United Kingdom–Venezuela relations

United Kingdom–Venezuela relations are the bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Venezuela since 1817 when so-called "British Legions" of former British soldiers fought to defend the Third Republic of Venezuela against Spanish royalists in the Venezuelan War of Independence.
In 1498, Trinidad island, eastern Venezuela, and Cubagua island were sighted by Christopher Columbus along with Margarita island. Later in 1499 Spanish expeditions returned to exploit abundant pearl oysters in Cubagua, enslaving the indigenous people as experts diver to harvest the pearls intensively.Throughout the colonial period, British naval vessels in times of war, occasional privateers – and in times of peace British and colonial pirates, outlaws, at risk of execution by neutral parties – harassed the wealthy Spanish authorities in Venezuela by plundering their ships, cities, and ports. In times of peace private trade ships from both empires brought mutually needed goods or slaves.
The pearls became one of the most valuable resources of the incipient Spanish Empire in the Americas since 1501 but by 1513 the local indigenous population had been devastated. When it was realized that the Lucayan people of the Bahamas practiced diving for conchs the Spanish sent them to the Isle of Cubagua as pearl divers. Within two years the southern Bahamas were largely depopulated. The Spanish may have carried away as many as 40,000 Lucayans by 1513. The first enslaved Africans arrived in Cubagua between 1526 and 1527 to work in pearl fishing. In 1528, Cristóbal Guerra founded the city of Nueva Cádiz, the first settlement to hold the title of "city" in Venezuela and South America. The city which reached a population between 1,000 and 1,500, became a synonym for the suppression by the Hispanic Conquistadores in Venezuela largely used by British and Dutch as an example of the Black Legend.
The Spanish conquests of the Aztec and the Inca empires in the early sixteenth century made the actual Mexico and Peru more desirable places for Spanish exploration and settlement but Caribbean remained strategically important. However, by 1531, the depletion of the pearl oyster beds became increasingly acute, causing the Spaniards to limit pearl production. In combination with the migration to the Guajira Peninsula where discovery of new pearl oyster beds at La Vela, led to a decline of Nueva Cádiz. By 1539 there were less than 50 people left on Cubagua. Nueva Cádiz was destroyed in an earthquake followed by a tsunami in 1541.
The cocoa and tobacco production in the valleys of the Central Coast range can be traced back to 1548 when the explorer Juan de Villegas founded Borburata on the coast of the Caribbean sea. In 1555 French pirates led by Jean Sorel attacked Borburata for 6 days and in 1561 Lope de Aguirre and his maranones attacked Borburata after plundering Isla Margarita. From 1560 onwards, the area was home to several haciendas which grew cocoa and tobacco. Sometimes, several slaves were imported to the villages from Africa to increase cocoa production on the haciendas. Early contact with the area known began in the 16th century with the limited expeditionary forces of Elizabeth I's privateers. In 1563 John Hawkins persuaded Queen Elizabeth I to back to the New World for slave trade and secured investors from her court, these included Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester and Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln. He set sail from Plymouth on 18 October 1564 with four vessels, Jesus of Lübeck, and 3 ships of his own. He took over 400 enslaved people from Africa, some he bought from the Portuguese, others he kidnapped directly by raiding the coast, he left Africa on 29 January 1565.
On 3 April 1565, Hawkins arrived at Borburata and forced the settlers to buy his cargo of African slaves and goods despite the trade being prohibited he carried out a fake threat of force with the local governor's collusion. He then traveled to Rio de la Hacha where he used force to ensure he secured the deals he thought fair. He sold 300 enslaved people, clothing, linen, and wine. He was paid in pearls, gold, silver, and other precious items and took further orders to sell enslaved people on a future voyage. The voyage returned a profit reported at 60%. Hawkins brought back to England the sweet potato and tobacco, which was initially used as a narcotic; smoking did not gain in popularity until years later.
1566: John Lowe attacked Borburata.1567 French pirates led by Nicolas Vallier invaded Borburata, and the residents had to abandon the town. 1568: John Hawkins and his second cousin Francis Drake attacked Borburata again, forcing residents to buy his cargo. This included some of the 400 Africans he had captured and enslaved in West Africa.
Events worsened for the fleet as it faced storms, Spanish hostility, armed conflict, and finally a hurricane that separated one ship from the rest, and it had to find its own way home. The remaining ships were forced into the port of San Juan de Ulúa near Vera Cruz so they could make repairs. Soon afterward the viceroy of New Spain, Martín Enríquez de Almanza, arrived with a fleet of ships. While still negotiating to resupply and repair, Hawkins' ships were attacked by the Spanish ships in what became known as the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa. The battle ended in an English defeat with all but two of the English ships lost. Drake, by this time the captain of Judith, fled leaving Hawkins behind. Hawkins escaped on Minion and limped back to England with dozens of his men dying along the way, and arriving with a crew of just 15. Hundreds of English seamen were abandoned.
After arriving back in England, Hawkins accused Drake of desertion and of stealing the treasure they had accumulated. Drake denied both accusations asserting he had distributed all profits among the crew and that he had believed Hawkins was lost when he left. The bitter end of the fourth voyage turned Drake's life in a different direction: thereafter he would not pursue trading and slaving but would, instead, dedicate himself to attacking Spanish possessions wherever he found them. The battle of San Juan de Ulúa would lead to the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) and other successive Anglo-Spanish wars in the area.
Raleigh's El Dorado expedition, was an English military and exploratory expedition led by Sir Walter Raleigh that took place during the Anglo-Spanish War in 1595. The expedition set out in February 1595 to explore the Orinoco River on the northeast tip of South America in an attempt to find the fabled city of El Dorado.
Raleigh first captured the Spanish settlement of San José de Oruña on the colony of Trinidad, along with the Governor Antonio de Berrío, who had been looking for El Dorado since the 1580s. After questioning De Berrío, Raleigh and the English held the place and used it as a base for their exploration. Despite the presence of a Spanish force shadowing him, Raleigh successfully navigated the Orinoco river and inlets, penetrating some 400 miles (640 km) into the Guiana highlands.
No gold or lost city was ever found; however, Raleigh returned to England and subsequently exaggerated his account. Still, the expedition resulted in an important alliance with the natives of the region, which would have a lasting impact on future colonization of the area.
In 1595, the Preston Somers Expedition, was initially supposed to join Walter Raleigh's El Dorado Expedition. After failing to meet with Raleigh at Trinidad, the expedition ventured on its own along the coast of Venezuela Province, capturing first the fort of La Guaira and later the colonial city of Caracas.
After the Spanish failed to pay their ransom, Preston and Somers ordered the pillaging and torching of the city and went on to capture Coro. They finished the expedition with a brief incursion into the Spanish West Indies, but cut short any future actions following a bout of dysentery among the crew which saw 80 mean death and a plummeting morale. They returned to safe ports in English-held water via Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. They later met and joined Raleigh's flotilla and sailed back to England via Newfoundland.
The next year Raleigh took part in the capture of Cádiz, where he was wounded. Being unable to go himself Raleigh recommended Lawrence Kemys in command of the Darling to continue the exploration of the Guiana coast from a river he called "Shurinama" (actual Suriname River) to the Essequibo river. Kemys brought back glowing accounts of the wealth of the country he had visited and urged on Raleigh that it would greatly advantage the queen Elizabeth I to take possession of it. Raleigh, however, was not in a position to follow the advice, and Kemys seems to have remained in his service on shore. During his exploration of the coast between the Amazon and the Orinoco, Kemys mapped the location of Amerindian tribes and prepared geographical, geological and botanical reports of the country. Kemys described the coast of Guiana in detail in his Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana (1596).
In 1597 the governor Diego de Osorio ordered the build-up of defenses of La Guayra. The coastal defenses of the Caribbean shore were also built up to resist future attacks of pirates. Several permanent garrisons and the fortification of the Royal Road to Caracas were established.
The tobacco that the first English settlers encountered in Virginia (Nicotiana rustica) tasted dark and bitter to the English palate. It was John Rolfe who in 1612 obtained Spanish seeds ( Nicotiana tabacum) from the Orinoco River valley. These seeds when planted in the relatively rich bottomland of the James River, produced a milder, yet still dark leaf that soon became the European standard. This saved England of another failure in North America and over the next 160 years, tobacco production spread from the Tidewater area to the Blue Ridge Mountains, especially dominating the agriculture of the Chesapeake region.
In 1617, Raleigh was pardoned by the King James I and granted permission to conduct a second expedition to Venezuela in search of El Dorado. During the expedition, a detachment of Raleigh's men under the command of his long-time friend Lawrence Kemys attacked the Spanish outpost of Santo Tomé de Guayana on the Orinoco river, in violation of peace treaties with Spain and against Raleigh's orders. A condition of Raleigh's pardon was avoidance of any hostility against Spanish colonies or shipping. In the initial attack on the settlement, Raleigh's son, Walter, was fatally shot. Kemys informed Raleigh of his son's death and begged for forgiveness, but did not receive it, and at once committed suicide. On Raleigh's return to England, an outraged Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, demanded that Raleigh's death sentence be reinstated by King James, who had little choice but to do so. Raleigh was brought to London from Plymouth by Sir Lewis Stukley, where he passed up numerous opportunities to make an effective escape.
Raleigh was beheaded in the Old Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster on 29 October 1618. "Let us dispatch", he said to his executioner. "At this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear."
Beginning in 1619 the General Assembly of Virginia colony put in place requirements for the inspection of tobacco and mandated the creation of port towns and warehouses. This system assisted in the development of major settlements at Norfolk, Alexandria, and Richmond. Tobacco formed the basis of the colony’s economy: it was used to purchase the indentured servants and enslaved laborers to cultivate it, to pay local taxes and thieves. Only in December 16, 1620 the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth Harbor and the English colonists, known today as Pilgrims, began building their town near Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
To protect the Araya salt flats, the "white gold" of the time, from English, French, and Dutch incursions, the Spanish Crown ordered the construction of a military fortress, which they finished building at the beginning of the year 1625. It was given the name of Real Fuerza de Santiago de Arroyo de Araya. Santiago, from the patron of Spain; Arroyo, from the governor Diego de Arroyo Daza and Araya, from the name of the place. It was the first important fortress of the captaincy of Venezuela. After that, a huge defensive system was erected at this time including circa 76 fortresses, forts, batteries, and castles. Thirty-six of these are located along the extensive (2,813 km) Caribbean coast. Of the latter, twenty-one were built for the defense of the port of La Guaira. The others were scattered throughout in Araya, Cumana, Barcelona, Puerto Cabello, Coro, Maracaibo, Zapara and Margarita islands as a backup of Cartagena de Indias and Portobello strongholds. The Atlantic coast from Trinidad island until Tordesillas meridian remained unprotected to military attacks of other European powers.
During the 17th century, drinking chocolate became very popular among the elites of Europe, and was believed to be an aphrodisiac. The New Spain cocoa was expensive due to the high transportation costs and import duties. The valley of Pocó river (actual state of Trujillo), located in the west of Venezuela, was one of the first places where cocoa was cultivated. The Spanish established large estates also on the south coast of Maracaibo Lake and exported their beans from Maracaibo and the port of Gibraltar to Veracruz, New Spain, or Seville, Spain. However, many of the shipments were diverted to the Caribbean island of Curaçao, a Dutch colony, and in this way, large-scale smuggling arose to other European countries that were willing to pay better prices. Maracaibo was plundered by the British pirate William Jackson in 1664. Four years after Maracaibo and Gibraltar were taken and ransacked in 1668 by the French pirate François l'Olonnais and by one year later by Sir Henry Morgan.
Around 1675, Margarita island was captured by Red Legs Greaves, a pirate known for his humanity and morality. He captured a fleet of Spanish ships off port, before turning the guns on the forts which he stormed and claimed a large booty of pearls and gold. The story of Greaves' capture of the island does not appear in historical Spanish records and may be fictional.
In 1678, Michel de Grammont captured Maracaibo and plundered Gibraltar, penetrating as far inland as Trujillo. The damage was so severe that Gibraltar had nearly ceased to exist by 1680.
During the late XVIII century cocoa cultivation expanded throughout Venezuela. The first plantations in Barlovento, a region situated on the Caribbean coast, were established by Dominican monks in Curiepe, Carenero, Rio Chico, and Panaquire. By the time Madrid had stored around 700,000 pounds of cacao. From Spain, cacao beans spread to other European nations: Portugal and Italy, and then outwards to France, Netherlands, and England. Tracing the spread of chocolate in Europe is complicated by the religious wars and shifting allegiances of the time, but it is understood that it was driven by cosmopolitanism and missionaries. Most cacao imported to Europe in the 17th–18th centuries came from Venezuela where the native beans of finest quality was called Criollo and the prevenient of the Amazonas basin or Mesoamerica Forastero.
