”’Editor’s note:”’ This is my proposed addition to the end of the Greytown Bombardment article.
This would follow the paragraph that begins with:
”And in 2019 . . .”
and ends with:
”. . . cites this case in its justification.”
Thank you,
Will-DubDub
== Post Bombardment Central America ==
== Post Bombardment Central America ==
Editor’s note: This is my proposed addition to the end of the Greytown Bombardment article.
This would follow the paragraph that begins with:
And in 2019 . . .
and ends with:
. . . cites this case in its justification.
Thank you,
Will-DubDub
Post Bombardment Central America
[edit]
In early 1856 President Pierce named a minister to England to negotiate a new bilateral Central American treaty with Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon. Pierce appointed George Mifflin Dallas, who was a former vice president and former minister to Russia. When Dallas and Clarendon began working on the projet treaty, the British regarded U.S. hegemony over Central America as inevitable and hoped the treaty would provide them with a graceful means to exit the region, while retaining Belize. (This might be regarded as a de facto Anglo acknowledgment of the Monroe doctrine.) The British also wanted — and got — a process built into this draft treaty for affirming the validity of land grants in the Mosquito Protectorate.[1] This treaty never went into effect, but the English would get their land grant guarantees three years later.
By 1859 British opinion was no longer supportive of their nation’s presence in the Mosquito Coast. The British government returned the Bay Islands and ceded the northern part of the Mosquito Coast to Honduras, negotiating with Guatemala to enlarge the British territory in Belize as compensation. The next year, Britain signed the Treaty of Managua, ceding the rest of the Mosquito Coast to Nicaragua, except for insisting on a reservation for the Mosquito Indians and protection for any land grants made by them.[2] (They had also secured such grant protection from the Hondurans the year before.[3])
In his fourth state-of-the-union, President Buchanan said he found the 1859 and 1860 treaties with Honduras and Nicaragua respectively “entirely satisfactory.” However, the Digest of International Law of the United States, writing about the Nicaraguan treaty (but whose words could apply as well to that with the Hondurans), said: “President Buchanan’s expressions of satisfaction … were based on the assumption that Great Britain had ceased to exercise any influence whatever over the Mosquito country. That this is not the case, however, follows from the ratification, by the treaty, of British [land grant] titles from Indians … giving British subjects a controlling power in the territory”.[4]
Greytown’s Ultimate Fate
[edit]
Although rebuilt by the British, Greytown was never the same. In 1855, improvements in the Panamanian route, including a robust new railroad, started making it a viable alternative to the Nicaraguan route. On July 26, 1859, a long time resident, W.P. Kirkland, wrote “the entire river, from Greytown to the Colorado (River), is filling up [with silt]. … We are now without hope of either Canal or Transit, with a certainty of poverty.” On November 17, Kirkland reported that property in the town was selling for 15 percent of its cost and that the population was swiftly melting away.” Memorials (petitions) from the aggrieved residents, wrote historian Robert Seager, “arguing that the Accessory Transit Company had maliciously produced the bombardment by misrepresenting the peaceful and cooperative nature of the Greytowners, failed to stir the Congress.”[5]
Greytown figured prominently in a failed attempt to build a canal across the Nicaragua isthmus from 1880-1889.
In 1984, Greytown was attacked again during the Sandinista–Contra conflict in which a US helicopter, while supporting the Contras, fired on the town on 9 April 1984.[3]
A new town was built a few kilometers to the northwest and is called both New Greytown and Nuevo San Juan del Norte.
In 2002, the municipality of San Juan del Norte was officially renamed San Juan de Nicaragua and its capital renamed Graytown [sic] by the National Assembly of Nicaragua.[4]
- ^ Manning, William R., ed. (1936). Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Inter-American Affairs, Vol. 7: Great Britain, 1831–1860 (Letter from George M. Dallas to William L. Marcy). Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. pp. 684–85. Retrieved 10 April 2025 – via HathiTrust.
- ^ Great Britain. Foreign Office. (1860). “Correspondence respecting Central America. 1856-60” (Book). HathiTrust. London: Harrison and sons. pp. 315–18. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
- ^ “Correspondence respecting Central America. 1856-60”. pp. 308–10.
- ^ Wharton, F. (1887). “A digest of the international law of the United States: taken from documents issued by presidents and secretaries of state, and from decisions of federal courts and opinions of attorneys-general” (Book). HathiTrust. Washington, D.C.: Govt. print. off. p. 34. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
- ^ Seager, Robert. “The Samuel S. Wood Papers” (Journal Article). The Yale University Library Gazette. 34 (4). New Haven, CT: Yale University: 176. Retrieved 14 April 2025.