1.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
2.
Hispaniola
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Hispaniola is the 22nd-largest island in the world, located in the Caribbean island group, the Greater Antilles. It is the second largest island in the Caribbean after Cuba, two sovereign nations share the 76, 192-square-kilometre island. The only other shared island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, Hispaniola is the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, founded by Christopher Columbus on his voyages in 1492 and 1493. The island was called by various names by its native people, fernández de Oviedo and de las Casas both recorded that the island was called Haiti by the Taíno. DAnghiera added another name, Quizqueia, but later shows that the word does not seem to derive from the original Arawak Taíno language. When Columbus took possession of the island in 1492, he named it Insula Hispana, meaning the Spanish Island in Latin and La Isla Española, meaning the Spanish Island, in Spanish. De las Casas shortened the name to Española, and when d‘Anghiera detailed his account of the island in Latin, he rendered its name as Hispaniola. Due to Taíno, Spanish and French influences on the island, historically the whole island was referred to as Haiti, Hayti, Santo Domingo, St. Domingue. The name Haïti was adopted by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1804, as the name of independent Saint-Domingue. It was also adopted as the name of independent Santo Domingo, as the Republic of Spanish Haiti. Christopher Columbus inadvertently landed on the island during his first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492, where his flagship, a contingent of men were left at an outpost christened La Navidad, on the north coast of present-day Haiti. The island was inhabited by the Taíno, one of the indigenous Arawak peoples, the Taino were at first tolerant of Columbus and his crew, and helped him to construct La Navidad on what is now Môle-Saint-Nicolas, Haiti, in December 1492. European colonization of the began in earnest the following year. In 1496 the town of Nueva Isabela was founded, after being destroyed by a hurricane, it was rebuilt on the opposite side of the Ozama River and called Santo Domingo. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas, several 16th century writers estimated the 1492 population of Hispaniola at over 1 million people. Twentieth-century estimates of the range from 60,000 to 8,000,000. Harsh enslavement by Spanish colonists, redirection of food supplies and labor towards the colonists, had a impact on both mortality and fertility over the first quarter century. Colonial administrators and Dominican and Hyeronimite priests observed that the search for gold, demographic data from two provinces in 1514 shows a low birth rate consistent with a 3. 5% annual population decline
3.
Dominican Republic
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The Dominican Republic is a sovereign state occupying the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western one-third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, christopher Columbus landed on the Western part of Hispaniola, in what is now Haiti, on December 6,1492. The island became the first seat of the Spanish colonial rule in the New World, the Dominican people declared independence in November 1821 but were forcefully annexed by their more powerful neighbor Haiti in February 1822. After the 1844 victory in the Dominican War of Independence against Haitian rule the country again under Spanish colonial rule until the Dominican War of Restoration of 1865. The Dominican Republic experienced mostly internal strife until 1916, a civil war in 1965, the countrys last, was ended by another U. S. military occupation and was followed by the authoritarian rule of Joaquín Balaguer, 1966–1978. Since then, the Dominican Republic has moved toward representative democracy and has been led by Leonel Fernández for most of the time since 1996. Danilo Medina, the Dominican Republics current president, succeeded Fernandez in 2012, the Dominican Republic has the ninth-largest economy in Latin America and is the largest economy in the Caribbean and Central American region. Though long known for agriculture and mining, the economy is now dominated by services. Over the last two decades, the Dominican Republic have been standing out as one of the economies in the Americas – with an average real GDP growth rate of 5. 4% between 1992 and 2014. GDP growth in 2014 and 2015 reached 7.3 and 7. 0%, respectively, in the first half of 2016 the Dominican economy grew 7. 4% continuing its trend of rapid economic growth. Recent growth has been driven by construction, manufacturing and tourism, private consumption has been strong, as a result of low inflation, job creation, as well as high level of remittances. The Dominican Republic has a market, Bolsa de Valores de la Republica Dominicana. and advanced telecommunication system. Nevertheless, unemployment, government corruption, and inconsistent electric service remain major Dominican problems, the country also has marked income inequality. International migration affects the Dominican Republic greatly, as it receives, mass illegal Haitian immigration and the integration of Dominicans of Haitian descent are major issues. A large Dominican diaspora exists, mostly in the United States, contributes to development, the Dominican Republic is the most visited destination in the Caribbean. The year-round golf courses are major attractions, the island has an average temperature of 26 °C and great climatic and biological diversity. The country is also the site of the first cathedral, castle, monastery, and fortress built in all of the Americas, located in Santo Domingos Colonial Zone, a World Heritage Site. Music and sport are of importance in the Dominican culture, with Merengue and Bachata as the national dance and music
4.