The death of the childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700, led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire between supporters of the French Bourbons and the Habsburgs. Charles named his heir as Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV of France, whose claim was backed by France and most of Habsburg Spain. His rival, Archduke Charles of Austria, was supported by the Grand Alliance, whose primary members included Austria and the Dutch Republic.
Since 1701 the Queen Anne involved England in the Grand Alliance intending to invade Spain and overthrow the King Philip V of Bourbon to oppose the expansionist policies of Louis XIV of France.
During the course of the War of the Spanish Succession, Venezuela stayed out of the battle fields in Europe and North America conflict. The exports will be drastically reduced in terms of volume and price, especially in the case of cocoa, and imports will become more expensive, including those of flour, which came from Martinique and Saint Thomas. The Crown signs a contract with the Royal Guinea Company to introduce 10 thousand of Africans as slaves or about 42 thousand in 10 years into the West Indies. African Slaves must replace the Indians in the roughest tasks. The French company obtained a license to also introduce, free of charge, food for the slaves, which gave rise to widespread smuggling that was difficult to control, despite the penalty, due to the shortage suffered in the colonies during the War of Succession. In 1704, 737 bushels of corn and 1,114 arrobas of cassava were imported from Saint Domingue to Venezuela at a very high price.
By 1708 the Orituco cocoa cultivated on the banks of the Tuy River and Yaracuy River gained well-deserved fame for its aroma and excellence. Numerous estates were also founded by Capuchins monks in the east of the country and Trinidad where a prosperous cocoa trade quickly flourished in lockstep with the importation of enslaved African peoples. This economic expansion stimulated migration from Europe, which led to more planters of valuable crops as tobacco and sugar cane, and thus, more slaves. Many of the shipments were diverted to Curaçao, a Dutch colony, and in this way, large-scale smuggling arose to other European countries that were willing to pay better prices.
In 1709, the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy led the Great Alliance to victories on France, but at such a cost that powerful political forces in England began to press for an armistice to end the war. The South Sea Company was a British joint-stock company founded in January 1711, created by Queen Anne as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of the national debt contracted due the war.
In 1711, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I of Austria died and was succeeded by Archduke Charles. The renewed threat of Habsburg domination in Europe enabled Louis XIV of France to obtain favorable peace terms in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) to keep the Spanish throne under the Bourbon dynasty in return for permanently renouncing his claim to the French throne, along with other necessary guarantees that would ensure that France and Spain should not merge, thus preserving the balance of power in Europe.
Philip V became King of Spain and his colonies in America and Asia on the condition that Spain and France would never be united. Britain received Gibraltar, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Manhattan Island and other North American territories as well as granted to Queen Anne the monopoly of the slave trade (Asiento) to supply the Spanish colonies with 4,800 slaves per year and one ship of trade goods per year until 1743. The South Seas Company was permitted this privilege to raise funds and cancel the war debts. To arrange the Atlantic slave trade the company open offices in Buenos Aires, La Guaira, Cartagena de Indias, Havana, Panama, Portobello and Vera Cruz. One ship of no more than 500 tons could be sent to one of these places each year (the Navío de Permiso) with general trade goods. One-quarter of the profits were to be reserved for the King of Spain. There was provision for two extra sailings at the start of the contract. The Asiento was granted in the name of Queen Anne and then contracted to the company.
There was thus no realistic prospect that the slave and goods trade would take place, and as it turned out, the South Sea Company never realized any significant profit from its monopoly. However, Company stock rose greatly in value as it expanded its operations dealing in government debt, and peaked in 1720 before suddenly collapsing to a little above its original flotation price.
The South Sea Company was by no means the only company seeking to raise money from investors. A large number of other joint-stock companies, making extravagant (sometimes fraudulent) claims about foreign or other ventures or bizarre schemes, had been created. Others represented potentially sound, although novel, schemes, such as for founding insurance companies. These were nicknamed "Bubbles". Some of the companies had no legal basis, while others (such as the Hollow Sword Blade Company, which acted as the South Sea Company's banker), used existing chartered companies for purposes entirely different from those designated at their creation.
On the island of Trinidad, a majority of the cacao plants died in the 1720s. Rumor has it there was a natural devastation of the existing Criollo trees on the island and so Forastero trees were planted. After cross-pollination with the few remaining Criollo trees, the Trinitario variety was born. Trinitario was known as “the world’s finest cocoa hybrid” bringing together the best of both worlds. This hybrid strain spread to Venezuela in the 19th century and South America in the 20th century. The Trinitario being the least pure has a wide range of tastes and profiles of any other variety. The ratios of criollo to Forastero, and terroir greatly influence the complex flavors found in this bean.
In 1728, King Philip V founded the Royal Gipuzkoan Company in San Sebastian to monopolize the trade with the Province of Venezuela thru the harbors facilities of La Guaira and Puerto Cabello. The specific aim of the company, acting almost autonomously with tasks of a military nature at their own command and expense, was to break the de facto Dutch cocoa monopoly and clash with the legal trade conceded to the Company of South Sea under the Treat of Utrecht until 1745. Thanks to the profit the company generated, the Basque provinces underwent some urban reforms and improvements in the trade and manufacture of cocoa and tobacco. in the Basque port cities, the company provided a fast track to job positions for many Basques. The company's activity kept active Basque forges which were gradually declining in the face of growing competition from their British counterparts, and fed indirectly the arms factories of Soraluze. Since 1743, the company received permission to charter vessels under the French flag and the main beneficiaries of that decision were no doubt the coast of the Basque province of Labourd and the city of Bayonne which become the historic capital of chocolate since the Sephardic Jews combined the Venezuelan cocoa beans and the secrets of the chocolate making.
By 1735 the British interests in the South American continent due to the trade and naval rivalries with Spain conducted the British fighting Spain over a War of Jenkins' Ear. La Guaira was the first military scene on 22 October 1739, when it was attacked by 3 ships from the Royal Navy expedition of Admiral Edward Vernon. At the orders of Captain Thomas Waterhouse bombarded the defenses and tried to take the three ships of the Royal Guipuzcoan Company, but the warned people on land launched close fire. After three hours of heavy shelling, Waterhouse ordered a withdrawal. The battered British squadron sailed to Jamaica to undertake emergency repairs. Trying later to explain his actions, Waterhouse argued that the capture of a few small Spanish vessels would not have justified the loss of his men.
In 1742 the Royal Gipuzkoan Company ships had rendered great assistance during the failed siege of Cartagena de Indias in carrying troops, arms, stores, and ammunition from Spain to her colonies. In retaliation, the Admiralty in London planned a severe attack to blow both the Company infrastructure and the Spanish Government. In 1743 a Royal Navy fleet under Sir Charles Knowles was defeated at La Guaira where 600 men were killed by the defenders, among whom was the captain of HMS Burford, and many of the ships were badly damaged or lost. Knowles was, therefore, unable to proceed to Borburata until he had refitted at Curacao before attempting an assault on Puerto Cabello on 15 April, and again on 24 April, but both assaults were again beaten back. Knowles called off the failed expedition and returned to Jamaica.
Apart from minor fighting in Florida, Georgia, and Havana, the conflict was largely subsumed into the War of the Austrian Succession, which involved most of the powers of Europe, and ended with the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Great Britain failed to achieve its territorial and economic ambitions, and Spain successfully defended its possessions in the Americas. After that the British withdrawing to focus naval efforts on their North American wars (1775–1783) and resulting in the Anglo-Spanish War in the Americas (1779–1783).
Several rebellions took place against the Guipuzcoan company and ethnic confrontation came to a head in 1749, which saw local criollos supported by the Dutch and British confront the powerful Basques supported by the Spanish Crown. The rebellion was led by Juan Francisco de León, a Canary Islander just replaced as Corporal of War (1749), but the Spanish Crown could not shrink from protecting its own interests by supporting the company, and quelling the uprising that very year.
The company was instrumental in the development of large-scale cocoa production along the valleys of the coast and encouraged the production of such crops as tobacco, indigo, cotton, and coffee. In addition, the company promoted the exploration and settlement of frontier areas, most famously under the border expedition of 1750–1761 headed by a company agent, José de Iturriaga y Aguirre, which resulted in new settlements in the Guayana region.
The Royal Barcelona Trading Company founded in 1755 was granted a monopoly on trade to the Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo and Margarita as well as being allowed ten annual visits to Guatemala and Honduras, trade with New Andalucia (north eastern Venezuela) and some limited trading with Havana.
The company exported principally wine and brandy and increasingly chintz (or printed calico Catalan: indianes) as this industry grew in Barcelona. Imported products include raw cotton, mules, indigo, dried meat, salt, brazil wood, cocoa, tobacco, and sugar amongst others.
In 1777 the provinces of Venezuela were separated from the Viceroyalty of New Granada by King Charles III and assigned to the Captaincy General of Venezuela as part of the Bourbon reforms. In addition to these core areas, the territory included parts of the Viceroyalty as Guyana, Cumana, Trinidad, Margarita, Maracaibo, southwestern Suriname, and parts of northwestern Brazil. It opened Venezuelan ports to foreign commerce of cocoa, sugar, indigo and tobacco, but this recognized a fait accompli. Like no other Spanish American dependency, Venezuela had more contacts with Europe through the British, Dutch, Danish, and French islands in the Caribbean. In an almost surreptitious, though legal, manner, Caracas had become an intellectual powerhouse. From 1721, it had its own university, which taught Latin, medicine, and engineering, apart from the humanities. Its most illustrious graduate, Andrés Bello, became the greatest Spanish American polymath of his time. In Chacao, a town to the east of Caracas, there flourished a school of music whose director José Ángel Lamas produced a few but impressive compositions according with the strictest 18th-century European canons. Later on, the development of the education system is one of the reasons why distribution began to improve.
In October 1778, King Charles III signed the Free Trade Regulations culminating the free trade process that had begun in 1765. The regulations were composed of 55 articles, expanded freedom of trade, and enabled 13 metropolitan ports including Margarita Island and Trinidad Island. The ports of Venezuela (La Guaira, Puerto Cabello, Cumaná, Maracaibo, Barcelona, and Angostura) were excluded to protect the interests of the Royal trade Companies along with the ports of New Spain, for fear that the prosperity of this territory would lead to a lack of concern for other less active areas, which went against the guiding idea of the project.
During the American Revolutionary War on 8 January 1780, 7 warships and 14 merchantmen of the Guipuzcoan Company were captured by the Royal Navy. On 15 January 1782 other 2 merchant ships were captured. Charles III signed the Cedula de Population of 1783 to stimulate immigration to Trinidad province invited persons of Roman Catholic faith who would swear loyalty to the Spanish Crown to receive land allotments in sizes depending on their race and heritage.
By 1783 the Barcelona Company was further weakened by losing half its ships sunk or seized by the Royal Navy. These facts combined with the 1778 liberalization of commerce the company's monopoly came to an end. The Spanish crown terminated the company's charter in 1784. The owners of the Guipuzcoan Company merged it with the Barcelona Trading Company to form the Royal Company of the Philippines in 1785.
The outbreak of War of the First Coalition between Britain and Revolutionary France in 1793 allowed Britain to recapture the Tobago island. The French forces surrendered after a two-pronged attack and reinstated the British colonial constitution.
In 1796 the Spanish anchored in Port of Spain a naval squadron consisting of four ships of the line and one frigate: San Vincente (84 guns), Gallardo (74 guns), Arrogante (74 guns), San Damaso (74 guns), and Santa Cecilia (36 guns), all under the command of Rear-Admiral Don Sebastian Ruiz de Apodaca.
British maritime activity in the late XVIII century became more aggressive and began actively to attack territories in the Caribbean Sea, to enable greater British mercantile trade in the area. In 1797 a Royal Navy force under the command of Rear-Admiral Henry Harvey, launched an invasion of Trinidad island. His squadron sailed through the Bocas of Drago and anchored off the coast of Chaguaramas. Seriously outnumbered, the Spanish Rear-Admiral Don Sebastian Ruiz de Apodaca had set on fire the warships anchored and most of the marines and seamen were ashore. The San-Damaso escaped the conflagration and, without any resistance, was brought off by the boats of the British squadron. After the landing of marines at the command of General Sir Ralph Abercromby the governor José María Chacón decided to capitulate in San José de Oruña without fighting. Trinidad thus became a British crown colony, with a largely French-speaking population, Catholic State and Spanish laws. The colony's first British governor was Thomas Picton, however his heavy-handed approach to enforcing British authority, including the use of torture and arbitrary arrest, provoked the migration to Venezuela. Afterwards, Abercromby secured possession of the settlements of Demerara and Essequibo in South America. A major assault on the port of San Juan, Puerto Rico, in April 1797 failed after fierce fighting where both sides suffered heavy losses. The invasion of Trinidad marked the end of Venezuelan economic expansion initiated in 1783, which was followed by stagnation, from 1800 to 1810 when the colonial economy reached her frontier production.
