The history of Venezuela reflects events in areas of the Americas colonized by Spain starting 1502; amid resistance from indigenous peoples, led by Native caciques, such as Guaicaipuro and Tamanaco. However, in the Andean region of western Venezuela, complex Andean civilization of the Timoto-Cuica people flourished before European contact.
After the first contacts between Europeans, specifically Portuguese and Spanish conquerors, there were no significant events between 1515 and 1528. The biggest event that happened after 1528 was the German Colonization of Venezuela. This event occurred because of a business between Charles V and the banking family of the Augsburg. Charles V gave the family of the Augsburg most of the territory of the Province of Venezuela, which after the concession was called by the Germans "Klein-Venedig" which means "Little Venice". The Germans in Venezuela were mostly conquistadores or explorers, which their mission was to find El Dorado. At the same time, the German explorers and conquistadores founded two standing cities in actuality, Maracaibo and Neu-Augsburg, which is the today's city of Coro. After the unsuccessful plan of the Germans of finding El Dorado, the Augsburg gave the concession to the Spanish crown. After this, the Spanish conquistadores continued their missions in the territory and the most representative event after the Augsburg concession was the foundation of Caracas, which was the most longstanding capital of the Province of Venezuela and the today's capital city of Venezuela. The colonial economy in the 16th and 17th centuries was centered on gold mining and livestock farming.
Relatively few colonists employed native farmers on their estates and enslaved other native peoples and later Africans to work in the mines. The territory of Venezuela was at various times ruled by the capitals of distant New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru. In the 18th century, cocoa plantations grew along the coast, which were processed by further importing African slaves. Cocoa beans became Venezuela's main export, monopolized by the Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas. Most of the surviving locals had migrated south by then, where Spanish monks worked. Intellectual activity increased among the white Creole elite and was centered on the University of Caracas. The Province of Venezuela was incorporated into the Viceroyalty of New Granada in 1717 and became Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1777. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American colonies to declare independence, which was not securely established until 1821, when Venezuela was a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia. It gained full independence as a separate country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional caudillos (military strongmen) until the mid-20th century.
Since 1958, Venezuela has had a series of democratic governments. However, economic shocks in the 1980s led to several political crises, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of El Presidente Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup-involved career officer Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution, beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela. This new constitution officially changed the name of the country to República Bolivariana de Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela). At the same time, the new government of Venezuela started several changes in the internal economy of the country, which resulted in a socioeconomic crisis that began during the rule of Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. The crisis is characterised by hyperinflation, escalating famine, disease, crime, and mortality, leading to massive emigration from the country.
Pre-Columbian period in Venezuela
Archaeologists have discovered evidence of the earliest known inhabitants of the Venezuelan area in the form of leaf-shaped flake tools, together with chopping and plano-convex scraping implements exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Pedregal River in western Venezuela. Late Pleistocene hunting artifacts, including spear tips, come from a similar site in northwestern Venezuela known as El Jobo. According to radiocarbon dating, these date from 15,000 to 9,000 B.P. Taima-Taima, yellow Muaco, and El Jobo in Falcón are some of the sites that have yielded archaeological material from these times.Silverman, Helaine; Isbell, William (Eds.) (2008): Handbook of South American Archaeology 1st ed. 2008. Corr. 2nd printing, XXVI, 1192 p. 430. . Pg 433–434. These groups co-existed with megafauna like megateriums, glyptodonts, and toxodonts. In this period, hunters and gatherers of megafauna started to turn to other food sources and established the first tribal structures.
Pre-Columbian Venezuela had an estimated population of one million. In addition to indigenous peoples known today, the population included historic groups such as the Kalina (Caribs), Caquetio, Auaké, Mariche, and Timoto-Cuicas. The Timoto-Cuica culture was the most complex society in Pre-Columbian Venezuela; with pre-planned permanent villages, surrounded by irrigated, terraced fields and with tanks for water storage.Mahoney 89 Their houses were made primarily of stone and wood with thatched roofs. They were peaceful, for the most part, and depended on growing crops. Regional crops included potatoes and ullucos."Venezuela." Friends of the Pre-Columbian Art Museum. (retrieved 9 July 2011) They left behind works of art, particularly anthropomorphic ceramics, but no major monuments. They spun vegetable fibers to weave into textiles and mats for housing. They are credited with having invented the arepa, a staple of Venezuelan cuisine.
which ends with the European Conquest and Colony period. In the 16th century, when Spanish colonization began in Venezuelan territory, the population of several indigenous peoples, such as the Mariches (descendants of the Caribes), declined. Native caciques (leaders), such as Guaicaipuro and Tamanaco, attempted to resist Spanish incursions, but the newcomers ultimately subdued them. Historians agree that the founder of Caracas, Diego de Losada, ultimately put Tamanaco to death.