Puerta del Conde
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The gate is part of a structure called El Baluarte del Conde, a fort in Ciudad Colonial, the colonial area of Santo Domingo. The fort was part of a system of fortifications that ran along a defensive wall which surrounded Ciudad Colonial. The Altar of the Fatherland and Independence Park are located there, the construction of this site began in 1543 and the site was originally named Fort San Genaro. It was designed to defend Santo Domingo from invading armies and attacks by pirates, the murralla was modified in 1655 after the English, led by William Penn and Robert Venables, undertook the Siege of Santo Domingo. The invasion was thwarted by Spanish troops commanded by the Captain General of the Colony, Don Bernardino de Meneses y Bracamonte, due to his valor, the site was named in his honor La Puerta del Conde. The muralla was appended to Fort San Genaro and the structures became indistinguishable, El Baluarte del Conde was a typical model of the school of 17th-century bastion fortresses of Italian influence, which are preserved in the Caribbean as a major legacy of 17th-century fortifications. The citys defensive wall reached its full footprint by about the 18th century with the addition of defensive structures. La Puerta del Conde was the entrance into Colonial Santo Domingo. Today, La Puerta del Conde serves as the entrance to El Parque Nacional. Inscribed above the arch of La Puerta del Conde is ỉDulce et Decori est pro patria moriḯ, in Latin, El Baluarte del Conde is a symbol of independence and contains several monuments and structures which attest to the Dominican struggle for freedom. El Parque Independencia is a park within the confines of El Baluarte del Conde so named because it contains the site where Dominican independence was proclaimed in 1844. The Altar de la Patria is located in the Park, Parque Independencia is nowadays only bound by a section of the original defensive wall, La Puerta del Conde. In 1912, the Park was redesigned by architect Antonin Nechodoma to its present state and this redesign later facilitated the construction of the Altar de la Patria. The Altar de la Patria, or Altar of the Fatherland, is a made of white marble. The Altar houses the remains of the fathers of the Dominican Republic, Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez. Within the mausoleum there are statues of the fathers, carved by Italian sculptor Nicholas Arrighini
5.
Peninsular War
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The Peninsular War was a military conflict between Napoleons empire and the allied powers of Spain, Britain and Portugal, for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war started when French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807, the Peninsular War overlaps with what the Spanish-speaking world calls the Guerra de la Independencia Española, which began with the Dos de Mayo Uprising on 2 May 1808 and ended on 17 April 1814. The French occupation destroyed the Spanish administration, which fragmented into quarrelling provincial juntas, the British Army, under the then Lt. Gen. Arthur Wellesley, guarded Portugal and campaigned against the French in Spain alongside the reformed Portuguese army. The demoralised Portuguese army was reorganised and refitted under the command of Gen, in the following year Wellington scored a decisive victory over King Josephs army at Vitoria. The years of fighting in Spain were a burden on Frances Grande Armée. The Spanish armies were beaten and driven to the peripheries. This drain on French resources led Napoleon, who had provoked a total war. War and revolution against Napoleons occupation led to the Spanish Constitution of 1812, the burden of war destroyed the social and economic fabric of Portugal and Spain, and ushered in an era of social turbulence, political instability and economic stagnation. Devastating civil wars between liberal and absolutist factions, led by officers trained in the Peninsular War, persisted in Iberia until 1850. The cumulative crises and disruptions of invasion, revolution and restoration led to the independence of most of Spains American colonies, the Treaties of Tilsit, negotiated during a meeting in July 1807 between Emperors Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon, concluded the War of the Fourth Coalition. With Prussia shattered, and Russia allied with France, Napoleon expressed irritation that Portugal was open to trade with the United Kingdom, furthermore, Prince John of Braganza, regent for his insane mother Queen Maria I, had declined to join the emperors Continental System against British trade. After a few days, a large force started concentrating at Bayonne, meanwhile the Portuguese governments resolve was stiffening, and shortly afterward Napoleon was once again told that Portugal would not go beyond its original agreements. After he received the Portuguese answer, he ordered Junots corps to cross the frontier into Spain, while all this was going on, the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau had been signed between France and Spain. The document was drawn up by Napoleons marshal of the palace Géraud Duroc and Eugenio Izquierdo, the treaty proposed to carve up Portugal into three entities. Porto and the part was to become the Kingdom of Northern Lusitania. The southern portion, as the Principality of the Algarves, would fall to Godoy, the rump of the country, centered on Lisbon, was to be administered by the French. According to the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Junots invasion force was to be supported by 25,500 men in three Spanish columns, Gen. Taranco and 6,500 troops were ordered to march from Vigo to seize Porto in the north. Capt. Gen. Solano would advance from Badajoz with 9,500 soldiers to capture Elvas, Gen. Caraffa and 9,500 men were instructed to assemble at Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, and cooperate with Junots main force
6.