In February 1797 the year of the Spithead and Nore mutinies — Captain Hugh Pigot took command of Hermione. Pigot was a cruel officer who meted out severe and arbitrary punishments to his crew. This treatment of the crew led to the bloodiest mutiny in British naval history in September 1797 which saw Pigot and most of the officers killed. The mutineers then handed the ship over to La Guaira harbour on 27 September 1797 and the Spanish renamed her Santa Cecilia. Her crew, which included 25 of her former crew, remained under Spanish guard. Meanwhile, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker wrote to the governor of La Guaira, demanding the return of the ship and the surrender of the mutineers but the governor only moved the ship to Puerto Cabello under the command of Captain Ramon de Chalas.
At that time London and the British West Indies were prime choices for exiled individuals to reside in temporarily is that Britain was quite happy to support them and see the Spanish Empire weaken as the British Empire continued to grow across the world. General Francisco de Miranda a Venezuelan-born, spent fourteen years of his life as a political exile in the British capital. Originally a member of the Spanish Navy, he decided to help free Latin America after witnessing the American War of Independence and French Revolution. De Miranda was a close ally of British Prime Minister William Pitt, and after several meetings between the two Pitt pledged money from the British government to help Latin America in their wars of independence.
The Gual and España conspiracy was reported on 1798 to Captain General Pedro Carbonell, who ordered a persecution against the conspirators, in which 49 Creoles and 21 Spaniards were arrested in La Guaira. Both Gual and España escaped to the neighboring British colony of Trinidad. The scholar Simon Rodriguez was forced to leave Venezuela to Jamaica. In Kingston, he changed his name to Samuel Robinson. A reward was put on their heads. Despite the reward offered for his capture, in 1799, José María España secretly returned to Venezuela, but was arrested in La Guaira and sent to Caracas, where the Royal Court sentenced him to the death penalty on 6 May. He was tortured, hanged, beheaded and dismembered on 8 May in the Plaza Mayor (current Plaza Bolívar). Manuel Gual remained in Trinidad, from where he maintained communication with the precursor Francisco de Miranda, who was in London. On 25 October 1800, he died in San José de Oruña, Trinidad, possibly poisoned by a Spanish spy named Antonio Valecillos, an operative of the Intendant of Caracas.
On 25 October 1799, Captain Edward Hamilton, aboard HMS Surprise, cut her out of Puerto Cabello harbour to recapture the HMS Hermione.
He and a force of some 100 soldiers and sailors in ships' boats approached the Santa Cecilia, which was heavily manned with around 400 Spanish, and lay under the guns of two shore batteries, together mounting some 200 guns. In the ensuing struggle Hamilton and his men fought their way aboard the ship, overpowered the Spanish defenders after a hard-fought battle, and sailed the Hermione out of the port. The Spanish had lost 119 killed, while 231 were taken prisoner, 97 of whom were wounded. All but three were subsequently returned to the port the next day. Another 15 Spanish escaped by jumping overboard and swimming ashore, while 20 more escaped in a launch that had been guarding the ship. By contrast the British had not lost a single man, and had just 11 wounded, four of them seriously. One of them was Hamilton himself, who had suffered a blow to the head from a musket, and cuts from sabre, pike and grapeshot. The Admiral Sir Hyde Parker had the recaptured Hermione renamed HMS Retaliation, after which the Admiralty ordered her to be renamed HMS Retribution on 31 January 1800. After that the United Kingdom furthered their interest against Dutch colonies of Batavian republic as allied of Spain and France in the War of the Second Coalition.
In 1800 the United Kingdom invaded Aruba, Curazao, and Dutch Guyana colonies of Batavian republic. The presence of a power other than the Netherlands alarmed the Spanish government given the proximity to the coast of Venezuela and the Essequibo River fact they could used as bases to launch military incursions against mainland territory. Venezuela went from a backwater in 1700 to one of Spain’s most dynamic colonies by the end of the century. They also aided planters as capital investments, which had the potential to increase in value over time and bring in more profits if they were resold. Venezuela’s cocoa industry flourished during the 18th century
The governor Sir Robert Picton ruled through fear and brutality the colony Trinidad. After torturing a fourteen-year-old mulatta girl by picketing her for theft in 1801, he was removed as Governor of Trinidad in 1803 and returned to England to stand trial. The main prosecutor of Picton, was William Fullarton, who had been appointed as part of a commission to look into the running of Trinidad along with Captain Samuel Hood of the Royal Navy. Fullarton accused Picton of jailing, punishing and starving maroons and runaways for petty offenses and then conducting clandestine sales of them to friends for minimal purchase prices to Antonio Valecillos, an operative of the Intendant of Caracas, who used his cover as an international slave catcher to conduct surveillance on the British.
The Treaty of Amiens temporarily ended hostilities between France, the Spanish Empire, the Batavian republic and the United Kingdom at the end of the War of the Second Coalition. It marked the end of the French Revolutionary Wars; after a short peace it set the stage for the Napoleonic Wars. The Second Coalition (Britain, Russia and Austria) failed on the common goal of invading France, ending the Revolution and restoring the Bourbon monarchy.
The treat of Amiens was signed on 25 March 1802 (4 Germinal X in the French Revolutionary calendar) by Joseph Bonaparte and Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace". In the Article III was established that "the Britannic majesty restores to the French republic and its allies his Catholic majesty of Spain and the Batavian republic, all the possessions and colonies which respectively belonged to them, and which have been either occupied or conquered by the British forces, during the course of the present war, with the exception of the island of Trinidad, and of the Dutch possessions on the island of Ceylon". Article IV. "His Catholic majesty of Spain cedes and guarantees, in full property and sovereignty, the island of Trinidad to his Britannic majesty".
France's unwillingness to block the cession of Trinidad to Britain was one of the things that most irritated King Charles IV. In fact, Spain dismissed its dominium on the Gulf of Paria, lost control of the mouths of the Orinoco River and the island had increases in population and prosperity. Spanish economic interests were further injured when Napoleon Bonaparte sold Louisiana to the United States, whose merchants competed with those of Spain. Following that sale, Charles wrote that he was prepared to throw off the alliance with France: "neither break with France, nor break with England."
In 1804 with informal British help, Miranda presented a military plan to liberate the Captaincy General of Venezuela from Spanish rule. At the time, Britain was at war with Spain, an ally of Napoleon. Home Riggs Popham was commissioned by prime minister Pitt in 1805 to study the plans proposed by Miranda to the British Government, Popham then persuaded the authorities that, as the Spanish Colonies were discontented, it would be easier to promote a rising in Buenos Aires. Disappointed by this decision in November 1805, Miranda travelled to New York, where he rekindled his acquaintance with William S. Smith to organize an expedition to liberate Venezuela.
Miranda hired a ship of 20 guns, which he rechristened Leander in honor of his oldest son, and set sail to Venezuela on 2 February 1806.
In Jacmel, Haiti, Miranda acquired two other ships, the Bee and the Bacchus, and their crews. It was in Jacmel on 12 March that Miranda made and raised on the Leander, the first Venezuelan flag, which he had personally designed. On 28 April, a botched landing attempt in Ocumare de la Costa resulted in two Spanish garda costas, Argos and Celoso, capturing the Bacchus and the Bee. Sixty men were imprisoned and put on trial in Puerto Cabello accused of piracy. Ten were sentenced to death, hanged and dismembered in quarters. One of the victims was the printer Miles L. Hall, who for that reason has been considered as the first martyr of the printing press in Venezuela.
Miranda aboard of the Leander escaped, escorted by the packet ship HMS Lilly to the British islands of Grenada, Trinidad, and Barbados, where he met with Admiral Alexander Cochrane. As Spain was then at war with Britain, Cochrane and the governor of Trinidad Sir Thomas Hislop, 1st Baronet agreed to provide some support of Royal Navy for a second attempt to invade Venezuela.
Miranda aboard the flagship Leander set sail from Port of Spain (Trinidad) along with 11 warships of the Royal Navy. Circumventing the surveillance of the Spanish Navy the fleet landed in La Vela. The expeditionaries captured Santa Ana de Coro, but found no support from the city residents. However, on 8 August a Spanish force of almost 2,000 men arrived from Maracaibo. General Miranda realized that his force was too small to achieve anything further or to hold Coro for long. On 13 August, Miranda ordered his force to set sail again. HMS Lilly and her squadron then carried him and his men safely to Aruba.
Miranda spent the next year in Trinidad as host of Governor Hyslop waiting for reinforcements that never came. On his return to London, he was met with better support for his plans from the British government after the failed invasions of Buenos Aires (1806–1807).
In 1807 British forces occupied again Curaçao and Dutch Guiana; the second occupation lasted from 1800 to 1815. During this time political refugees from the mainland regrouped in Curaçao under protection of British rule.
In 1808 a large military force to attack Venezuela was assembled and placed under the command of Arthur Wellesley, but Napoleon's invasion of Spain suddenly transformed Spain into an ally of Britain, and the force instead went there to fight in the Peninsular War started when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807.
The economic difficulties of Venezuela were joined by the political crisis of the metropolis, when Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII were stripped in Bayonne of the Crown of Spain by Napoleon, who offered it to his brother Joseph Bonaparte, until then King of Naples. This news officially reached Caracas almost at the same time as that of the reaction of a large part of the Spanish people against the French and of the formation of Provincial Juntas, and a Central Junta in Seville, which governed in the name of Ferdinand VII, prisoner of Napoleon at Bayonne. This had happened at the beginning of May 1808.
On July 14, 1808, the French corvette "Serpent" arrived at La Guaira; its captain, Paul de Lamanón, boarded Caracas to met with the captain general Juan de Casas, to whom he handed over the documents he brought: the Council of the Indies, from Madrid, announced the accession of José I Bonaparte to the throne of Spain and ordered him to recognize him as such. Andrés Bello, an official of the Government, acted as interpreter. Casas received Lamanón well, but made no decision. The frigate HMS Acasta seized the Serpent docked in La Guaira and the captain Philip Beaver immediately traveled to Caracas, brought news of the Spanish uprising against the French and the formation of the Juntas in defense of the King Ferdinand wrights. A sudden change of alliances had taken place: until May 1808, Spain and France had fought together against England; from then on, England and Spain fought together against the French. In September, 1808, the Anglo-Canadian John Robertson, secretary to the governor of Curazao (then occupied by the English), was in Caracas on an unofficial diplomatic and commercial mission. His presence encouraged the aspirations of landowners and merchants for greater commercial freedom.
The Venezuelan Junta formed in Caracas by 1810 was the first Junta to engage in diplomacy to gain ties to Great Britain. In June 1810 Simon Bolivar travelled to London with Luis Lopez Mendez and Andrés Bello to explain why the Junta of Caracas broke relations with the Spanish Monarchy; to the British Foreign Office undersecretary Richard Wellesley; seeking British naval and diplomatic protection, however the Spanish ambassador on the grounds Bolivar had at the time no diplomatic capacity to demand self-rule, engaged the British Foreign Office to turn Bolivar away. Bolivar instead returned to Venezuela and his entourage stayed behind in Somers Town, London, and in the following years did not gain further in their activities due to the fluctuation and instability of the parties and states they represented. Their case was also not helped by how in-flux the first statehoods of Venezuela were also viewed by the British as being too unstable to consider offering support to.
The General Francisco de Miranda returned to Caracas following the outbreak of the failed campaign of Coro in 1810. The colonial revolts against Spanish rule in Venezuela led by General Miranda aroused British interest, when seven of the ten provinces had declared themselves an independent republic on 5 July 1811, starting the Venezuelan War of Independence. John Mires, Gregor MacGregor and Santiago Mariño Fitzgerald joined the Patriot army and fought tirelessly in the campaigns of War of Independence.
John Mires was captured and sent along with other Patriots to the dungeons of the Spanish prisons in Ceuta, Africa, from where he managed to escape to immediately return to South America and continue his fight for freedom.
On 10 December 1812 while on a commerce raiding cruise, the American schooner Saratoga, of 16 guns and 140 men under Captain Charles Whiting Wooster anchored off La Guaira. After Wooster arrived the American consul warned Wooster that if he remained in port, the Spanish garrison would sink his ship with their shore batteries. The Americans withdrew out of range but remained off the city. That same day Saratoga captured a British schooner and sent her as a prize back to the United States.
Jose Maria Vargas decided to move away from the bloody independence war and the chaos of Venezuelan politics, and travelled to the United Kingdom to study chemistry and medicine Edinburgh University.
After the signing of the Treaty of London of 1814, Aruba, Bonaire, Curazao and Dutch Guiana were reincorporated into the Dutch Empire except the provinces of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo that remained under British rule. According to scholar Allan Brewer Carías, the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 did not establish a western border of what would later be known as the British Guiana, which is why explorer Robert Schomburgk would later be commissioned to draw a border.
