federal state, see Central America. The history of the Mosquito Reserve and of the relations between Nicaragua and Great Britain is told in full under Mosquito Coast.
First discovered by Columbus in 1502, Nicaragua was not regularly explored till 1522, when Gil Gonzalez Davila penetrated from the Gulf of Nicoya to the western provinces and sent his lieutenant Cordova to circumnavigate the great lake. The country is said to take its name from Nicaras or Nicaragua (also written Micaragua), a powerful Cholutec chief, ruling over most of the land between the lakes and the Pacific, who received Davila in a friendly spirit and accepted baptism at his hands. Nicaragua’s capital seems to have occupied the site of the present town of Rivas. The Spaniards overran the country with great rapidity, both from this centre northwards, and southwards from the Honduras coast. The occupation began with sanguinary conflicts between the two contending waves of intrusion. Granada was founded in 1524 on the isthmus between the two lakes as the capital of a separate government, which, however, was soon attached as a special province to the captaincy general of Guatemala, which comprised the whole of Central America and the present Mexican state of Chiapas. Hence, during the Spanish tenure, the history of Nicaragua is merged in that of the surrounding region. Of its five earliest rulers “the first had been a murderer, the second a murderer and rebel, the third murdered the second, the fourth was a forger, the fifth a murderer and rebel” (Boyle). Then came the hopeless revolts of the Indians against intolerable oppression, the abortive rebellions of Hernandez de Contreras and John Bermejo (Bermudez) against the mother country (1550), the foundation of Leon, future rival of Granada, in 1610, its sack by the buccaneers under William Dampier in 1685, and, lastly, the declaration of independence (1821), not definitively acknowledged by Spain till 1850.
In 1823 Nicaragua joined the Federal Union of the five Central American states, which was dissolved in 1839. While it lasted Nicaragua was the scene of continual bloodshed, caused partly by its attempts to secede from the confederacy, partly by its wars with Costa Rica for the possession of the disputed territory of Guanacaste between the great lake and the Gulf of Nicoya, partly also by the bitter rivalries of the cities of Leon and Granada, respective headquarters of the Liberal and Conservative parties. During the brief existence of the Federal Union no fewer than three hundred and ninety-six persons exercised the supreme Power of the republic and the different states. The independent government of Nicaragua was afterwards distinguished almost beyond all other Spanish-American states by an uninterrupted series of military or popular revolts, by which the whole people was impoverished and debased. One outstanding incident was the filibustering expedition of William Walker (q.v.), who was at first invited by the Liberals of Leon to assist them against the Conservatives of Granada, and who, after seizing the supreme power in 1856, was expelled by the combined forces of the neighbouring states, and on venturing to return was shot at Trujillo in Honduras on the 12th of September 1860.
Under the administration of Chamorro, who became president in 1875, a difficulty with Germany occurred. The German government asserted that one of its consuls had been insulted, and demanded an indemnity of $30,000 (about £2800), a demand to which Nicaragua only submitted after all her principal ports had been blockaded. The successor of President Chamorro was General Zavala, whose administration brought Nicaragua to a higher degree of prosperity than she had ever known. He was succeeded in 1883 by Dr Cardenas, during whose presidency the attempt of General Barrios to unite the five Central American states was a cause of war between Guatemala and Honduras on one side, and Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica on the other. Cardenas had taken command of the united Nicaraguan and Costa Rican army when Barrios died, and on the 11th of April 1885 a treaty of peace was signed. Don Evaristo Carazo succeeded Dr Cárdenas as president of the republic in 1887, but died when he had served a little over two years, and was succeeded by Dr Roberto Sacasa. Under Carazo’s administration the boundary question between Nicaragua and Costa. Rica had been settled by arbitration, the president of the United States acting as