Americas
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The Americas, also collectively called America, encompass the totality of the continents of North America and South America. Together they make up most of the land in Earths western hemisphere, along with their associated islands, they cover 8% of Earths total surface area and 28. 4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera, a chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by river basins, such as the Amazon, St. Lawrence River / Great Lakes basin, Mississippi. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 42,000 and 17,000 years ago, a second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later from Asia. The subsequent migration of the Inuit into the neoarctic around 3500 BCE completed what is regarded as the settlement by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The first known European settlement in the Americas was by the Norse explorer Leif Ericson, however, the colonization never became permanent and was later abandoned. The voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1502 resulted in permanent contact with European powers, diseases introduced from Europe and Africa devastated the indigenous peoples, and the European powers colonized the Americas. Mass emigration from Europe, including numbers of indentured servants. Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution in 1776, the population is over 1 billion, with over 65% of them living in one of the three most populous countries. As of the beginning of the 2010s, the most populous urban agglomerations are Mexico City, New York, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, all of them megacities. The name America was first recorded in 1507 in the Cosmographiae Introductio, apparently written by Matthias Ringmann and it first applied to both North and South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. Amerigen means land of Amerigo and derives from Amerigo and gen, America accorded with the feminine names of Asia, Africa, and Europa. When conceived as a continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America. In some countries of the world, America is considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents, the first inhabitants migrated into the Americas from Asia. Habitation sites are known in Alaska and the Yukon from at least 20,000 years ago, beyond that, the specifics of the Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. Widespread habitation of the Americas occurred during the glacial maximum
7.
Unification of Hispaniola
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The Unification of Hispaniola by Haiti lasted twenty-two years, from February 9,1822 to February 27,1844 under administration as the Departments of the Ozama and the Cibao. This unification ended the first brief period of independence in the history of the Dominican Republic, the occupation is recalled by some as a period of strict military rule, though the reality was far more complex. It led to large-scale land expropriations and failed efforts to force production of crops, impose military services, restrict the use of the Spanish language. The twenty-two year unification reinforced the Dominican people’s view of themselves as different from the Haitians in race, language, religion, during the second half of the eighteenth century the French side of the island quickly developed into the most prosperous plantation colony of the New World. French Saint-Domingue was dubbed the Pearl of the Antilles, as a result of the sugar plantations worked by African slaves, sugar had become an indispensable commodity in Europe. By the Peace of Basel of 22 July 1795, Spain ceded its two-third of the island to France in exchange for the return of the province of Guipuzcoa occupied by the French since 1793. Independence did not come easily, given the fact that Haiti had been Frances most profitable colony, by 1795, the eastern side, what was once the headquarters of Spanish colonial power in the New World had long fallen into decline. The economy was stalled, the land largely unexploited and used for farming and cattle ranching. Haiti, on the hand, was nearing a million former slaves. The new nation was known as Republic of Spanish Haiti, as Haiti had been the name of the island. On December 1,1821 a constitutive act was ordered to petition the union of Spanish Haiti with Gran Colombia, a large faction based in the northern Cibao region were opposed to the union with Gran Colombia and also sided with Haiti. The Dominicans were unaware that Boyer made a concession to the French, thus, the Haitians would essentially be forced into paying to maintain their freedom from the French. The Dominican nationalists who were against the unification of the island were at a disadvantage if they were to maintain their nations sovereignty. At the time, they had an infantry force. The population was eight to ten times less than Haiti’s, the racial massacres perpetrated in the later days of the French–Haitian conflict only added to the determination of Haitians to never lose a battle. The island was united from Cape Tiburon to Cape Samana in possession of one government. Since Haiti was unable to adequately provision its army, the occupying forces largely survived by commandeering or confiscating food, in the rural and rugged mountainous areas, the Haitian administration was usually too inefficient to enforce its own laws. It was in the city of Santo Domingo that the effects of the occupation were most acutely felt, haitis constitution also forbade white elites from owning land, and the major landowning families were forcibly deprived of their properties
8.
