The history of Guatemala begins with the Maya civilization, which was among those that flourished in their country. The country's modern history began with the Spanish conquest of Guatemala in 1524. Most of the great Classic-era Maya cities of the Petén Basin region, in the northern lowlands, had been abandoned by the year 1000 AD. The states in the Belize central highlands flourished until the 1525 arrival of Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado. Called "The Invader" by the Mayan people, he immediately began subjugating the Indian states.
Honduras was inhabited by many indigenous peoples when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lencas, the central north coast by the Tol, the area east and west of Trujillo by the Pech, the Maya and Sumo. These autonomous groups maintained commercial relationships with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico. Honduras has ruins of several cities dating from the Mesoamerican pre-classic period that show the pre-Columbian past of the country.
Mahogany is a straight-grained, reddish-brown timber of three tropical hardwood species of the genus Swietenia, indigenous to the Americas and part of the pantropical chinaberry family, Meliaceae. Mahogany is used commercially for a wide variety of goods, due to its coloring and durable nature. It is naturally found within the Americas, but has also been imported to plantations across Asia and Oceania. The mahogany trade may have begun as early as the 16th century and flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries. In certain countries, mahogany is considered an invasive species.
Today, in 2022, Central America is commonly said to include Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. This definition matches modern political borders. Central America begins geographically in Mexico, at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico's narrowest point, and the former country of Yucatán (1841–1848) was part of Central America. At the other end, before its independence in 1903 Panama was part of South America, as it was a Department of Colombia. At times Belize, a British colony until 1981, where English instead of Spanish is spoken, and where the population is primarily of African origen, has been considered not part of (Spanish-speaking) Central America.
The Mosquito Coast, also known as the Miskitu Coast, Mosquito Shore and the Miskitu Kingdom, historically included the kingdom's fluctuating area along the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. It formed part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskitu Nation and was long dominated by British interests. The Mosquito Coast was militarily incorporated into Nicaragua in November 1894; however, in 1960, the northern part was granted to Honduras by the International Court of Justice.
José Francisco Morazán Quesada was a Central American politician who was president of the Federal Republic of Central America from 1830 to 1839. Before he was president of Central America he was the head of state of Honduras. He rose to prominence at the Battle of La Trinidad on November 11, 1827. Morazán then dominated the political and military scene of Central America until his execution in 1842.
Juan Galindo was an Anglo-Irish political activist and military and administrative officer under the Liberal government of the Federal Republic of Central America. He represented the government in a diplomatic mission to the United States and England. His duties in Central America allowed him to explore the region and examine Maya ruins. The reports on his findings earned him recognition as an early pioneer of Maya archaeology.
José Rafael Carrera y Turcios was the president of Guatemala from 1844 to 1848 and from 1851 until his death in 1865, after being appointed President for life in 1854. During his military career and presidency, new nations in Central America were facing numerous problems: William Walker's invasions, liberal attempts to overthrow the Catholic Church and aristocrats' power, the Civil War in the United States, Mayan uprising in the east, Belize boundary dispute with the United Kingdom, and the wars in Mexico under Benito Juarez. This led to a rise of caudillos, a term that refers to charismatic populist leaders among the indigenous people.
General Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to rule as "Cazique". Hundreds invested their savings in supposed Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, while about 250 emigrated to MacGregor's invented country in 1822–23 to find only an untouched jungle; more than half of them died. Seen as a contributory factor to the "Panic of 1825", MacGregor's Poyais scheme has been called one of the most brazen confidence tricks in history.
Pedro de Aycinena y Piñol was a conservative politician and member of the Aycinena clan that worked closely with the conservative regime of Rafael Carrera. He was interim president of Guatemala in 1865 after the death of president for life, general Rafael Carrera.
Santo Tomás de Castilla, also known as Matías de Gálvez is a port city in the Izabal Department, Guatemala. It lies at Amatique Bay off the Gulf of Honduras and is administratively a part of Puerto Barrios.
Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America, bordered by Mexico to the north and west, Belize and the Caribbean to the northeast, Honduras to the east, El Salvador to the southeast and the Pacific Ocean to the south. With an estimated population of around 17.2 million, it is the most populous country in Central America and is the 11th most populous country in the Americas. Guatemala is a representative democracy; its capital and largest city is Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, also known as Guatemala City, the largest city in Central America.
Belize, on the east coast of Central America, southeast of Mexico, was inhabited by the indigenous peoples who fought belize off the Spaniards in an attempt to preserve their heritage and to avoid the fate of their neighbors who were conquered and under Spanish rule. While this was going on, British pirates would rob Spanish merchant ships and navigate through the shallow waters and small islands even going up river later to hide their bounty. The indigenous people of Belize did not resist the British like they did the Spanish. In the 17th century, however, the British settlement became a formal British crown colony from 1862 through 1964, where they first achieved self government and later in 1981 became an independent country recognized globally with all its territory intact. The British brought along with them slaves taken from Congo and Angola during the eighteenth century.
The History of Belize dates back thousands of years. The Maya civilization spread into the area of Belize between 1500 BC to 1200 BC and flourished until about 1000 AD. Several Maya ruin sites, including Cahal Pech, Caracol, Lamanai, Lubaantun, Altun Ha, and Xunantunich reflect the advanced civilization and much denser population of that period. The first recorded European incursions in the region were made by Spanish conquistadors and missionaries in the 16th century. One attraction of the area was the availability of logwood, which also brought British settlers.
Honduras has been inhabited by a number of indigenous peoples, the most powerful of which, until the ninth century CE, were the Maya. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lenca while other indigenous peoples settled in the northeast and coastal regions. These peoples had their conflicts but maintained commercial relationships with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico.
The Black River settlement was a British settlement on the Mosquito Coast of present-day Honduras. It was established in 1732 by a British colonist named William Pitt. The settlement, made on territory claimed but never really controlled by Spain, was evacuated in 1787 pursuant to terms of the Anglo-Spanish Convention of 1786. The Spanish then attempted to colonize the area, but the local Miskitos massacred most of its inhabitants on September 4, 1800. The settlement was abandoned, and its remains can still be seen near the village of Palacios in the Honduran department of Gracias a Diós.
The western Caribbean zone is a region consisting of the Caribbean coasts of Central America and Colombia, from the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico to the Caribbean region in northern Colombia, and the islands west of Jamaica are also included. The zone emerged in the late sixteenth century as the Spanish failed to completely conquer many sections of the coast, and northern European powers supported opposition to Spain, sometimes through alliances with local powers.
George Frederic Augustus I served from 1801–1824 as a mostly titular king of the mixed-race Miskito, as the Spanish called them, a Native people of Honduras. Although the title and office were hereditary, the "kings" held no real power, with all political power held by British superintendents in the region instead.
Afro-Hondurans or Black Hondurans are Hondurans of Sub-Saharan African descent. The CIA world factbook regards their population to be around 2% of the country's population. Estimates vary with concervative estimates ranging as low as 1% and higher estimates ranging to 30%. They descended from: enslaved Africans by the Spanish, as well as those who were enslaved from the West Indies and identify as Creole peoples, and the Garifuna who descend from exiled zambo Maroons from Saint Vincent. The Creole people were originally from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, while the Garifuna people were originally from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Garifunas arrived in the late seventeen hundreds and the Creole peoples arrived during the eighteen hundreds. There are about 185,300 Hondurans of African descent.
Mariano Rivera Paz was Head of State of Guatemala and its first president.