Following the establishment of Gran Colombia in 1819, territorial disputes began between Gran Colombia, later Venezuela, and the British.
By 1814, the United Provinces of New Granada and Venezuela sent José Maria del Real as an envoy to London for British support against Spanish military intervention, but as part of a long delay tactics on Britains part due to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and the return of Fernando VII's restoration, Britain did not immediately recognize the new states representatives, denying requests for British assistance against Spanish attack led by the General Pablo Morillo in 1815. However, Bolivar, exiled in Jamaica in 1815, wrote from Kingston to Richard Wellesley, asking for military support against Spain, yet this was ignored based on the foreign policy of the British Foreign secretary Viscount Castlereagh who was aiming to keep the peace amongst the French, Spanish and European powers following a fine tightrope which British foreign policy makers walked in regards to South America after the close of the Napoleonic wars, culminating in the 1814–1815 Grand Alliance at Congress of Vienna, under which France supported Spain keeping its American colonies, and thus Britain supporting Spanish rule in the Americas. Cartagena de Indias, under siege of the Spanish fleet, even declared itself a British dominion, but was denied the request of military support eventually falling back under Spanish control by December 1815.
Around New Year 1816, Bolivar made his way to Port-au-Prince (today Haiti), to raise a new army with the aid of the president Alexandre Petion. Bolívar received the British officers Gregor MacGregor and Charles Chamberlain and included in the expeditionary force that left Aux Cayes (now Les Cayes) on 30 April 1816. MacGregor took part in the capture of the port town of Carúpano as second-in-command of Manuel Piar's column. After the Spanish were driven from many central Venezuelan towns, MacGregor was sent to the coast west of Caracas to recruit native tribesmen in July 1816. On 18 July 1816 the numerically superior royalists broke Bolívar's main force at La Cabrera and fled to Haiti. MacGregor at the command of the rest of the army resolved to retreat hundreds of miles east to Barcelona. Two pursuing royalist armies harried MacGregor constantly as he retreated across the country, but failed to break his rearguard. MacGregor's party was helped the rest of the way east to Barcelona by elements of the main revolutionary army. They arrived on 20 August 1816, after 34 days' march. With Bolívar back in Aux Cayes, overall command of the republican armies in Venezuela had been given to Piar. On 26 September, Piar and MacGregor defeated the Spanish army commanded by Francisco Tomás Morales at El Juncal.
The British Government on paper however was still in support of Spain in official channels, apart from a number of liberal politicians, but British public favour went with Colombian and Venezuelan patriots and favored pressuring the government to open new trade markets with these newly formed Spanish American countries in 1817 and 1818 as United Provinces of River Plate and Chile. However, around this time Lopez Mendez had begun recruiting what became the British Legions, over 7,000 ex-military Irish and Englishmen who had been dismissed after the Napoleonic wars ended; who went on to fight for Venezuelan and Colombian Independence from Spanish rule.
The British Legion took part in the campaign of the Venezuelan Llanos in 1818 and fought at the battles of El Sombrero, Ortiz, Rincón de los Toros, La Puerta, and Calabozo.Despite de heavy defeat of La Puerta, these first recruits from Britain made a good impression on Bolivar who was anxious to secure the services of more British volunteers. In March 1818, Bolivar combined most of his foreign volunteers into a brigade of 250 men named the British Legions, with James Rooke as commander. George Elsom, who had formerly been an ensign with a militia regiment near London and who had sailed with Hippisley's expedition, returned to London to recruit. Amongst his recruits were some 110 Hanoverians, who were commanded by John Uslar who saw action at Waterloo with the King's German Legion.
The British Legions joined Bolivar's army on the Plains of Apure towards the end of 1818. They would soon become an important part of Bolívar's army to liberate the Viceroyalty of New Granada.
The Republic of Colombia was issued by Bolivar in January 1819 during the Congress of Angostura. Since Gran Colombia's territory corresponded more or less to the original jurisdiction of the former Viceroyalty of New Granada, it also claimed the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, the Mosquito Coast, as well as most of Esequibo river.
Vargas then moved from Edimburg to London, to continue his medical education, and obtained a degree from London’s College of Surgeons
In February 1819 Secretary of the Navy Smith Thompson selected Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry for the mission of establishing friendly relations with the government of newly independent Republic of Venezuela and Provinces United of Rio de La Plata and negotiating with the president Simon Bolivar to obtain restitution for United States schooners Tiger and Liberty that the Venezuelans patriots had illegally taken in the Orinoco river during the revolution.
The Foreign Enlistment Act 1819 was passed on 3 July, 1819 to uphold British neutrality in the Spanish American wars of independence and made it a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment for British subjects to serve in foreign militaries.
The British Legion engaged by Bolivar in the campaign of New Granada had to endure the secretive and brutal crossing of the Andes from May to June 1819 during which the Patriot army suffered greatly including the British. They played a pivotal role however in the Battle of Vargas Swamp on 25 July by the time the firing stopped, James Rooke and his second-in-command, Arthur Sandes, were seriously wounded. Losing his shattered left arm to amputation, Rooke died a few days later. In the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819, colonel Sandes' Rifles Battalion led a bayonet charge on the royalist artillery which turned the tide of the battle. After the triumphal entry into Santa Fe de Bogota Bolivar credited them with the victory saying "those soldier-liberators are the men who deserve these laurels" They were awarded with the 'Order of the Liberator' one of the rare occasions during the war when this decoration was bestowed onto an entire unit.
In July 7, !819 the commodore Perry aboard of his flagship USS John Adams at Annapolis in company with schooner USS Nonsuch reached the mouth of the Orinoco river. He ascended to Angostura in Nonsuch while John Adams sailed on to Trinidad to await his return at Port of Spain. In the absence of Bolivar (who was engaged in the liberation of New Granada), Perry protracted negotiation with the Vice President of Venezuela Francisco Antonio Zea who granted all the demands of the United States on 11 August. However, during the passage down the river, Perry was stricken with yellow fever. Despite the crew's efforts to reach Trinidad for medical assistance, the commodore died on board USS Nonsuch on 23 August 1819, his 34th birthday, as the ship entered the Gulf of Paria and was nearing Port of Spain. He was buried in Port of Spain with great honors while the USS Nonsuch's crew acted as honor guard.
In 17 December, !819 the Gran Colombia was proclaimed through the Fundamental Law of the Republic of Colombia, issued in January 1819 during the Congress of Angostura. Since Gran Colombia's territory corresponded more or less to the original jurisdiction of the former Viceroyalty of New Granada, it also claimed the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, the Mosquito Coast, as well as most of Esequibo river.
At the victory of Carabobo (24 June 1821) the British legion troops fought as part of the 1st Division, led by General Jose Antonio Paez.
Of Bolívar's force in the Battle of Carabobo, of 6,500 or 8,000, between 340 or 350 were men of the British Rangers battalion, the great majority of them of Irish origin, commanded by Colonel Thomas Ilderton Ferrier and including many former members of the King's German Legion. Though greatly outnumbered and low on supplies, the legion soldiers managed to maintain control of tactically critical hills. By the battle's end, the legionary force had suffered 119 deaths, of which 11 were officers. Col. Ferrier was among the dead. Bolívar later praised the Legion troops and called them the "Saviors of my Fatherland", noting that they had distinguished themselves among other armies. The formalization of the Republic of Colombia did not come into being until the installation of the Congress of Cúcuta (1821) which promulgated the Constitution of Cúcuta. In October 1821, Francisco Antonio Zea was appointed by Bolivar as special diplomatic agent of Colombia to Europe and United States. In London he negotiated loans of financial creditors Herring & Richardson and gained recognition of his new country only from the United States. A year later he ambassador Zea dies in Bath, and a large amount of British private investment is made in the new state of Colombia. Jose Rafael Revenga as substitute of Zea as Minister Plenipotentiary of Colombia in London, negotiated Great Britain's recognition of Colombia as an independent country.
On July 26, 1822, Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin met in the port city of Guayaquil, actual Ecuador. Details of the discussions are not known, but presumably they covered completion of the military struggle in Peru as well as the subsequent organization of liberated Hispanic America. On his return to Lima from his interview with Bolivar, the general San Martín resigned his office as Protector of Peru and went into exile in France, allowing Bolívar to assume sole direction of the war.
In August 1822, Castlereagh committed suicide. Instead of going to India, George Canning succeeded him as both Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. He continued many of Castlereagh's foreign policies, such as the view that the powers of Europe should not be allowed to meddle in the affairs of other states. He also prevented the United States from opening trade with the British West Indies.
In his second term of office, he sought to prevent South America from coming into the French sphere of influence, and in this he was successful. He helped guarantee the independence of Brazil and the Spanish colonies, thereby acting in support of the Monroe Doctrine.
With the independence of several Spanish colonies such as Mexico and Peru between 1817 – 1821 at the Congress of Verona, the Foreign Secretary Duke of Wellington, who was taking the place of Foreign Secretary Castlereagh after the latter's suicide on the eve of the congress, shifted position to favour Colombian independence, after the accession of British interest to the Western Question, due to the fluctuating relations with regards to the French Empire and its interests and power relations with the Spanish Empire.
The Latin Americans received a certain amount of unofficial aid – arms and volunteers – from outside, but no outside official help at any stage from Britain or any other power. Britain refused to aid Spain and opposed any outside intervention on behalf of Spain by other powers. Royal Navy veterans were a decisive factor in the struggle for independence of certain Latin American countries.
Black Christmas of 1822 is an episode of the Colombian war of Independence, in which the city of Pasto and its inhabitants received reprisals for remaining loyal to King Ferdinand VII. General Antonio José de Sucre had direct instructions from Bolívar to attack the civilian population without any consideration. The Rifles Battalion and Colonel Arthur Sandes, its commander, have been identified as the direct perpetrators of the crimes against the civilian population on 24, 25 and 26 December 1822.
After he success of Bolivarian diplomacy with the signing of the United States-Colombia Trade agreement in 1822 formal relations were established with the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation Between Colombia and the United Kingdom. The two countries established diplomatic relations in March 1823 and John Potter Hamilton ESP was appointed as Secretary of Legation in Santafe de Bogota. In September the Bolivar army invaded Peru at request of Lima authorities to defeat the rests of the Spanish forces located in the Andean mountains under Viceroy Laserna. In November 1823 he arrived in Lima where the congress nominated him as Dictator of Peru. The Spanish army occupied the mountains east of the city, and its position was considered unassailable. On February 1824 after the order of evacuation dictated by Bolivar who fled to Trujillo, the General Monet army occupied Lima. Thomas Edward Rowcroft the first British diplomatic representative in Peru arrived at El Callao as consul general on June 8, 1824. At this time, Lima was in the hands of the royalists. Bolívar, however, systematically assembled troops, horses, mules, and ammunition to form an army, and in July of 1824 he moved out Trujillo and ascended the high Andean cordillera. The first major battle took place at Junín and was easily won by Bolívar, who then left the termination of the campaign of the Andes to his able chief of staff, the general Sucre. On November 9, 1824, shortly after Rowcroft's arrival, Bolívar returned to Lima and the Spanish retreated to Castle of Real Felipe that was put under siege by patriot army.
In December 3, 1824 during the Campaign of the Andes the rearguard of the patriots force formed by the Rifles battalion commanded by Colonel Arthur Sandes, were caught at the middle of the Corpahuaico creek, losing in combat a third of their soldiers, and another of their commanders was killed, Major Thomas Duchbury second in command, and ended up dispersed. The royalist companies of Cazadores had managed to climb almost to the crest and also disperse the Vargas Battalion, but General Guillermo Miller managed to rally the Vargas and made it protect the cavalry when it crossed the Chonta valley, supporting the royalist attack until achieving the retreat.
The same day the consul Rowcroft decided to go to Callao, the port of Lima, to deliver letters to HMS Cambridge under Captain Thomas James Maling and arranged for a safe pass through the royalist lines. On the return from his visit he handed in his safe pass but, as his coach left the outpost, it was struck by a hail of bullets. Rowcroft was wounded in the hand and the torso on December 4, 1824.
The congress of Panama was called by Bolívar on December 7, 1824, and José Faustino Sánchez Carrión, Minister of Government and Foreign Relations of Peru, who fully shared with Bolívar the ideal of Hispanic-American unity, sent the invitation to the American governments. The same day the consul Rowcroft died at the home of a British merchant. There is now little doubt that Rowcroft was accidentally shot by the Independents under Simon Bolivar.
After the victory of General Sucre at battle of Ayacucho on 9 December 1824, the Gran Colombia was recognized formally by the United Kingdom on 1 January 1825 when Manuel José Hurtado the first minister from a Latin American state, Colombia, was officially presented to King George IV, and thereby became the first Latin American envoy to be received by the King, and indeed by any European Court. This symbolized a major change in the international order, marking the transition of the former Spanish American colonies into independent nations in their own right. "Spanish America is free," Canning declared, "and if we do not mismanage our affairs she is English ... the New World established, and if we do not throw it away, ours." In 1825 the London stock market crashed the reinstatement of the gold standard entailed a contraction of the money supply and a tightening of bank lending which made it difficult for merchants to raise capital. Bankruptcies increased significantly during the remainder of 1825 and nearly doubled in 1826. reducing the already small number of private brokers willing to invest in what is now considered as a risky financial investment.
