New Kingdom of Granada

The New Kingdom of Granada (Nuevo Reino de Granada), or Kingdom of the New Granada, was the name given to a group of 16th-century Spanish colonial provinces in northern South America governed by the president of the Royal Audience of Santafé, an area corresponding mainly to modern-day Colombia. The conquistadors originally organized it as a province with a Royal Audience within the Viceroyalty of Peru despite certain independence from it. The audiencia was established by the crown in 1549. Ultimately the kingdom became the Viceroyalty of New Granada first in 1717 and permanently in 1739. After several attempts to set up independent states in the 1810s, the kingdom and the viceroyalty ceased to exist altogether in 1819 with the establishment of the United Provinces of New Granada. Spanish conquest of the Muisca In 1514, the Spanish first permanently settled in the area. With Santa Marta (founded on July 29, 1525 by the Spanish conquistador Rodrigo de Bastidas) and Cartagena (1533), Spanish control of the coast was established, and the extension of colonial control into the interior could begin. Starting in 1536, the conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada explored the extensive highlands of the interior of the region, by following the Magdalena River into the Andean cordillera. There his force defeated the powerful Muisca and founding the city of Santa Fé de Bogotá (Bogotá) and naming the region El nuevo reino de Granada, "the new kingdom of Granada", in honor of the last part of Spain to be recaptured from the Moors, home to the brothers De Quesada. After Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada left for Spain in May 1539, the reign of the colony was transferred to his brother Hernán. De Quesada, however, lost control of the province when Emperor Charles V granted the right to rule over the area to rival conquistador, Sebastián de Belalcázar, in 1540, who had entered the region from what is today Ecuador, and named himself governor of Popayán. Charles V ordered the establishment of an audiencia, a type of superior court that combined executive and judicial authority, at Santafé de Bogotá in 1549.