Spanish rule
Christopher Columbus sailed along the eastern coast of Venezuela on his third voyage in 1498 and explored most of the today's Sucre state coast line, the only one of his four voyages to reach the South American mainland. This being the first time that Europeans sighted the continent, Columbus, upon observing the variety of flora and fauna of the Orinoco delta, called the area "Land of Grace", in clear allusion to the biblical Eden. The expedition discovered the so-called "Pearl Islands" of Cubagua and Margarita off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. Later Spanish expeditions returned to exploit these islands' abundant pearl oysters, enslaving the indigenous people of the islands and harvesting the pearls intensively. They became one of the most valuable resources of the incipient Spanish Empire in the Americas between 1508 and 1531, by which time the local indigenous population and the pearl oysters had been devastated.
The second Spanish expedition, led by Alonso de Ojeda, sailing along the length of the northern coast of South America in 1499, gave the name Venezuela ("little Venice" in Spanish) to the Gulf of Venezuela—because of its perceived similarity to the Italian city.
Spain's colonization of mainland Venezuela started in 1502. Spain established its first permanent South American settlement in what became the city of Cumaná. At the time of the Spanish arrival, indigenous people lived mainly in groups as agriculturists and hunters – along the coast, in the Andean mountain range, and along the Orinoco River.
Klein-Venedig (Little Venice) was the most significant part of the German colonization of the Americas, from 1528 to 1546, in which the Augsburg-based Welser banking family obtained colonial rights in the Province of Venezuela in return for debts owed by Charles I of Spain. The primary motivation was the search for the legendary golden city of El Dorado . The venture was led by the first governor Ambrosius Ehinger, who founded Maracaibo in 1529. Upon his arrival to Santa Ana de Coro, Ehinger had appointed Nikolaus Federmann as his deputy. On 30 July 1530 Federmann became responsible for the colony of Klein Venedig. Governor Ehinger temporarily handed over authority to Federmann, because he had to go Hispaniola for health reasons. After the deaths of Ehinger, and then his successor, Georg von Speyer, Philipp von Hutten continued exploration in the interior, and in his absence from the capital of the province, the crown of Spain claimed the right to appoint the governor. Upon Hutten's return to the capital, Santa Ana de Coro, in 1546, the Spanish governor, Juan de Carvajal, had Hutten and Bartholomeus VI. Welser executed. Charles I later revoked Welser's charter.
By the middle of the 16th century, not many more than 2,000 Europeans lived in the region that became Venezuela. The opening of gold mines in 1632 at Yaracuy led to the introduction of slavery, at first involving the indigenous population, then imported Africans. The first real economic success of the colony involved the raising of livestock, much helped by the grassy plains known as Llanos. The society that developed as a result – a handful of Spanish landowners and widely dispersed native herdsmen on Spanish-introduced horses – recalls primitive feudalism, certainly a powerful concept in the 16th-century Spanish imagination that (perhaps more fruitfully) bears comparison in economic terms with the latifundia of antiquity.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the cities that constitute today's Venezuela suffered relative neglect. The Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru (located on the sites that had been occupied by the capital cities of the Aztecs and Incas, respectively) showed more interest in their nearby gold and silver mines than in the remote agricultural societies of Venezuela. Responsibility for the Venezuelan territories shifted to and between the two viceroyalties. The Province of Venezuela came under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Granada created in 1717 by King Felipe V, as part of a new territorial control policy. It was suspended in 1723 for financial problems and was restored in 1739 until the independence movement suspended it again in 1810.
In the 18th century, a second Venezuelan society formed along the coast with the establishment of cocoa plantations manned by much larger importations of African slaves. Quite a number of black slaves also worked in the haciendas of the grassy llanos. Most of the Amerindians who still survived had perforce migrated to the plains and jungles to the south, where only Spanish friars took an interest in them – especially the Franciscans or Capucins, who compiled grammars and small lexicons for some of their languages. The most important friar misión (the name for an area of friar activity) developed in San Tomé in the Guayana Region. Since 1726 the Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas held a close monopoly on trade with Europe. The Guipuzcoana company stimulated the Venezuelan economy, especially in fostering the cultivation of cacao beans, which became Venezuela's principal export.