By granting recognition to Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil Canning brought these new states into the European system of trade and diplomacy, while blocking further colonization. Recognition was greeted with enthusiasm throughout Latin America. Canning was the first British Foreign Secretary to devote a large proportion of his time and energies to the affairs of Latin America (as well as to those of Spain and Portugal) and to foresee the important political and economic role the Latin American states would one day play in the world.
To promote immigration, the ambassador of Colombia in London opened the Sociedad Agrícola Colombiana authorized to employ temporary farmers who will cultivate in concession in Venezuela. The Society was established in various colonies, between one of Caracas and the Top of Tacagua. Consisting of one of 200 colonists that were harvested at the end of 1825. However, at the same time, began to manifest problems as difficulty of acclimatization, lack of understanding of tropical agriculture on the part of the colonists, lack of planning and credits, and very important routes of access. The British Consul, Sir Robert Ker Porter, noted in his Diary, on February 9, 1826, that the newly born colonies were subject to difficulties and a priori of discontent, although they suffered more from the deprivations of those established by the British. In less than a year the colony was shattered and the crops were destroyed.
The Congress of Panama (also referred to as the Amphictyonic Congress, in homage to the Amphictyonic League of Ancient Greece) was organized by Simón Bolívar in 1826 with the goal of bringing together the new republics of Latin America and the United States, to develop a unified policy towards the repudiated mother country Spain. Held in Panama City from 22 June to 15 July, it proposed creating a league of American republics, with a common military, a mutual defense pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly.
Simón Bolívar agreed to invite the United Kingdom and Netherlands as observers, because of the commercial interests they had in Latin America. The invitation to the British government sought to stimulate assistance from Argentina and Chile, which had their main trading partner in that country. The United Kingdom accepted the proposal and sent an observer, Edward James Dawkins, but with precise orders from Minister George Canning: limit themselves to seeking trade agreements and dissuade Greater Colombia and Mexico from supporting expeditions to the islands of Cuba or Puerto Rico to make them independent of Spain.
The grandly titled "Treaty of Union, League, and Perpetual Confederation" that emerged from the congress was ultimately ratified only by Gran Colombia, and Bolívar's dream soon foundered irretrievably with civil war in that nation, the disintegration of Central America, and the emergence of nationalism.
In 1826 Robert Ker Porter was appointed as British consul in Caracas, Venezuela, a position he held for fifteen years. He continued to paint during this period, his works including several large religious pieces, and a portrait of Simón Bolívar.José Fernández Madrid was named ambassador to the United Kingdom by Bolívar on 23 November 1826 He was still in Paris when the government urged him to move to London as fast as possible. On 12 December 1826, in the House of Commons, Canning was given an opportunity to defend the policies he had adopted towards France, Spain and Spanish America, and declared: "I resolved that if France had Spain it should not be Spain with the Indies. I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." The ambassador Fernández Madrid arrived on 30 April 1827.
On the night of 25 September 1827 in Santafe about twelve civilians and twenty-five soldiers led by Pedro Carujo broke into the Presidential Palace (Palacio de San Carlos) and killed the guards. They then searched for the president Bolívar's room. Manuela Sáenz, who was with Bolívar that night, woke him up. Upon learning of the attack, Bolívar grabbed his pistol and sword and tried to open the door, but Manuela convinced him to escape through the window.
Bolívar sent to find out the situation in the barracks while he was under a bridge all night. Bolívar managed to jump out of the window while Manuela entertained and engaged the conspirators. The result of this conspiracy was the death of Colonel William Ferguson, an Irish aide-de-camp of Bolivar army, the injury of young Andrés Ibarra, and a concussion from a blow to the forehead received by the rescuer of the illustrious Caracas native. The freed slave José Palacios [es] carried the newly saved from death to a safe place. Vargas's battalion led by Colonel Whittle contributed to the failure of the conspiracy. Finally, it was up to General Rafael Urdaneta to put an end to the plot, control the situation in the capital and imprison those involved in this sinister attack. The Irish General Daniel Florence O'Leary was commissioned by Bolivar to render the general José María Córdova. The ensuing battle took place near El Santuario, Antioquia, where Córdova died by the hand of the Irish Commander Rupert Hand, on 17 October 1829.
During the Gran Colombia–Peru War, the General John Mires was given the position of commander of the then insignificant village of Samborondón, having no more under his command than a lieutenant and twenty-fivegran Colombians recruits. There he was attacked by a Peruvian column commanded by a certain Bustamante, who ordered his capture and immediate execution. Martin Guisse was asked to take command of the Peruvian Navy. Appointed Vice-Admiral, his fleet captured Guayaquil but he was killed by a sniper during the battle. His body was brought to Callao in honour and he was buried there in the clothes of a Franciscan friar.
The London climate was detrimental to ambassador Fernandez Madrid health, so he moved with his family to the town of Barnes Terrace, where his condition worsened. On 27 June 1830, the ex vice president of Colombia General Francisco de Paula Santander, exiled in the United Kingdom, visited Fernández Madrid on his sickbed. While carrying out his diplomatic duties, Fernández Madrid died on 28 June 1830.
In 1831 the Gran Colombia was dissolved due to the political differences that existed between supporters of federalism and centralism, as well as regional tensions among the peoples that made up the republic. It broke into the successor states of New Granada (actual Colombia), Ecuador, and Venezuela. The Republic of Venezuela began to outline a foreign policy favouring relations with Britain, which became one of the main buyers of Venezuela raw materials and one of the major sources of investment in the country. By mid century, London bankers were sending in capital, to invest in railways, docks, cattle farms, mines and utilities. London sent in 800 agents to handle shipping, insurance, and banking. In 1830, economic ties between Britain and Venezuela increased substantially. Britain's textile exports to Venezuela grew by 9.4% yearly between 1817 and 1874. Nearly 8 percent of Britain's capital outflows between 1865 and 1914 went to Venezuela; this was similar to the British capital outflow to India.
In 1838 Alejo Fortique was appointed as plenipotentiary minister of the Republic of Venezuela in United Kingdomn. He carried out a mission for six years, highlighting diplomatic works as the settlement of the external debt contracted by Gran Colombia with London banks and which the nations resulting from the separation, namely: Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador, agreed to pay. The question of the limits between Venezuela and British Guiana, remained unresolved due to the death of Fortique in London, and which had as its center of dispute the difference between the limit proposed by Venezuela (the Essequibo River) and the one proposed by England, much further west along the line of the Morocco River.
In 1824 Bolivar leased his copper mines of Aroa to British entrepreneurs. According to some sources his aim was to help finance the struggle for independence from Spain. Captain Joseph Malachy sailed from Plymouth in March 1825 to take up his position as agent and resident director of the Bolivar Mining Association at the Aroa copper mines. Malachy was given the huge salary of £1,200, compared to the typical salary of about £300 for a mine manager in Cornwall. The British employed about 1,200 workers in the mines, including British and Venezuelans. They used the Aroa River to carry the ore by barge to the coast, where it was loaded onto ships.
In 1832 Bolivar's sisters Juana and Maria Antonia sold the mines to Robert Dent, an Englishman who owned the Bolívar Mining Association. In the 1830s Cornishmen in the reduction department of the Aroa mines made significant advances in methods of calcinating the copper ore. However, the company closed the mines in 1836 due to high mortality among the European workers and tensions with the native workers. The Bolívar Mining Association was succeeded by companies such as the Quebrada Land Mining Company, Quebrada Railway Land and Copper Company Limited, Aroa Mines Limited and Bolívar Railway Company Limited.
In 1837 sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society the German researcher Robert Hermann Schomburgk (1804–1865) investigated the river Essequibo and followed its course to the south-west, while Sipu River flows to a westerly direction. He specified the coordinates of the source at 0°41`northern latitude, while not giving a longitude. Incidentally he discovered the giant Victoria Regia water lily and many new species of orchids, one genus of which, Schomburgkia, was named for him. In the maps he renamed the Essequibo river with the name of William IV.
In 1838 Alejo Fortique was appointed as plenipotentiary minister of the Republic of Venezuela in London. He carried out a mission for six years, highlighting diplomatic works as the settlement of the external debt contracted by Gran Colombia with London banks which the nations resulting from the separation, namely: Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador, agreed to pay. In 1841 confronted the border policies of Great Britain in relation to the territory of British Guiana and its limits; since the government of Great Britain on 13 January unilaterally sent a communication announcing that it had commissioned Robert Schomburgk to recognize the territory of British Guiana and set the limits that separate it from Venezuela.
In 1841, Venezuela denounced an incursion by the Royal Navy into its territory. In the same year, Schoumburgk returned to Guiana, this time as a British Government official to survey the colony and fix its eastern and western boundaries. The result was the provisional boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela, known as the "Schomburgk Line", and the boundary with the Dutch colony of Surinam. He was joined there by his brother, Moritz Richard.
In 1844, the question of the limits between Venezuela and British Guiana, remained unresolved due to the death of Fortique in London. The center of dispute remains the difference between the limit proposed by Venezuela, the Essequibo River, and the one proposed by England, much further west along the line of the Morocco River.
In October 1846, information arrived that the British Empire intended to annex Cumaná and Barcelona provinces and form a Republic with the Island of Trinidad and British Guiana.
During 1852–1854 Richard Spruce made numerous observations and botanical collections.
In 1859 the United Kingdom began a claim on the island of Patos in Drago Mouth of Gulf of Paria that Venezuela rejected arguing that it was not mentioned in the capitulation of 1797 nor in the Treaty of Amiens of 1802. Despite this in 1902 the United Kingdom raised its flag on the island which provoked a strong protest from the Venezuelan government. In 1904 Venezuela included it as part of the federal territory Colón
In 1864, German naturalist and botanist Carl Ferdinand Appun and British geologist Charles Barrington Brown arrived at the southeastern tip of Mount Roraima for observation and proposed to go up the mountain by hot air balloon.
In 1867 Charles Barrington Brown, and his partner Sawkins did some of their mapping and preparation of geological reports together, some work was performed in separate expeditions, and Sawkins was taking a break from his work at the time of Brown's discovery of Kaieteur falls in the Esesquibo territory.
In 1871 Appun undertook a second exploration of Essequibo region, where he had an accident which led to his death. His last writings were essays about Indigenous peoples in Venezuela.
Everard im Thurn and Harry Perkins led in 1884 an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society to Mount Roraima. The team met local people known as the Pemón who could have climbed to the top of Mount Roraima before their expedition. The explorers still believed the top of the cliff to be previously unknown to humans.
Between 1890 and 1893 the British ornithologist Henry Whiteley, studied the birds of the area of Mount Roraima tepuis in the Essequibo territory. Whitely died in his camp on the Annie Scapy River near Bartica.
On July 29, 1839 the first bank to open its doors in Venezuela was the British Colonial Bank, established in Caracas as a branch of the Colonial Bank of London, with a capital of 330,000 pesos. Under the management of Leandro Miranda Andrews, son of General Francisco de Miranda, and William Ackers, the British Colonial Bank was authorized to receive deposits, extend loans at 12% per year, discount Treasury bills, negotiate money orders, issue banknotes and, above all, serve as an intermediary to service the external public debt. The links between the Bank Colonial and foreign capital, as well as the privileged position it was given regarding the use of national money for the payment of the foreign debt, sparked a broad debate that resulted in the National Congress, on May 17, 1841,
The president José Tadeo Monagas modified the Wait and Quit Law, affecting the British Colonial Bank and foreign investments in Venezuela. In 1850, the Royal Navy warships from the British West Indies arrived in the Caribbean coasts, accompanied by a Dutch frigate demanding that the damage caused to their countrymen be repaired as a result of the law, under the threat of blocking the ports of La Guaira and Puerto Cabello if said grievances were not paid. After 6 months of naval blockade, the government agreed to sign an agreement where the State agreed to assume responsibility for the debts.
The Urrutia Protocol was an official document signed on 26 March 1858, at the Government House of Venezuela, located in the city of Caracas. It was signed by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela Wenceslao Urrutia and the diplomatic representatives to the Venezuelan government of United Kingdom, France, United States, Brazil, the Netherlands and Spain, in order to agree on measures for the peaceful departure from the country of the overthrown president José Tadeo Monagas , who was asylum in the French Legation and requested to be exiled, but feared for his life. The signing of the document meant the beginning of serious diplomatic conflicts between the signatory countries, especially France and the United Kingdom that threatened to carry out a naval blockade on the Venezuelan coasts until the stipulations were fulfilled. Fermín Toro, who occupied the position left by Urrutia, was in charge of ensuring that the agreement was fulfilled. The conflict generated with the signing of that agreement is also known as the Urrutia Protocol.
