Mosquito Coast

 

or Mosquitia (məskē'tēə, mōskētē'ä) , region, east coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. The name is derived from the Miskito, the indigenous inhabitants and remnants of the Chorotega. Never exactly delimited, the region is a belt c.40 mi (60 km) wide extending from the San Juan River north into NE Honduras. It is sultry and swampy, rising to low hills in the west. Lobstering has replaced banana cultivation as the major economic activity, but most inhabitants depend on subsistence farming.

In the early colonial period, English and Dutch buccaneers preyed on Spanish shipping from there, and English loggers exploited the forest. England established a protective kingdom at Bluefields in 1678. Slaves from Jamaica were brought in to increase the labor supply. In 1848, the British took San Juan del Norte to offset U.S. interest in a transisthmian route to California. Nicaragua protested the seizure. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) between the United States and Great Britain checked British expansion, but relinquishment of the coast was delayed until a separate treaty was concluded with Nicaragua (1860), which established the autonomy of the so-called Mosquito Kingdom.

In 1894, José Santos Zelaya ended the territory's anomalous position by forcibly incorporating it into Nicaragua. The northern part was awarded to Honduras in 1960 by the International Court of Justice, thus ending a long-standing dispute. The Nicaraguan portion was officially given partial autonomy in 1987, including control over local natural resources, but little real change has resulted and the area remains impoverished.

This article is about the Central American area. For the film and novel see The Mosquito Coast.

The Caribbean Mosquito Coast (or Miskito Coast) historically consisted of an area along the Atlantic coast of present-day Nicaragua, named after its native Miskito Indians and long dominated by British interests. The Mosquito Coast was incorporated into Nicaragua in 1894, however, in 1960 the northern part was granted to Honduras by the International Court of Justice.^[1]

History

Although its name sometimes applies to the whole eastern seaboard of Nicaragua — and even to La Mosquitia in Honduras, i.e. the coast region as far west as the Río Negro or Tinto – the Mosquito Coast more accurately consisted of a narrow strip of territory, fronting the Caribbean Sea, and extending from about 11°45’ to 14°10’ N. It stretched inland for an average distance of 40 miles (60 km), and measured about 225 miles (360 km) from north to south. In the north, its boundary skirted the river Wawa; in the west, it corresponded with the eastern limit of the Nicaraguan highlands; in the south, it followed the Río Rama. The chief towns were Bluefields or Blewfields (the largest town, which has a good harbour and is the capital of Nicaragua's Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur), Magdala on Pearl Cay, Prinzapolka on the river of that name, Wounta near the mouth of the Kukalaya, and Carata near the mouth of the Wawa River.

The Mosquito Coast is so called from its principal inhabitants, the Miskito Indians, whose name was corrupted into Mosquito by European settlers. The Miskito Indians, of whom there are several tribes, are short of stature and very dark-skinned. Their colour is said to be due to intermarriage with shipwrecked slaves.

The first European settlement in the Mosquito country started in 1630, when the agents of the English chartered Providence Company — of which the Earl of Warwick was chairman and John Pym treasurer — occupied two small cays and established friendly relations with the local inhabitants.

From 1655 to 1860, Britain claimed a protectorate over the Miskito Indians; but little success attended the various endeavors to plant colonies, and the protectorate was disputed by Spain, the Central American republics, and the United States. The opposition of the United States was due very largely to the fear that Britain would acquire a privileged position in regard to the proposed interoceanic canal. In 1848, the seizure of Greytown (San Juan del Norte), by the Miskito Indians, with British support, aroused great excitement in the United States, and even involved the risk of war. In 1854, the American ship USS Cyane bombarded Greytown after failing to receive compensation for violence which had been directed against Solon Borland, an American diplomat, and other US citizens. But through the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, both powers pledged themselves not to fortify, colonise or exercise dominion over any part of Central America; in November 1859, Britain delegated its protectorate to Honduras.

This caused great dissatisfaction among the Indians, who shortly afterwards revolted; and on 28 January 1860 Britain and Nicaragua concluded the treaty of Managua, which transferred to Nicaragua the suzerainty over the entire Caribbean coast from Cabo Gracias a Dios to Greytown (now San Juan del Norte) but granted autonomy to the Indians in the more limited Mosquito Reserve (the area described above). The local chief accepted this change on condition that he should retain his local authority, and receive a yearly subvention of £1000 until 1870. But on his death in 1864, Nicaragua refused to recognize his successor.

The reserve nevertheless continued to be governed by an elected chief, aided by an administrative council, which met in Bluefields; and the Indians denied that the suzerainty of Nicaragua connoted any right of interference with their internal affairs. The question was referred for arbitration to the Habsburg emperor of Austria, whose award (published in 1880) upheld the contention of the Indians, and affirmed that the suzerainty of Nicaragua was limited by the Indians right of self-government. After enjoying almost complete autonomy for fourteen years, the Indians voluntarily surrendered their privileged position, and on 20 November, 1894 their territory formally became incorporated in that of the republic of Nicaragua by Nicaraguan president José Santos Zelaya. The former Mosquito Coast was established as the Nicaraguan department of Zelaya. During the 1980s, the department disappeared, substituted by RAAN (Región Autónoma del Atlántico Norte) and RAAS (región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur), autonomous regions with a certain degree of self-government.

The first version of the Mosquito Coast flag was adopted 1834. The second was adopted in 1860 when the Nicaraguan flag replaced the Union Flag in the canton.

Inhabitants of the Mosquito Coast

The Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua has a population of 118,000 inhabitants, consisting of 57% Miskito, 22% Creoles (Afro-Europeans) 15% Ladinos, 4% Sumu (Amerindian), 1% Garifuna (Afro-Indians), 0.5% Chinese and 0.5% Rama (Amerindian). [1]

Miskito	Creole	Ladino	Sumo	Garifuna	Chinese	Rama
57%	22%	15%	4%	1%	.5%	.5%

Mosquito Coast in popular culture

There is also a novel by Paul Theroux called The Mosquito Coast, which was later made into a movie starring Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, and a young River Phoenix. The tale tells the story of an inventor who, displeased with the way things are changing in the United States, chooses to bring his family to live in an extremely small village in Honduras.

See also

• Garifuna
• Miskito
• La Mosquitia
• Nicaragua

Footnotes

Sources and references

• http://www.flag.de/FOTW/flags/ni-mc.html - Mosquito Coast flag
• RoyalArk-Mosquitos
• A Bibliography of the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua by Courtney de Kalb, in Bulletin of the American Geographic Society., vol. xxvi. (1894)
• Studies of the Mosquito Shore in 1892 by the same author, and in the same publication, vol. xxv. (I893)
• A Forgotten Puritan Colony in No. 165 of Blackwood's Magazine (Edinburgh, 1898), described the attempt at colonization made in 1630.
• See also Der Streit um die Mosquito-Küste by J. Richter, in Zeitschrift f. Gesellschaft d. Erdkunde, No. 30 (Berlin, 1895).
• Mitla: A Narrative of Incidents and Personal Adventures on a Journey in Mexico, Guatemala and Salvador in the years 1853 to 1855 by G. F. Von Tempsky (London, 1858)
• Von Tempsky: Adventurer by W. T. Parham (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1969) SBN 340 10798 7 (Chapters 2 & 6 are on the Mosquito Coast)
• The War in Nicaragua by W. Walker (New York, 1860)

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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