History of Colombia: a timeline

13 moments in the history of Colombia, in order, each with what happened and why it matters.

Eras

  1. Before 1492 (15000 BC–1492)
  2. Empire and the colonial Americas (1492–1808)
  3. Revolutions and new nations (1808–1898)
  4. Revolution, war and dictatorship (1898–1975)
  5. Democracy and today (1975–)

Before 1492 (15000 BC–1492)

  1. between 600 and 1537: The Muisca and the legend of El Dorado — On the cool high plateau around today's Bogotá lived the Muisca, or Chibcha, a people of farmers, salt traders and goldsmiths who flourished from about AD 600…

Empire and the colonial Americas (1492–1808)

  1. 1585–28 January 1596: Drake raids the Spanish Caribbean — Francis Drake, 'El Draque' to the Spaniards, had robbed the mule trains at Nombre de Dios in 1572 and the silver ship Cacafuego off Peru in 1579.
  2. 26 March 1713–1750: The slave asiento goes to Britain — From the sixteenth century the Crown sold the asiento, a monopoly contract to supply enslaved Africans to its American colonies, to Portuguese, Genoese, Dutch…
  3. c. 1765–1788: The Bourbon reforms — Under Charles III (1759–88) the Crown set out to govern the Americas more tightly and profitably.

Revolutions and new nations (1808–1898)

  1. 20 July 1810: The Florero de Llorente: Bogotá's 20 July — On Friday 20 July 1810, market day in Santafé de Bogotá, a group of creoles went to the shop of the Spanish merchant José González Llorente to borrow a flower…
  2. 6 September 1815: Bolívar writes the Jamaica Letter — In 1815 the cause of independence looked lost.
  3. 7 August 1819: The Battle of Boyacá — In the rainy season of 1819 Bolívar led an army from the Venezuelan plains over the flooded llanos and the freezing páramo of Pisba into the heart of New…
  4. 17 December 1819–17 November 1831: Gran Colombia, Bolívar's republic — On 17 December 1819 the Congress of Angostura passed the Fundamental Law that united Venezuela and New Granada in a single Republic of Colombia; the province…

Revolution, war and dictatorship (1898–1975)

  1. October 1899–3 November 1903: The Thousand Days' War and the loss of Panama — Colombia's last and bloodiest civil war of the nineteenth century began in October 1899, when Liberals rose against the Conservative government.
  2. 6 December 1928: The banana massacre at Ciénaga — In November 1928 the workers of the United Fruit Company's banana plantations in Magdalena, on Colombia's Caribbean coast, struck for written contracts, a…

Democracy and today (1975–)

  1. October 1982: García Márquez wins the Nobel: the Boom — In the 1960s a handful of Latin American novelists became world famous almost at once: the Argentine Julio Cortázar with Rayuela (1963), the Peruvian Mario…
  2. c. 2015: The Venezuelan exodus — Venezuela, once the richest country in South America and a magnet for immigrants from Spain, Italy, Portugal and Colombia, has in a decade become the source of…
  3. 28 October 2025: Spanish today: almost 635 million speakers — According to the Instituto Cervantes's yearbook El español en el mundo 2025, presented in Madrid on 28 October 2025, almost 635 million people speak Spanish:…

Changes over time