The gold mine at El Callao started in 1871 was for a time one of the richest in the world. These mines contained 1.5 kilograms of gold per ton, when the best gold mines in other parts of the world had only 120 grams of gold per ton. The goldfields as a whole saw over a million ounces exported between 1860 and 1883. The gold mining was dominated by immigrants from the British Isles and the British West Indies, giving an appearance of almost creating an English colony on Venezuelan territory. The real number of inhabitants may be five times higher than the official one, which is around 25.000. This is due to gold mines in the area and diamonds in nearby rivers. Guasipati was decreed capital of the newly formed Federal Territory of Yuruary, and during the 30 years that followed the discovery of the gold veins of El Callao, the area of waterlogged gold prospectors that came to Guayana to request the granting of solid rock concessions.
One of the most outstanding facts was that in 1876, this population prepared and witnessed the first soccer game in Venezuela. El Callao and some neighboring towns such as Guasipati, Tumeremo, El Dorado, Kavanayen and Santa Elena de Uairen are the areas with more foreign languages in Venezuela, due to the great migration of foreigners who settled in search of gold. The strongest established languages were the English, the French and the Portuguese, with the lowest influence being Dutch.
With the rise to power of Cipriano Castro in 1899 and the collapse of Callao, the gold cycle in Guayana came to an end. A British consortium, Goldfields of Venezuela Limited, bought part of the companies that had declared bankruptcy, beginning exploitation east of El Callao.
The Venezuelan capital, Caracas, is situated only seven miles from the Caribbean Sea, but lies in a valley at an altitude 3,000 ft the Venezuelan Coastal Range. Surveys for a rail line from La Guaira began by British engineers as Robert Stephenson and Robert Fairlie recommended the use of a narrow gauge, switchbacks and rack to help with the problems caused by hilly terrain. By 1871 British and U.S. engineers disputed the route across the Coastal Range and financing for 14 years. The general Antonio Guzmán Blanco, president of Venezuela for three separate terms, negotiated concessions with British entrepreneurs to build railways between the country's two main cities and their ports to be completed in 1883 to commemorate the centennial of Simon Bolivar's birth. By the time growth of Caracas and Valencia as storage and collection centers of coffee took a rising trend as its prices in the North Atlantic nations. The rail was the solution to reduce transportation costs that involved moving production in mule trains climbing up the peaks of the Coastal range to the coastal ports of La Guaira and Puerto Cabello. An English group finally secured a contract in 1881, registered La Guaira and Caracas Railway Company in London, and began constructing a 23-mile line to mitigate the gradients. To help with the mountainous terrain, the line used a narrow gauge of 3 ft (914 mm), 15 bridges and 8 tunnels were perforated running through them that involved neither cables, switchbacks nor rack. In Manchester eight locomotives were ordered from Nasmyth, Wilson & Co. along with an assortment of passenger and freight cars. The line began carrying passengers on 25 July 1883 just one day after its inauguration by President Guzman Blanco during the official celebration of the Bolivar Centennial.
The railway Puerto Cabello Valencia was inaugurated in February 1888 by Guzman Blanco's successor Hermógenes López. The route chosen by the Puerto Cabello and Valencia Railway Company involved a short coastal stretch from Puerto Cabello to El Palito at the mouth of the River Aguas Calientes, after which the line mostly followed the course of the river to cross the mountains of the Venezuelan Coastal Range. There was a climb of 500 metres (1,600 ft) until the Valencia Terminal station.
The use of a Narrow gauge steam railway to help with the problems caused by hilly terrain was consistent with the principles of the engineer Robert Fairlie, who was involved in surveying near Puerto Cabello in the 1870s. The tunnels on this line were short, and a rack section was used to deal with the gradients near Bárbula.
With coffee rails Venezuela witnessed all round development when coffee production rapidly peaked only behind of Brasil as there was an additional support in the form of loans from foreign countries. Profitability was affected by the unstable political situation at the end of the 19th century; matters were particularly bad during the revolucion legalista, the Venezuela civil war of 1892 which brought Joaquín Crespo to power for the second time. The railway sought compensation for damage caused by civil war. Failure to pay such damages was one of the causes of the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903 when European powers imposed a naval blockade on Venezuela.
Asphalt is a mixture of heavy oils that is left over after the lighter components of crude oil evaporate. It is formed when oil seeps from deep underground deposits and concentrates over time.
Both Trinidad island and Venezuela have natural asphalt deposits, including Pitch Lake in Trinidad and Lake Guanoco in Venezuela which lie a few miles from each other in the Gulf of Paria. Pitch Lake located in southwest Trinidad, is the world's largest natural asphalt deposit. It is a solid, 100-acre lake that is 250 feet deep and contains an estimated 10 million tons of asphalt. Since 1885 Pitch Lake was mined for asphalt by Lake Asphalt of Trinidad and Tobago, a subsidiary of General Asphalt, and the asphalt is a major export for the country. Lake Guanoco also known as Lake Bermudez, is the world's second largest natural tar pit and is located in Eastern Venezuela. It covers more than 1,100 acres and contains an estimated 6 million tons of asphalt. In 1890 the Guanoco Lake was granted to the New York and Bermudez Company, a subsidiary of General Asphalt as a mining concession to commerce asphalt. The mining labors attracted numerous immigrants from Trinidad, Barbados and British Guyana. By 1898, General Asphalt had laid over 12 million square yards of asphalt pavement in 70 American cities at a cost of $35 million. In 1899 the government put higher taxes on the asphalt revenues by exports of the New York & Bermudez Company; in response, the company supported politically the opposing side to Venezuelan government under Manuel Antonio Matos Revolution.
Following the establishment of Gran Colombia in 1819, territorial disputes at west or Essequibo river began between Gran Colombia, later Venezuela, and the British. In 1822 José Rafael Revenga, Minister Plenipotentiary of Gran Colombia to Britain, complained to the British government at the direction of Simón Bolívar about the presence of British settlers in territory claimed by Venezuela: "The colonists of Demerara and Berbice have usurped a large portion of land, which according to recent treaties between Spain and Holland, belongs to our country at the west of Essequibo River. It is absolutely essential that these settlers be put under the jurisdiction and obedience to our laws, or be withdrawn to their former possessions."
In 1825 the Colombian ambassador José Manuel Hurtado in London officially presented to the British government a claim to the border at the Essequibo River, which was not objected to by Britain. However, the British government continued to promote colonisation of territory west of the Essequibo River in succeeding years. In 1831, Britain merged the former Dutch territories of Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo into a single colony, British Guiana.
During the late 19th century, Britain refused to include in the proposed international arbitration the disputed territory with Venezuela 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 mine at El Callao, started in 1871, was dominated by immigrants from the British Isles and the British West Indies, giving an appearance of almost creating a British colony on Venezuelan territory. In October 1886, Britain declared the modified Penrose line to be the provisional frontier of British Guiana, and in February 1887 Venezuela severed diplomatic relations. Proposals for a renewal of relations and settlement of the dispute failed repeatedly, and by summer 1894, diplomatic relations had been severed for seven years. In addition, both sides had established police or military stations at key points in the area, partly to defend claims to the Caratal and Omai goldfields of the region's Yuruani river basin, which was within Venezuelan territory but claimed by the British. The dispute ultimately saw Britain accept the United States mediation to force arbitration of the entire dispute territory under Washington Treaty of 1897, and tacitly accept the US 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.
In 1899 Cipriano Castro came to power after winning another civil war, the Restorative Liberal Revolution, in which he overthrew the constitutional president Ignacio Andrade, establishing a government called the Restaurador. Since then, the new government dedicated itself to initiating a centralist project, canceling the external debt, modernizing the armed forces and allying itself with the most influential caudillos in the country, but thereby weakening many others. To do this, he used the system of alliances created by Antonio Guzmán Blanco to impose central government officials in each of the country's regions. Given this, many caudillos found themselves in the dilemma of, on the one hand, supporting the uprising or risking being isolated and without power for these reforms.
The Liberating Revolution was a civil war in Venezuela between 1901 and 1903 in which a coalition of regional caudillos led by the banker Manuel Antonio Matos tried to overthrow the government of President| Cipriano Castro.
The revolutionaries were financed by Caracas bankers such as the Matos, Boulton, Lobo and Velutini who had been harassed by President Castro, who forced them under threat of imprisonment to lend money to the government. Previously in 1899 the government had put higher taxes on the asphalt revenues by exports of the New York & Bermudez Company; in response the company supported politically the opposing side under Matos Revolution. Throughout 1901 Castro managed to put down insurrections produced in the states of Bermúdez and Bolívar led by Pablo Guzmán, Horacio and Alejandro Dúcharne, Zoilo Vidal and others supported by exilates in Trinidad. The political crisis escalated and culminated in the "Asphalt War" as called by the press in the world. The conflict becomes internationalized with the invasion of Táchira state by a Colombian offensive in San Cristóbal led by Venezuelan General Carlos Rangel Garbiras, in retaliation for Castro's support for the liberal rebels of Rafael Uribe Uribe in the context of the War of the Thousand Days. After that Castro severed relations with Colombia.
In October 1901 the General Rafael Montilla (El Tigre de Guaitó) rebels in Lara State, but it will finally be in December that the armed revolution breaks out throughout the country. First, it is the veteran Liberal General Luciano Mendoza who raises Aragua and Carabobo baptizing the movement as the Liberating Revolution that was formed by the various regional caudillos, each with the ability to mobilize and arm masses of peasants in montoneras. Castro reacted immediately and increased the number of troops of the so-called Active Army, also buying modern weapons and a large number of warships and transport.
The main leader of the uprising, the banker Manuel Antonio Matos, planned and directed the initial operations from Port Of Spain capital of the island of Trinidad under British rule, managing to convince several local warlords dissatisfied with the government to join the fight. In addition, several foreign-owned companies operating in Venezuela were dissatisfied and had been engaged in litigation with different governments dating back almost to the beginning of their activities in Venezuela. The French Cable Company, the German Rail, the British Rail, the New York & Bermúdez Company, and the Orinoco Shipping, among others, had given Matos $150,000 to buy the ship Ban Righ in London. In December 1901, the international intrigue against President Castro had begun when the German Chancellor Theodor Von Holleben sent a completed report to the US Secretary of State, John Hay, detailing a debt of Venezuela with the bank "Disconto Gesellschaft" for 33 million bolívares, which the Venezuelan government refuses to recognize. For his part, Matos had armed the ship "Ban Righ" in London, which he renamed "The Libertador", as well bought weapons and ammunition. Finally, in January 1902, he set sail from the Port of Spain (Trinidad) and, circumventing the surveillance of the national army, Matos landed near Coro, at which time the civil war spread throughout the country.
Matos also had a large, heavily armed rebel army with which he was able to seize large territories. By July 1902, only the Miranda, Aragua, and Carabobo states in the center of the country remained in the power of the Castro government; and those of Trujillo, Zulia, Mérida and Táchira in the west. Many battles were fought, the most important was the siege of La Victoria in October 1902, Castro with 9,500 men tried to stop the advance of 14,000 of the revolutionaries who tried to take Caracas by force. Despite the disadvantage, Castro had extremely important military resources, Mauser repeating rifles and rapid-fire Krupp cannons, the first in the country, with which his men obtained greater firepower to break the siege. After a month of combat, the rebels defeated by Castro divided due to internal differences, which in the long run were the cause of their failure because the Castro government took advantage of their division to defeat each caudillo separately, reconquering the territory they had won. Even so, some active rebel pockets remained, mainly General Nicolás Rolando in central and eastern Venezuela. The remaining rebel forces were hunted down and progressively dismantled by Juan Vicente Gómez, disarming the revolution. On November 20 the Thousand Days War resulted in a Conservative victory, and ensured the continued dominance of the Conservative Party in Colombian politics for another 28 years. As an international conflict, the war had extended into Ecuadorian and Venezuelan territories whose Liberal governments supported the Liberal party with the aim of restoration of the Gran Colombia. Conservative and liberal factions of those two countries, as well as of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, backed their respective parties within Colombia. American interests in the Panama Isthmus led to an American intervention and naval deployment in Panama (then part of Colombia) under the guise of upholding the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty of 1846.
With the defeat of the Revolution in La Victoria, international capital decided to move from opposing operations to direct intervention, and in this way they began to strangle the national economy. The culminating point was the naval blockade of the Venezuelan ports, on 9 December 1902, by German, English and Italian warships, under the pretext of forcing the government to fulfill debt commitments, especially that contracted for the construction of the railway network by German and British companies. Faced with the violence of the military actions that plunged the country into a serious international crisis President Castro requests the intervention of President Roosevelt of the United States as a mediator in compliance with the Monroe Doctrine. The State Department saw the doctrine as applying only to European seizure of territory, rather than intervention per se. With prior promises that no such seizure would occur, the U.S. was officially neutral and allowed the action to go ahead without objection.