arbitrator. While Dr Sacasa was president of Honduras, Salvador and Guatemala signed a treaty, under which the United States of Central America were to be formed. The president of Nicaragua adhered to this treaty, but the National Congress refused to ratify it. Sacasa was overthrown by a revolution in 1893, and was succeeded by a provisional government, which in its turn was deposed soon after by another uprising, at the head of which was General José Santos Zelaya. His position was regularized by the constitution of 1894, and he was re-elected president in 1898 for another term of four years. Under his government the incorporation of the Mosquito Reserve into the territory of Nicaragua took place. In 1895 occurred the Hatch incident, which led to the occupation of the port of Corinto by a British fleet. Mr Hatch, British pro-vice-consul at Bluefields, being accused of conspiracy against the Nicaraguan government, was arrested, along with other British subjects, and expelled. For this action Nicaragua was required to pay an indemnity of $15,000. An attempt to overthrow Zelaya was made in February 1896, but it was crushed after several months of severe fighting. There were occasional disturbances subsequently, but none sufficient to overturn President Zelaya, who was again reelected in 1902 and 1906. In 1907 he carried to a successful issue the war which broke out in that year between Nicaragua and Honduras (q.v.). But he was believed to be planning the conquest of other Central American states, and his policy of granting monopolies and commercial concessions to his own supporters aroused widespread discontent. In October 1909 an insurrection broke out in the Atlantic departments. The execution (after alleged torture) of two citizens of the United States named Grace and Cannon, who were said to have fought in the revolutionary army under General Estrada, led to the despatch of United States warships to Nicaragua; but in the absence of full evidence President Zelaya’s responsibility for the execution could not be proved.[1] On the 1st of December the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, and in an official note Secretary Knox described the Zelayan administration as a “blot on the history” of the republic. Fighting at Bluefields was prevented by the U.S. cruiser “Des Moines” (18th December), an example followed at Greytown by the British cruiser “Scylla”; but elsewhere along the Atlantic coast the insurgents gained many victories. In the battle of Rama (23rd December) they captured the greater part of the government troops. On the following day Zelaya took refuge on board a Mexican gunboat, and sailed for Mexico. Dr Madriz, one of his supporters, had already succeeded him as president.
Bibliography.—For a general account of Nicaragua, see F. Boyle, A Ride across a Continent (2 vols., London, 1868); E. G. Squier, Nicaragua, &c. (2nd ed., London, 1871); J. W. Bodham, Whetham, Across Central America (London, 1877); T. Belt, The Naturalist in Nicaragua (London, 1888); A. R. Colquhoun, The Key of the Pacific (London, 1895); G. Niederlein, The State of Nicaragua (Philadelphia, 1898); A. P. Davis, Hydrography of Nicaragua (U.S.A. Geological Survey report, No. 20) (1900); C. Medina, Le Nicaragua en 1900 (Paris, 1900); J. W. G. Walker, Ocean to Ocean: an Account, Personal and Historical, of Nicaragua and its People (Chicago, 1902). For commerce, finance and administration, see the annual Reports of the Committee of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders (London); D. Pector, Étude économique sur la république de Nicaragua (Neuchâtel, 1893); Bulletins of the Bureau of American Republics (Washington); U.S.A. Consular and British Foreign Office Reports; official reports issued periodically at Managua, in Spanish. For history, M. M. de Peralta, Nicaragua y Panama en el siglo XVI (Madrid, 1883); J. D. Gamez, Archivo historico de la República de Nicaragua (Managua, 1896); F. Ortega, Nicaragua en los primeros años de su emancipación politica (Paris, 1894); D. B. Lucas, Nicaragua: War of the Filibusters (Richmond, Va., 1896); C. Bovallius, Nicaraguan Antiquities (Stockholm, 1886).
NICASTRO, a town and episcopal see of Calabria, Italy, in
the province of Catanzaro, 17 m. W.N.W. of Catanzaro by rail,
and 512 m. E. of S. Eufemia, a station on the line along the
- ↑ General Medina and other officers were tried by a Nicaraguan court-martial for the murder of Grace and Cannon, but were acquitted on the 28th of January 1910.
