page_title: History of Venezuela (1830–1908)
section_title: Civilian presidencies and Crespo ascendancy (1887 - 1899)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Venezuela (1830–1908) / Civilian presidencies and Crespo ascendancy (1887 - 1899)
caption_attribution_description: El General Joaquín Crespo y los jefes de la Revolución Legalista
context_page_description: Following the Venezuelan War of Independence, Venezuela initially won independence from the Spanish Empire as part of Gran Colombia. Internal tensions led to the dissolution of Gran Colombia in 1830/31, with Venezuela declaring independence in 1811. For the rest of the nineteenth century, independent Venezuela saw a range of caudillos compete for power. Leading political figures include José Antonio Páez, Antonio Guzmán Blanco and Cipriano Castro.
  In a succession of rebellions, the Federal War was particularly bloody, and saw the establishment of the modern system of States of Venezuela. The turn of the century saw several notable international crises which contributed to the development of the United States' Monroe Doctrine: the Venezuela Crisis of 1895 under Joaquín Crespo and the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 under Cipriano Castro.
context_section_description: Guzmán Blanco decided to retire to Paris in 1887 at the age of 59. He died there in 1899. He had left behind statues of himself and other reminders of his prolonged direct and indirect rule. Also, he left a country in relative peace. His appointed successor, Hermógenes López, was a colorless caudillo, who inaugurated some of the projects Guzmán Blanco had started, among them a submarine cable to Curaçao, which linked Venezuela to the rest of the world, and the Valencia-Puerto Cabello railroad. López was replaced by the civilian Juan Pablo Rojas Paúl with Guzmán Blanco's far-away blessing. Joaquín Crespo, who thought he should have been chosen president, went into exile and started planning his own revolution. Rojas Paúl actively promoted an anti-Guzmán popular reaction in Caracas and other cities. He turned power over to another civilian, Raimundo Andueza Palacios, who forgot the cardinal rule of relying on caudillos for support, a power vacuum which Crespo promptly filled in 1892. Ambitious but unassuming, Crespo ruled until 1898 and handed power to Ignacio Andrade, but Crespo was the military mainstay of the government. In suppressing a serious threat to the government he was killed in action and Andrade was left to fend for himself.
  Under Crespo, Venezuela experienced an international crisis in what became known as the Venezuela Crisis of 1895. The crisis occurred over Venezuela's longstanding dispute with the United Kingdom about the territory of Essequibo and Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory. As the dispute became a crisis, the key issue became Britain's refusal to include in the proposed international arbitration the territory east of the "Schomburgk Line", which a surveyor had drawn half a century earlier as a boundary between Venezuela and the former Dutch territory of British Guiana. The crisis ultimately saw Britain accept the United States' intervention in the dispute to force arbitration of the entire disputed territory, and tacitly accept the United States' right to intervene under the Monroe Doctrine. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the matter, and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.
caption: El General Joaquín Crespo y los jefes de la Revolución Legalista, by Arturo Michelena. Joaquín Crespo was President 1884–1886 and 1892–1898.