Britain was involved in the Venezuelan crisis on 7 December 1902, both London and Berlin is thesued ultimatums to Venezuelan government of Cipriano Castro, even though there was still disagreement about whether to impose a pacific blockade (as the Germans wanted) or a war blockade (as the British wanted). Germany ultimately agreed to a war blockade, and after receiving no reply to their ultimatums, an unofficial naval blockade was imposed on 9 December with SMS Panther, SMS Falke, SMS Gazelle and SMS Vineta as major Kaiserliche Marine warships in Caribbean Sea. On 11 December, Italy offered its own ultimatum, which Venezuela also rejected. Venezuela maintained that its national laws were final, and said "the so-named foreign debt ought not to be and never had been a matter of discussion beyond the legal guaranties found in the law of Venezuela on the public debt". The German naval contingent followed the Royal Navy lead in operational terms with eight warships to block the Venezuelan coast. The British ships of the Particular Service Squadron under Commodore Robert Montgomerie included the sloop HMS Alert and the protected cruiser HMS Charybdis.
The blockaders captured four Venezuelan warships, with the Venezuelan navy providing little challenge. Virtually all its ships were captured within two days. The Germans, lacking the capacity to tow them to Curaçao, simply sank two Venezuelan ships that proved unseaworthy On land, Castro arrested over 200 British and German residents of Caracas, prompting the allies to deploy soldiers to evacuate their citizens. The U.S. Ambassador Herbert W. Bowen negotiated the release of all foreign nationals.
On 13 December, after a British merchant vessel had been boarded and its crew briefly arrested, the British demanded an apology, and failing to receive it, launched a bombardment of Venezuelan forts at Puerto Cabello, assisted by the German SMS Vineta. The same day, London and Berlin received from Washington a request forwarded from Castro to submit the dispute to arbitration, which neither power relished, because of concerns over enforceability of any settlement.
An Italian naval contingent arrived in support of the blockade on 16 December. The Italian cruiser Elba was the first to arrive off the coast of La Guaira and the following day the armed cruiser Giovanni Bausan and the armored cruiser Carlo Alberto arrived. Italy was tasked with the blockade of the port of La Vela (Falcón State). Warships from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain also joined the blockade. The United Kingdom raised its flag on the Patos island in the Gulf of Paria which provoked a strong protest from the Venezuelan government. The rebels took advantage of the precarious situation of the Castro government and on 29 December 1902, Amábilis Solagnie and Luciano Mendoza attacked the government positions in Caja de Agua, near Barquisimeto, where they expelled the troops of Leopoldo Baptista and González Pacheco.
The Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis María Drago in a diplomatic note to the United States stated that "simply failing to repay national debt was not a valid reason for foreign intervention, especially by a power outside of the Western Hemisphere".
In January 1903, as the blockade continued during the negotiations, the German SMS Panther attempted to enter the lagoon of Maracaibo, a centre of German commercial activity. On 17 January it exchanged fire with the settlement of Fort San Carlos, but withdrew after half an hour, as shallow waters prevented it getting close enough to the fort to be effective. The Venezuelans claimed this as a victory, and in response the German commander sent SMS Vineta, with heavier weapons, to set an example. On 21 January Vineta bombarded the fort, setting fire to it and destroying it, with the death of 25 civilians in the nearby town. The action had not been approved by the British commander, who had been told by Admiralty after the incident of 13 December not to engage in such action without consulting London. The message was not passed to the German commander, who had been told previously to follow the British commander's lead. The incident caused "considerable negative reaction in the United States against Germany"; the Germans said that the Venezuelans fired first, which the British concurred with but declared the bombardment "unfortunate and inopportune" nonetheless.
After agreeing to arbitration under pressure of US Navy and Roosevelt administration, Britain, Germany, and Italy reached a settlement with Venezuela on 13 February 1903 resulting in the Washington Protocols. Venezuela was represented by the U.S. Ambassador to Caracas Herbert W. Bowen. Venezuela's debts had been very large relative to its income. The agreement reduced the outstanding claims by Bs150m, and created a payment plan taking into account the country's income. The naval blockade was finally lifted on 19 February 1903, however, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom argued for preferential treatment for their claims, which Venezuela rejected
In March 1903, President Castro sent a strong naval and land contingent under the command of the Vice president Juan Vicente Gómez to subdue Rolando's forces entrenched in Ciudad Bolívar on the right bank of the Orinoco River. '
The blockading nations argued for preferential treatment for their claims, which Venezuela rejected, and on 7 May 1903 a total of ten powers with grievances against Venezuela, including the United States, signed protocols referring the issue to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
In 1903, the United States failed to gain access to a strip on the Panama isthmus for the construction of a interoceanic canal, and reversed its position on Panamanian secession from the Republic of Colombia.
After a long naval siege that led to the landing of troops and the bloody battle of Ciudad Bolívar, General Rolando surrendered along with his staff on 21 July 1903. signaling the official end of the civil war. With most of the caudillos defeated and his revolution practically extinct, Matos decided to go abroad, leaving for Curaçao, establishing himself in Paris.
The defeat of the Liberating Revolution marked the end of the Venezuelan XIX century characterized by political instability and fights between caudillos, where the method of coming to power was through armed rebellion, and the end of the time of the great Venezuelan civil wars, giving way to a stage of consolidation of the central government under the hegemony of the Andeans, but not before confronting, as never before a Venezuelan president had done, with modern foreign powers.
The Hague International Court held on 22 February 1904 that the blockading powers of Venezuela were entitled to preferential treatment in the payment of their claims. The Theodore Roosevelt administration disagreed with the decision in principle and feared it would encourage future European intervention to gain such an advantage.
The Entente Cordiale comprised a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic which saw a significant deterioration in Anglo-German relations.
In 1904 Venezuela included the Patos island in the Gulf of Paria as part of the Federal Territory Colón
The Venezuela crisis, particularly the arbritral award, was key in developing the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, described in President Roosevelt's 1904 message to Congress. The Corollary asserted the right of the United States to intervene to "stabilize" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts, to preclude European intervention to do so. After that, the United States took control of the customs of several Latin American countries to ensure debt payments were made to Europe.
Venezuela strained relations with Great Britain, Germany, and Italy. Following the confrontation in January 1906, diplomatic relations between Venezuela and France were interrupted due to the claims filed by the French Telegraph Cable Company.
In 1908, accusing the opposition to his regime, General Castro expelled the Corsican producers and traders established in and around Carúpano to Trinidad.
In late 1908 the Dutch fleet began to conduct a belligerent naval demonstration against the Venezuelan coast and the United States was debating, among stronger measures, whether or not to boycott Venezuelan coffee and cacao exports.
The Castro administration severed relations with the United States in 1908, after the expropriation of the New York & Bermudez Company.
The so-called Liberal Restoration Army was institutionalized, becoming an effective and professional National Army in charge of the security of the entire Venezuelan territory. The Navy, so devastated by the naval blockade of 1902, began a long process of modernization and incorporation of units into the fleet.
The Vice-president Gómez seized power from Cipriano Castro in a coup d'état on 19 December 1908, while Castro was in Europe for medical treatment.
Despite the knowledge of the existence of oil reserves in Venezuela for centuries, the first oil wells of significance were not drilled until the early 1910s. In 1908, Juan Vicente Gómez replaced his ailing predecessor, Cipriano Castro, as the president of Venezuela. Over the next few years, Gómez granted several concessions to explore, produce, and refine oil. Most of these oil concessions were granted to his closest friends, and they in turn passed them on to foreign oil companies that could actually develop them. One such concession of around 270,000 square kilometres (100,000 sq mi) were obtained in 1909 by John Alen Tregelles, a representative of the English business "The Venezuela Development Company". Other was granted to Rafael Max Valladares who hired Caribbean Petroleum Company (later acquired by Royal Dutch Shell) to carry out his oil exploration project. On 15 April 1914, upon the completion of the Zumaque-I (now called MG-I) oil well, the first Venezuelan oilfield of importance, Mene Grande, was discovered by Caribbean Petroleum in the Maracaibo Basin. This major discovery encouraged a massive wave of foreign oil companies to Venezuela in an attempt to gain a foothold in the burgeoning market.
From 1914 to 1917, several more oil fields were discovered across the country including the emblematic Bolivar Coastal Field; however World War I slowed significant development of the industry. Due to the difficulty in purchasing and transporting the necessary tools and machinery, some oil companies were forced to forego drilling until after the war. In 1917, the first refining operations began at the San Lorenzo refinery to process the Mene Grande field production, and the first significant exports of Venezuelan oil by Caribbean Petroleum left from the San Lorenzo terminal. At end of 1918, petroleum appeared for the first time on the Venezuelan export statistics at 21,194 metric tons. Coffee production peaked to 1 million bags per year before 1914, and after local consumption much of its exports were second only to Brazil. More than 82,000 tonnes of coffee were produced in 1919 making Venezuela the second largest coffee producing nation in the world only behind Brasil. By the time the excellent harbor of Willemstad and stable Dutch government on Curaçao were deciding factors for Royal Dutch Shell to construct an Oil refinery compared to the shallow harbor of Maracaibo and notorious unstable government of Venezuela.
It was the blowout of the Barroso No. 2 well drilled by Venezuela Oil Concessions in Cabimas in 1922 that marked the beginning of Venezuela's modern history as a major producer. This discovery captured the attention of the nation and the world. Soon dozens of foreign companies acquired vast tracts of territory in the hope of striking it rich as British Controlled Oil Fields, Colon Development Company, Equatorial Fields and the Americans Standard Oil, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, Sinclair, Richmond and others. In 1927, Royal Dutch Shell started the construction of a Refinery near Oranjestad, in the island of Aruba. This development would ultimately have a significant influence on the construction of a Refinery by Standard Oil at Sint Nicolas town.
By 1928 with the blowout of the Moneb No. 1 well, oil exploitation began and the Eastern Venezuela. The Town of Caripito achieved an important boost in its urban development due to the arrival of migrant labor, particularly from the West Indies. Venezuela became the world's leading oil exporter and the second producer after United States. Oil ended Venezuela's relative anonymity in the eyes of world powers, making it a linchpin of an ever-expanding international oil industry and a new consideration in global policymaking.
On 8 June 1929 Curazao was raided and captured by rebel Rafael Simón Urbina together with 250 Venezuelan employees of Shell Refinery of Willemstad . They plundered weapons, ammunition and the treasury of Fort Amsterdam. They also managed to capture the Dutch governor, Leonardus Albertus Fruytier, and hauled him off to Venezuela on the stolen American ship Maracaibo but failed to overthrown the Gomez dictatorship. After the failed Falke expedition in Cumana, the captain purchased coal in Grenada. The crew forced him to sail to Port of Spain, which she entered on 14 August 1929. The English authorities questioned the crew and confiscated the Falke, because the Venezuelan government had branded her a pirate in an official communication to the British governor of Trinidad. 1930 the tanker Creole Bueno left the port of Caripito with 20 thousand barrels of oil bound for Refinery Pointe-à-Pierre of Trinidad. During the 1934–1939 labor riots in Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, British Guyana the discontent population was part of the early West Indies migration to Venezuela, where employment opportunities were expanding in the oil industry with the blow up of Oficina N 1 well at El Tigre. By the end of the 1930s, Venezuela had become the third-leading oil producer in the world, behind the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the leading exporter.
Negotiations for settling the border dispute and defining the maritime boundary between Venezuela and the United Kingdom began in 1939 and were led by geologist Hans Gottfried Kugler. Negotiations were influenced by considerations for placing anti-submarine devices in the Gulf of Paria as World War II was underway.
During the Second World War, Venezuela remained neutral but played an important role in the supply of fuel for the Allied forces but maintained diplomatic relationships with Italy and Germany. On 18th November 1939 the SS Simon Bolivar of the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot-Maatschappij (KNSM), was sunk one mile South of lightschip Sunk, near to Harwich. 102 of the 397 people on board died. In 1940 the Royal Navy warships that patrol the maritime routes of Caribbean sea received orders to pursuit and sank the merchants of Italy and Germany. In March of 1940 six Italian-flagged ships and one German-flagged ship asked the Venezuelan government for refuge given its status as a neutral country. They were granted refuge and the seven vessels were housed in the bay of Puerto Cabello. Among the ships were: the Italian-flagged merchant ships Baccicin Padre, Teresa Odero, Jole Faccio and Trottiera and the German Sesostris. On the night of March 31, 1940, the crews of the refugee ships set fire to their own ships following the orders of the high naval command of the Rome-Berlin axis. Before the invasion of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany, in May 10, 1940 the Royal Dutch Shell moved its headquarters to Curaçao and the Queen Wilhelmina with her family fled to London aboard the HMS Hereward. After that, the British occupied Curaçao and the French Aruba. The presence of powers other than the Netherlands alarmed the Venezuelan government given the proximity of these islands at the entrance to the Gulf of Venezuela and the fact they had historically been used as bases to launch incursions against Venezuelan territory. After the invasion of France by Nazi Germany and Italy the British Empire stood alone in warfare against Hitler and Mussolini. The British Chiefs of Staff Committee concluded "we do not think we could continue the war with any chance of success" without "full economic and financial support" from the United States. Under Destroyers for Bases agreement US Navy and US Army landed on Trinidad on September 2, 1940. The Naval Base Trinidad was built by private contractors in 1941 to protect the shipping lanes to and from the Panama Canal by sea and air. The base did fueling, loading and unloading of cargo ships. The base also became a repair depot, with auxiliary floating drydocks that were able to repair boats and ships in the field.
