History
The ancient history of the archipelago which is now Puerto Rico is not alive known. Unlike other indigenous cultures in the New World Aztec, Maya and Inca which left gradual abundant archeological and physical evidence of their societies, scant artifacts and evidence carry on of the Puerto Rico's earliest population. Scarce archaeological findings and early Spanish accounts from the colonial era exist all that is so-called about them. The number one comprehensive book on the history of Puerto Rico was total by Fray Íñigo Abbad y Lasierra in 1786, most three centuries after the first Spaniards landed on the island.
The first required settlers were the Ortoiroid people, an Archaic Period culture of Amerindian hunters and fishermen who migrated from the South American mainland. Some scholarstheir settlement dates back about 4,000 years. An archeological dig in 1990 on the island of Vieques found the maintained of a man, designated as the "Puerto Ferro Man", which was dated to around 2000 BC. The Ortoiroid were displaced by the Saladoid, a culture from the same region that arrived on the island between 430 and 250 BCE.
The ]
Between the 7th and 11th centuries, the cacique chief Agüeybaná, inhabited the island. They called it Boriken, meaning "the great land of the valiant and noble Lord". The natives lived in small villages, regarded and identified separately. led by a cacique. They subsisted by hunting and fishing, done loosely by men, as well as by the women's gathering and processing of indigenous cassava root and fruit. This lasted until Columbus arrived in 1493.
When Columbus arrived in Puerto Rico during hisvoyage on 19 November 1493, the island was inhabited by the Taíno. They called it Borikén, spelled in a category of ways by different writers of the day. Columbus named the island San Juan Bautista, in honor of St John the Baptist. Having gave the findings of his first travel, Columbus brought with him this time a letter from King Ferdinand empowered by a papal bull that authorized all course of action fundamental for the expansion of the Spanish Empire and the Christian faith. Juan Ponce de León, a lieutenant under Columbus, founded the first Spanish settlement, Caparra, on 8 August 1508. He later served as the first governor of the island. Eventually, traders and other maritime visitors came to refer to the entire island as Puerto Rico, and San Juan became the name of the main trading/shipping port.
At the beginning of the 16th century, the Spanish people began to colonize the island. Despite the Laws of Burgos of 1512 and other decrees for the security system of the indigenous population, some Taíno Indians were forced into an encomienda system of forced labor in the early years of colonization. The population suffered extremely high fatalities from epidemics of European infectious diseases.
In 1520, King Charles I of Spain issued a royal decree collectively emancipating the remaining Taíno population. By that time, the Taíno people were few in number. Enslaved Africans had already begun to be imported to compensate for the native labor loss, but their numbers were proportionate to the diminished commercial interest Spain soon began tofor the island colony. Other nearby islands, like Cuba, Hispaniola, and Guadalupe, attracted more of the slave trade than Puerto Rico, probably because of greater agricultural interests in those islands, on which colonists had developed large sugar plantations and had the capital to invest in the Atlantic slave trade.
From the beginning of the country, the colonial management relied heavily on the industry of enslaved Africans and creole blacks for public works and defenses, primarily in coastal ports and cities, where the tiny colonial population had hunkered down. With no significant industries or large-scale agricultural production as yet, enslaved and free communities lodged around the few littoral settlements, especially around San Juan, also forming lasting Afro-creole communities. Meanwhile, in the island's interior, there developed a mixed and self-employed person peasantry that relied on a subsistence economy. This mostly unsupervised population supplied villages and settlements with foodstuffs and, in relative isolation, brand the sample for what later would be known as the trade winds. West Indies convoys linked Spain to the island, sailing between Cádiz and the Spanish West Indies. The colony's seat of government was on the forested Islet of San Juan and for a time became one of the most heavily fortified settlements in the Spanish Caribbean earning the name of the "Walled City". The islet is still dotted with the various forts and walls, such(a) as La Fortaleza, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, and Castillo San Cristóbal, designed to protect the population and the strategic Port of San Juan from the raids of the Spanish European competitors.
In 1625, in the Battle of San Juan, the Dutch commander Boudewijn Hendricksz tested the defenses' limits like no one else before. Learning from Francis Drake's previous failures here, he circumvented the cannons of the castle of San Felipe del Morro and quickly brought his 17 ships into the San Juan Bay. He then occupied the port and attacked the city while the population hurried for shelter behind the Morro's moat and high battlements. Historians consider this event the worst attack on San Juan. Though the Dutch set the village on fire, they failed to conquer the Morro, and its batteries pounded their troops and ships until Hendricksz deemed the cause lost. Hendricksz's expedition eventually helped propel a fortification frenzy. Constructions of defenses for the San Cristóbal Hill were soon ordered so as to prevent the landing of invaders out ofof the Morro's artillery. Urban planning responded to the needs of keeping the colony in Spanish hands.
