Ecuador: Through the Nineteenth Century

Through the Nineteenth Century

Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, Ecuador was controlled by the Inca empire. Francisco Pizarro's subordinate, Benalcázar, entered the area in 1533. Not finding the wealth of the mythical El Dorado, he and other conquistadors, notably Gonzalo Pizarro and Orellana, moved restlessly on and the region became a colonial backwater. Given an audiencia in 1563 and established politically as the presidency of Quito, it was at various times subject to Peru and to New Granada. After an abortive independence movement in 1809, the region remained under Spanish control. It was liberated by Antonio José de Sucre in the battle of Pichincha (1822) and was joined by Simón Bolívar to Greater Colombia.

With the dissolution of that union in 1830, Ecuador, geographically isolated, became a separate state (four times its present size) under a constitution promulgated by its first president, Juan José Flores. Ecuador unsuccessfully attempted to annex Popayán prov. from Colombia by war in 1832 and occupied the Galápagos Islands that year. Boundary disputes led to frequent invasions by Peruvians in the 19th and 20th cent. The entire eastern frontier, known as Oriente, was in dispute. (In 1942, Ecuador signed a treaty ceding a large area to Peru, but in 1960 it renounced the treaty.)

Bitter internecine struggles between Conservatives and Liberals marked the political history of Ecuador in the 19th cent. The Conservatives, led by Flores and García Moreno (1821–75), supported entrenched privileges and the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church; the Liberals, led by Rocafuerte (1783–1847) and Alfaro (1867–1912) and championed by the writer Montalvo (1832–89), sought social reforms.

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