After Adolf Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941, U-boat operations were extended to East Coast of the United States, Gulf of Mexico, and to the Caribbean. The Naval Base Trinidad became a key to keeping Panama Canal, Venezuelan oil and the Caribbean open. By 1942 the demand for aviation gasoline further increased and considerable expansion was done at the Aruba refineries. With this expansion, San Nicolaas Lago of Aruba became one of the largest refineries in the world, only bested by Royal Dutch Shell refinery on Curaçao, and a major producer of petroleum products for the Allied war efforts. After the Attack on Pearl Harbor Venezuela changed its position to reflect that of other Latin American nations and severed diplomatic relations with the Axis powers (which included Japan) on 31 December 1941. Soon after the United States entered the war in February 1942, US troops occupied Aruba, Curazao and Trinidad islands and built military airports. The main purpose was this deployment was to fight against expected future attacks by Axis submarines and potentially long-distance Nazi bombers. America was also concerned over the potential threat of a German invasion of the continental US launched with the aid of German settlers in South America.
The vulnerability of the Aruba refineries was well known to the German High Command and on February 16, 1942 the Lago refinery was attacked by the German submarine U-156. Due to mistakes by the German deck gunner the refinery was not damaged but three of the Lago tankers were torpedoed in San Nicolaas harbour. On the night six oil tankers were torpedoed the Pedernales, Arkansas, Oranjestad, Tia Juana, San Nicholas, and Monagas. Five were sank and the Pedernales, was beached with her mid-section destroyed.
On 26 February 1942, an agreements were formalized in Caracas. and the Patos island became part of Venezuela in exchange for Soldado Rock to Trinidad and Tobago The island was put under the administration of the Ministerio del Interior y de Justicia (Ministry of Interior and Justice) as part of the Dependencias Federales.
Accordingly, after the U-boat attack on Aruba, the United States Navy established the Fourth Fleet on 15 March 1943, which was responsible for countering enemy naval operations in the Caribbean and in the South Atlantic. The United States Army also sent aircraft and personnel to help protect the oil refineries and bolster the Venezuelan Air Force. To support the mission, Venezuela granted American ships and planes access to the country's ports and airstrips.
The Naval Base Trinidad played significant roles as the convoy-assembly point transmitting oil tankers from the Caribbean oil ports across the Atlantic to North Africa and Europe. The Gulf of Paria was used by US carriers and airplanes for their final exercises before going to the Pacific Battleground via the Panama Canal. The planes for the Eighth Army in North Africa were ferried through Trinidad and lastly vessels and civilian planes from South America had to stop at Trinidad for clearance to proceed to North America and European destinations. At its peak, it had 135,000 troops on the island.
In 1944, Ogilvie-Forbes former ambassador in Havana was appointment to as the British minister in Venezuela which was regarded as a promotion. Venezuela was the world's third largest oil producer, and was as a consequence, was always a major concern for British diplomacy. When Britain upgraded relations with Venezuela from the legation to the embassy level, Ogilvie-Forbes became the first British ambassador in Caracas.
On February 16, 1945, Venezuela formally declared war on the Axis Powers: Germany and Japan. After numerous bilateral diplomatic attempts failed to convince the United Kingdom of its seriousness to nullify the 1899 Paris ward on Essequibo territory, Venezuela denounced it in San Francisco before the first assembly of the United Nations in 1945. At the San Francisco conference, which founded the United Nations, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Caracciolo Parra Pérez, announced that the Venezuela did not recognize the border with British Guiana (modern Guyana), leading Ogilvie-Forbes to predict to Anthony Eden a return to the long running border dispute, which had been supposedly settled for good in 1899.. In the same dispatch, he drew Eden's attention to the article in the newspaper El Pais by Rómulo Betancourt of the Acción Democrática (AD) who argued that Venezuela should lay claim to the Netherlands Antilles and the British colony of Trinidad, both of which were off the coast of Venezuela. Ogilvie-Forbes described Betancourt as a firebrand nationalist who greatly resented the power of the oil companies in his country who had once belonged to the Venezuelan Communist Party, but who was now friendly with the British press attache in Caracas.
In 1945, the Venezuelan government authorized Creole Petroleum Corporation and Royal Dutch Shell to build two oil refineries near Punto Fijo (Falcon State), which was decisive for the rise of this city.
The coup of 18 October 1945 and the tumultuous three years of El Trienio Adeco Venezuela became a democracy for the first time under President Rómulo Betancourt. Ogilvie-Forbes was very much a supporter of the Acción Democrática government, writing in December 1945 about the Venezuelan delegation to the newly founded United Nations that "they are as good as be expected from this well meaning revolutionary government". Despite the vast wealth generated by the oil industry, most Venezuelans were illiterate as the government had never established an educational system. El Trienio Adeco saw the first attempt to ensure that the pardo (mixed race) majority of the Venezuelans received some benefits from the oil industry like establishing a mass educational system, measures that Ogilvie-Forbes approved of.
In 1948, President Rómulo Gallegos signed the law for increasing the state's fiscal share of oil revenues from 43% to 50%, a scheme that became known as "fifty-fifty" and was later replicated in several producing countries, notably Saudi Arabia.
In 1949, the US jurist Otto Schoenrich gave the Venezuelan government a memorandum written by Mallet-Prevost, which was written in 1944 to be published only after his death. Mallet-Prevost surmised from the private behavior of the judges that there had been a political deal between Russia and Britain, and said that the Russian chair of the panel, Friedrich Martens, had visited Britain with the two British arbitrators in the summer of 1899, and subsequently had offered the two American juto the western bank of the river.
The Cardón Refinery of Shell started operations in 1949 with capacity to refine 30 thousand barrels per day (4,800 m/d).305 thousand barrels per day (48,500 m/d). The Amuay Refinery was established by Creole Petroleum in 1950. It started having a capacity of 60 thousand barrels per day (9,500 m/d). The Bajo Grande Refinery, built in 1956 by Richmond (now Chevron), has the capacity to refine 16 thousand barrels per day (2,500 m/d).
In 1953, Eagle Reinery of Royal Dutch Shell ceased its operations in Oranjestad, Aruba, after serving as a depot for both arubans refineries during the Second World War.
Following the oil finds in earlier decades in Point Fortin, Parrylands, Penal and Siparia, there were discoveries in the Gulf of Paria as Ortoire and Soldado Field which reversed the decline in production. Further drills led to oil finds at Balata East, Cat's Hill and Inniss, the latter being the last onshore find. The first offshore well was drilled in 1954 at Soldado Island. Two years after Soldado Field, 14 miles offshore, west of Point Fortin, became a major oil producer in 1956.
After Suez crisis however Middle Eastern countries had started contributing significant amounts of oil to the international petroleum market, and the United States had implemented oil import quotas. The world experienced an over-supply of oil, and prices plummeted.
In 1959, the Seven Sisters reduced the price of oil for Venezuela and Middle Eastern producers, which provoked anger among oil-producing governments. This prompted the oil-producing governments to take the initial steps to establish OPEC.
Venezuela as a major oil producer was pivotal in the foundation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) an organization enabling the cooperation of leading oil-producing and oil-dependent countries in order to collectively influence the global oil market and maximize profit. It was founded on 14 September 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela). In a series of steps OPEC restructured the global system of oil production in favor of oil-producing states and away from an oligopoly of dominant Anglo-American oil firms (the "Seven Sisters").The Seven Sisters threatened the OPEC founders that they would lose market access if they went ahead with their plans.
By 1965 the Cardón Refinery of Shell currently handles 305 thousand barrels per day (48,500 m3/d). The Amuay Refinery of Creole Petroleum can refine 645 thousand barrels per day (102,500 m3/d).
The first gold rush at El Callao was over by 1899, and the mines were for long thought to be exhausted, but a combination of new technology and high gold prices in the 1970 led to the redevelopment of the goldfields by CVG (Corporación Venezolana de Guayana) Minerven, a Venezuelan national mining corporation.
On January 1, 1976, amid the oil boom, President Carlos Andrés Pérez signed the Law that nationalized the hidrocarbons industry, creating state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) to oversee all exploring, producing, refining, and exporting of oil and gas. The Zumaque I well was the stage for the official acts of nationalization of the oil industry at Mene Grande as well as all the assets of Royal Dutch Shell in Venezuela became the property of the new company Maraven, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). All foreign oil companies that once did business in Venezuela were replaced by Venezuelan companies, such as Lagoven (Standard Oil), Meneven (Gulf) and Llanoven (Mobil). The Law allowed PDVSA to partner with foreign oil companies as long as it held 60 percent equity in joint ventures and, critically, structured the company to run as a business with minimal government regulation.
In 1985, Royal Dutch Shell sold the refinery of Willemstad to the government of Curaçao for a symbolic single dollar. Although Curaçao now owned the refinery, it lacked the skilled personnel to maintain it and inherited responsibility for the facility's environmental problems. The solution was Venezuela's state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which was contracted to be the facility operator with a 35-year lease.
The archive Colombeia of the general Francisco de Miranda, thought to be lost since 1830, was located in 1926 in Cirencester, England by Dr. Alberto Adriani, who lived in London and made all the arrangements for the Venezuelan government to acquire it. Dr. Caracciolo Parra Pérez, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and was a friend and countryman of Adriani, accepted the proposal and claimed responsibility for the discovery.
In 2007, the National Academy of History of Venezuela, requested the inclusion of the Miranda Archive in the UNESCO Memory of the World Program. That same year, UNESCO accepted the inclusion in the Program.
The status of the Essequibo territory became subject to the Geneva Agreement, which was signed by the United Kingdom, Venezuela and British Guiana on 17 February 1966. This treaty stipulates that the parties will agree to find a practical, peaceful and satisfactory solution to the dispute. Disputes over the territory have continued since, even after Guyana was granted independence the same year.
Although in the 20th century both countries were mostly on good terms, Venezuela expressed its support to Argentina over the Falklands Islands dispute that eventually led to the Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina in 1982.
As of August 2017, the British Government advised against 'all but essential travel' to Venezuela, and withdrew dependents of British Embassy staff, due to the 'ongoing unrest and instability', citing the protests and crime in the country.
In January 2019 during a visit to the United States, UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt stated that "Nicolás Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela" and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó should become President of Venezuela. On 4 February 2019, Hunt stated that the UK officially recognised Guaidó as president. However the United Kingdom continued to maintain consular and diplomatic relations with the Maduro controlled government, suggesting some ambiguity. This policy is a partial exception to the UK's long held policy of recognising states rather than specific governments.
In Autumn 2019 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office created the 'Venezuela Reconstruction Unit' led by John Saville, formerly UK ambassador to Venezuela, to coordinate a UK effort to support Venezuela. After this became public in May 2020, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza summoned the UK's Chargé d'Affaires "to present a formal protest and demand explanations", and in a Twitter post wrote "We demand that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland withdraw from Washington's coup plans and from any destabilizing initiative". Venezuela characterised the Venezuela Reconstruction Unit as an attempt to give future preferred status to British companies in Venezuela.
Since 2018, the Bank of England has delayed releasing 31 tonnes of Venezuelan gold to the Maduro government. UK foreign office minister Alan Duncan said in January 2019 that while the disposition of the gold was a Bank of England decision, "they will take into account there are now a large number of countries across the world questioning the legitimacy of Nicolás Maduro and recognising that of Juan Guaidó.".
On 14 May 2020, the Central Bank of Venezuela filed a legal action against the Bank of England, to force Britain to release the €930m worth of gold to the United Nations Development Programme to buy healthcare equipment, medicine, and food for the COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela. Guaidó has appointed a parallel Venezuelan central bank board of directors, so the court will have to decide which board of directors legally controls the gold. In July 2020 the High Court ruled that Guaidó was interim president, but the Court of Appeal ruled in October 2020 that the British Foreign Secretary's statement on recognition was ambiguous, clarified the legal importance of the distinction between de jure president and de facto president, and returned the case to the High Court for reconsideration.