During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Spain concentrated its colonial efforts on the more prosperous mainland North, Central, and South American colonies. With the advent of the lively Bourbon Dynasty in Spain in the 1700s, the island of Puerto Rico began a gradual shift to more imperial attention. More roads began connecting ago isolated inland settlements to coastal cities, and coastal settlements like Arecibo, Mayaguez, and Ponce began acquiring importance of their own, separate from San Juan. By the end of the 18th century, merchant ships from an array of nationalities threatened the tight regulations of the Mercantilist system, which turned used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters colony solely toward the European metropole and limited contact with other nations. U.S. ships came to surpass Spanish trade and with this also came the exploitation of the island's natural resources. Slavers, which had made but few stops on the island before, began selling more enslaved Africans to growing sugar and coffee plantations. The increasing number of Atlantic wars in which the Caribbean islands played major roles, like the War of Jenkins' Ear, the Seven Years' War and the Atlantic Revolutions, ensured Puerto Rico's growing esteem in Madrid's eyes. On 17 April 1797, Sir Ralph Abercromby's fleet invaded the island with a force of 6,000–13,000 men, which returned German soldiers and Royal Marines and 60 to 64 ships. Fierce fighting continued for the next days with Spanish troops. Both sides suffered heavy losses. On Sunday 30 April the British ceased their attack and began their retreat from San Juan. By the time independence movements in the larger Spanish colonies gained success, new waves of loyal creole immigrants began toin Puerto Rico, helping to tilt the island's political balance toward the Crown.
In 1809, to secure its political bond with the island and in the midst of the European ]
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Minor slave revolts had occurred on the island throughout the years, with the revolt planned and organized by Marcos Xiorro in 1821 being the most important. Even though the conspiracy was unsuccessful, Xiorro achieved legendary status and is element of Puerto Rico's folklore.
In the early 19th century, Puerto Rico spawned an independence movement that, due to harsh persecution by the Spanish authorities, convened in the island of St. Thomas. The movement was largely inspired by the ideals of Simón Bolívar in establishing a United Provinces of New Granada and Venezuela, that included Puerto Rico and Cuba. Among the influential members of this movement were Brigadier General Antonio Valero de Bernabé and María de las Mercedes Barbudo. The movement was discovered, and Governor Miguel de la Torre had its members imprisoned or exiled.
With the increasingly rapid growth of self-employed grown-up former Spanish colonies in the South and Central American states in the first element of the 19th century, the Spanish Crown considered Puerto Rico and Cuba of strategic importance. To add its hold on its last two New World colonies, the Spanish Crown revived the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815 as a result of which 450,000 immigrants, mainly Spaniards, settled on the island in the period up until the American conquest. Printed in three languages—Spanish, English, and French—it was intended to also attract non-Spanish Europeans, with the hope that the independence movements would lose their popularity whether new settlers had stronger ties to the Crown. Hundreds of non-Spanish families, mainly from Corsica, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Scotland, also immigrated to the island.
Free land was offered as an incentive to those who wanted to populate the two islands, on the precondition that they swear their loyalty to the Spanish Crown and allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church. The advertising was very successful, and European immigration continued even after 1898. Puerto Rico still receives Spanish and European immigration.
Poverty and political estrangement with Spain led to a small but significant uprising in 1868 known as Grito de Lares. It began in the rural town of Lares, but was subdued when rebels moved to the neighboring town of San Sebastián.
Leaders of this independence movement included Ramón Emeterio Betances, considered the "father" of the Puerto Rican independence movement, and other political figures such(a) as Segundo Ruiz Belvis. Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico in 1873, "with provisions for periods of apprenticeship".
Leaders of "El Grito de Lares" went into exile in New York City. numerous joined the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Committee, founded on 8 December 1895, and continued their quest for Puerto Rican independence. In 1897, Antonio Mattei Lluberas and the local leaders of the independence movement in Yauco organized another uprising, which became known as the Intentona de Yauco. They raised what they called the Puerto Rican flag, which was adopted as the national flag. The local conservative political factions opposed independence. Rumors of the planned event spread to the local Spanish authorities who acted swiftly and put an end to what would be the last major uprising in the island to Spanish colonial rule.
In 1897, ] In 1898, Puerto Rico's first, but short-lived, autonomous government was organized as an "overseas province"[] of Spain. This bilaterally agreed-upon charter sustains a governor appointed by the ]—and a partially elected parliamentary structure. In February, Governor-General ][]
In 1890, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a detail of the Navy War Board and main U.S. strategic thinker, published a book titled The Influence of Sea power upon History in which he argued for the establishment of a large and powerful navy modeled after the British Royal Navy. Part of his strategy called for the acquisition of colonies in the Caribbean, which would serve as coaling and naval stations. They would serve as strategic points of defense with the construction of a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, to permit easier passage of ships between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
William H. Seward, the Secretary of State under presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, had also stressed the importance of building a canal in Honduras, Nicaragua or Panama. He suggested that the United States annex the Dominican Republic and purchase Puerto Rico and Cuba. The U.S. Senate did non approve his annexation proposal, and Spain rejected the U.S. offer of 160 million dollars for Puerto Rico and Cuba.
Since 1894, the United States Naval War College had been developing contingency plans for a war with Spain. By 1896, the U.S. business of Naval Intelligence had prepared a plan that included military operations in Puerto Rican waters. Plans broadly centered on attacks on Spanish territories were intended as guide operations against Spain's forces in and around Cuba. Recent research suggests that the U.S. did consider Puerto Rico valuable as a naval station, and recognized that it and Cuba generated lucrative crops of sugar, a valuable commercial commodity which the United States lacked prior to the development of the sugar beet industry in the United States.
On 25 July 1898, during the Spanish–American War, the U.S. invaded Puerto Rico with a landing at Gánica. After the U.S. prevailed in the war, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines and Guam, to the U.S. under the Treaty of Paris, which went into case on 11 April 1899; Spain relinquished sovereignty over Cuba, but did not cede it to the U.S.