Gran Colombia
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Gran Colombia is a name used today for the state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central America from 1819 to 1831. It included the territories of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru, western Guyana, the first three were the successor states to Gran Colombia at its dissolution. Panama was separated from Colombia in 1903, since Gran Colombias 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. Its existence was marked by a struggle between those who supported a government with a strong presidency and those who supported a decentralized. The two men had been allies in the war against Spanish rule, but by 1825, their differences had become public and were an important part of the political instability from that year onward, the official name of the country at the time was the Republic of Colombia. The name Colombia comes from the Spanish version of the eighteenth-century New Latin word Columbia and it was the term preferred by the revolutionary Francisco de Miranda as a reference to the New World, especially to all American territories and colonies under Spanish rule. He used an improvised, quasi-Greek adjectival version of the name, Colombeia, to papers and things relating to Colombia. Bolívar and other Spanish American revolutionaries also used the word Colombia in the continental sense, the establishment in 1819 of a nation with the name Colombia by the Congress of Angostura gave the term a specific geographic and political reference. The Republic of Colombia comprised more or less the former territories of the Viceroyalty of New Granada and it united the territories of the former Third Republic of Venezuela, the United Provinces of New Granada, the former Royal Audiencia of Panama and the Presidency of Quito. Before a new constitution could be written by the Congress of Cúcuta, under the Constitution of Cúcuta, the country was divided into twelve departments governed by an intendant. Departments were further divided into provinces headed by a governor. Military affairs at the department level were overseen by a commandant general, all three offices were appointed by the central government. The central government, which temporarily was to reside in Bogotá, consisted of a presidency, a bicameral congress, the president was the head of the executive branch of both the central and local governments. The president could be granted extraordinary powers in military fronts, such as the area that became Ecuador, the vice-president assumed the presidency in case of the absence, death, demotion, or illness of the president. Since President Bolívar was absent from Gran Colombia for the years of its existence, executive power was wielded by the vice-president. The vote was given to persons who owned 100 pesos in landed property or had an equivalent income from a profession, in that year, none of the provinces of Quito, nor many in Venezuela and New Granada, were free yet. The Constitution of Cúcuta was drafted in 1821 at the Congress of Cúcuta, Bolívar and Santander were elected as the nations president and vice-president. To break up regionalist tendencies and to set up efficient central control of local administration, the Gran Colombian army later consolidated the independence of Peru in 1824
9.
Haiti
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Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti and formerly called Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican Republic, the region was originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno people. Spain discovered the island on 5 December 1492 during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic, when Columbus initially landed in Haiti, he had thought he had found India or Asia. On Christmas Day 1492, Columbus flagship the Santa Maria ran aground north of what is now Limonade, the island was named La Española and claimed by Spain, which ruled until the early 17th century. Competing claims and settlements by the French led to the portion of the island being ceded to France. The development of plantations, worked by slaves brought from Africa. Upon his death in a prison in France, he was succeeded by his lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Haitian Revolution lasted just over a dozen years, and apart from Alexandre Pétion, the first President of the Republic, all the first leaders of government were former slaves. The Citadelle Laferrière is the largest fortress in the Americas, Henri Christophe – former slave and first king of Haiti, Henri I – built it to withstand a possible foreign attack. It has the lowest Human Development Index in the Americas, most recently, in February 2004, a coup détat originating in the north of the country forced the resignation and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A provisional government took control with security provided by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, the name Haïti comes from the indigenous Taíno language which was the native name given to the entire island of Hispaniola to mean, land of high mountains. The h is silent in French and the ï in Haïti, is a mark used to show that the second vowel is pronounced separately. In English, this rule for the pronunciation is often disregarded, the name Haïti was restored by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines as the official name of independent Saint-Domingue, as a tribute to the Amerindian predecessors. The Taíno name for the island was Haiti. The people had migrated over centuries into the Caribbean islands from South America, genetic studies show they were related to the Yanomami of the Amazon Basin. They also originated in Central and South America, after migrating to Caribbean islands, in the 15th century, the Taíno were pushed into the northeast Caribbean islands by the Caribs. In the Taíno societies of the Caribbean islands, the largest unit of organization was led by a cacique, or chief. The caciquedoms were tributary kingdoms, with payment consisting of harvests, Taíno cultural artifacts include cave paintings in several locations in the country. These have become symbols of Haiti and tourist attractions
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