Humanities desk
< January 29	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 31 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 30

Why El Salvador

Why is El Salvador a separate entity? It's so tiny, after all; I don't see why a separate jurisdiction was created there in the first place. Essentially, I'm unclear whether its self-identity were the result of a separate jurisdiction there, or whether a separate jurisdiction were created because the area was considered distinct already. El Salvador#History, History of El Salvador, and History of Central America discuss factors such as the split-up of the 1820s regional federation, which explains why El Salvador is independent, but as far as I can tell from those articles, it was a distinct jurisdiction at independence and within the federation. I'm unsure whether it were separate from Guatemala and Honduras during the later colonial period (apparently at least part of it was included in Guatemala during the earlier colonial period) or whether it became separate at independence, and why it became separate whenever it did. Nyttend (talk) 01:18, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Because in the late 1830s the Federal Republic of Central America dissolved itself. El Salvador was a constituent state within the Federation, and it took some time (until 1841) for that state to constitute an effective government. It was a bit silly, by 1838 every state in that country had effectively declared itself independent from it, so essentially the Federal Republic of Central America, from 1838-1841, was El Salvador and nothing else. Essentially, El Salvador exists because every other state that was part of its Federation left it, and it was functionally the rump state that was left over. The reason why it exists is because every other state that was part of the country it was also a part of split off and left it behind. --Jayron 32 12:59, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To answer the original question, El Salvador may be small but is very densely populated, with its capital San Salvador being one of the oldest cities in central America. So it's not surprising that when organizing the territory, it would have been the center of a region, that although geographically small, was quite important for central America as a whole. It's a bit like the state of Victoria in Australia: it may look small compared to some to some of the others on the Australian continent, but revolving around a major city like Melbourne as it does, it is by no means marginal. Xuxl (talk) 13:19, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing to consider is that, like many Central American states, it was a single-crop economy, and foreign business interests tended to be well involved in acting to support the state to keep business costs low in exporting that crop. For Honduras, for example, it was the banana and the Standard Fruit Company and United Fruit Company, in El Salvador it became the coffee industry, etc. There was a lot of pressure to keep these single-crop economies stable and propped up by the companies involved, and to work against unification and industry diversification. It may have not been a big factor in making El Salvador independent, but the involvement of US food companies in Central American politics was a major theme of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it likely played a big part in keeping the status quo of those small states. --Jayron 32 13:27, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Because in the late 1830s the Federal Republic of Central America dissolved itself. El Salvador was a constituent state within the Federation". Understood, but why was there a separate constituent state there in the first place? (If 49 US states declared independence in alphabetical order, "it's the rump state left over when all the others left" would explain why Wyoming was independent, but it wouldn't explain why there's a rectangular region in North America called "Wyoming" in the first place.) I get the impression that there were a bunch of separate jurisdictions in Central America before independence, since the federal republic sounds like a union of pre-existing jurisdictions. If that's so, why was one created in the vicinity of San Salvador, or if I'm wrong, when that republic was first divided into states, why was one created around San Salvador? I'm not interested in the "keeping" aspect but in the "starting" aspect. Victoria was created because the population in the region was growing and it was rather far from the rest of New South Wales; if you can find sources saying that El Salvador was created because even 200+ years ago it was densely populated and far from the centres of pre-existing jurisdictions, that's good enough for me. Nyttend (talk) 22:57, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it may look small in some map projections, but El Salvador, at 21000 square kilometres, is about 7 times larger than Rhode Island, bigger than Delaware and Connecticut, and only slightly smaller than Vermont, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:41, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also bigger than Israel (20,770), Slovenia (20,273) and Kuwait (17,818); see List of countries and dependencies by area. Alansplodge (talk) 10:49, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To answer the question "why was there a separate constituent state there in the first place?", according to El Salvador#History and Captaincy General of Guatemala, "The Salvadoran territory was administered by the Mayor of Sonsonate, with San Salvador being established as an intendancia in 1786." and "As part of the Bourbon Reforms in 1786 the crown established a series of intendancies in the area, which replaced most of the older corregimientos. The intendants were granted broad fiscal powers and charged with promoting the local economy. The new intendancies were San Salvador (El Salvador), Ciudad Real (Chiapas), Comayagua (Honduras), and León (Nicaragua)." So, in 1786, the Captaincy General of Guatamala was subdivided into administrative units called intendancia, El Salvador was one of those, whose Intendant was based at San Salvadore. It looks like essentially all of the small central American countries (save Belize and Panama which have a different origin story) originated as one of these intendancies. Does that help?--Jayron 32 14:20, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, if I'd thought to look in the CG-of-G article, I would have understood. So the Crown basically divided the region into zones for better administration, and after independence those zones continued functioning, first as states within the federal republic, and then as independent countries. Thank you. Nyttend (talk) 11:51, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]