,673,628, of which 39 perent are British.
| Great Britain | 10,990 vessels, total tonnage of 10,792,714 |
| United States | 3,010 vessels, total tonnage of 2,405,887 |
| Norway | 2,528 vessels, tonnage of 1,604,230 |
| Germany | 1,676 vessels, with a tonnage of 2,453,334, in which are included her particularly large ships. |
| Sweden | 1,408 vessels with a tonnage of 643, 527 |
| Italy | 1,150 vessels |
| France | 1,182 vessels |
For Historical Comparison
Top 10 Maritime Nations Ranked by Value (2017)
| Country | # of Vessels | Gross Tonnage (m) |
Total Value (USDbn) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greece | 4,453 | 206.47 | $88.0 |
| 2 | Japan | 4,317 | 150.26 | $79.8 |
| 3 | China | 4,938 | 159.71 | $71.7 |
| 4 | USA | 2,399 | 55.92 | $46.5 |
| 5 | Singapore | 2,662 | 64.03 | $41.7 |
| 6 | Norway | 1,668 | 39.68 | $41.1 |
| 7 | Germany | 2,923 | 81.17 | $30.3 |
| 8 | UK | 883 | 28.78 | $24.3 |
| 9 | Denmark | 1,040 | 36.17 | $23.4 |
| 10 | South Korea | 1,484 | 49.88 | $20.1 |
| Total | 26,767 | 87.21 | $466.9 | |
Site Search
The Explorer's Eye:
First-Hand Accounts of
Adventure and Exploration
Fergus Fleming, Annabel Merullo, Michael Palin
In the eighteenth century, exploration entered a new phase; for the first time explorers were motivated by scientific inquiry rather than greed. Their job was not only to open new lands but also to investigate the globe's mysteries. They were now expected to make a full record of everything they encountered, and include pictures as well as words.
Combining firsthand accounts with original images, The Explorer's Eye gives insight into who these people were, how they operated, and, above all, what they saw. Here you have Alexander von Humboldt braving the electric eels of South Africa, Robert Peary explaining the rigors of polar travel (and his wife giving her own slant too), Umberto Nobile lamenting the loss of his Zeppelin in an ice floe, Jacques Cousteau examining the planet from under the waves, and Neil Armstrong doing the same from outer space.
Ploughing the South Sea: A History of Merchant Shipping on the West Coast of South America
E. John McGarry
The Gold Rush Diary of
Ramon Gil Navarro
Patagonia: A Forgotten Land: From Magellan to Peron
C.A. Brebbia
WIT Press (UK)
A history of Patagonia from its discovery by Magellan to recent times. Patagonia has been associated with conditions of extreme hardship and suffering. Men and ships were lost in the dangerous waters of the Straits of Tierra del Fuego, giving rise to tales of mysterious cities populated by the shipwrecked sailors, survivors of failed expeditions. Early Spanish attempts to colonize Patagonia ended in failure and the region remained largely uninhabited until the arrival of the Welsh in 1865. Their peaceful coexistence with the natives ended abruptly when the Argentine Army entered Patagonia and took over the Indian lands, which were promptly distributed to new settlers. As a new frontier society, Patagonia could not fail to attract its share of desperadoes and adventurers, the most notorious of whom are described in the book, including gold prospectors, hunters and bandits such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The Americas: A Hemispheric History
(Modern Library Chronicles)
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures
(Palgrave Essential Histories)
Marshall C. Eakin
This narrative history of Latin America surveys five centuries in less than five hundred pages. The first third of the book moves from the Americas before Columbus to the wars for independence in the early nineteenth century. The construction of new nations and peoples in the nineteenth century forms the middle third, and the final section analyzes economic development, rising political participation, and the search of identity over the last century. The collision of peoples and cultures - Native Americans, Europeans, Africans - that defines Latin America, and gives it both its unity and diversity, provides the central theme of this concise, synthetic history.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann
The Penguin History of Latin America
Edwin Williamson
From Columbus to Chavez.
Born in Blood & Fire:
A Concise History of Latin America
(Third Edition)
John Charles Chasteen
A Brief Political and Geographic History of Latin America: Where Are Gran Colombia, La Plata, and Dutch Guiana?
(Places in Time/a Kid's Historic Guide)
Earle Rice, Jr.
For young readers with maps, timelines, Web addresses for additional study.
Black in Latin America
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Tropical Nature
Life and Death in the Rain Forests of Central and South America
Adrian Forsyth, Ken Miyata,
Dr. Thomas Lovejoy
Ursua (Spanish Edition)
William Ospina
Con solo quince anos de edad, Ursua se embarca hacia America en busca de fortuna y de gloria, llega primero a Peru donde la insurreccion de Pizarro, la confusion general y un tesoro que ya se encuentra en manos de otros espanoles, le hacen dudar de continuar en esas tierras. Sin embargo, estando alli una carta de un tio le devuelve la esperanza; Miguel Diaz de Armendariz, nombrado juez de la Nueva Granada, invita a Ursua a Cartagena. El joven acude en el acto y a partir de alli se puede decir que comienzan sus aventuras y desventuras en el Nuevo Mundo. Guerras sangrientas y crueles contra indigenas y negros libertos, enganos y traiciones, un amor por una india y un hijo con una blanca al que jamas conocio, y atravesando todo esto, constante, como grabado sobre piedra, la leyenda de El Dorado, la maxima quimera de todas sus ambiciones.
Young Ursua embarks in a voyage to America in search of fortune and glory. He arrives in Peru, where Pizarro's uprising, the general upheaval and the riches now in hands of other Spaniards, make him question his plans to stay. He receives an unexpected letter from his uncle, the judge of Nueva Granada, inviting him to Cartagena, where his adventures, fortunes, and misfortunes begin. Ospina presents a dramatic testimony of the Spanish conquest of America.
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