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Mosquito Coast

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition

Mosquito Coast or Mosquitia , 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.

Author not available, MOSQUITO COAST., The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2008


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The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press

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Related entries from encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses

Mosquito Coast
Mosquito Coast (Costa de Mosquitos), Honduras‐Nicaragua Also spelt Miskito. A region along the Caribbean coast and probably named after the Miskito...less likely that Europeans named the coast and the indigenous people living along... Read more
Mosquito Coast
...incorporated into Nicaragua, but the northern part was granted to Honduras in 1960 by the International Court of Justice. The chief town is Bluefields, at the mouth of the Escondido River in Nicaragua. Mosquito Coast Mosquito Coast Mosquito Coast Read more
Mosquito Coast
Mosquito Coast (Mosquitia) Coastal region bordering on the Caribbean Sea, c. 65km (40mi) wide, now divided between Nicaragua and Honduras. A British... Read more
Nicaragua
...has a south-western-facing coast on the Pacific Ocean and...on the Caribbean Sea, the Mosquito Coast. In the west are fertile...America who settled on the coast. From the 10th century AD...Juan del Norte, known as the Mosquito Coast, after a tribe of American...and recognized a ... Read more
Honduras
...plantations. To the e lies the Mosquito Coast . The Cordilleras highlands form...rainforest and tropical savanna. The Mosquito Coast contains mangrove swamps and dense...Guatemala. Britain controlled the Mosquito Coast. In the 1890s, US companies developed... Read more

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