Uruguay

From the Charrua of the Banda Oriental and a contested frontier between the Spanish and Portuguese empires to Artigas and the Thirty-Three Orientals, the 1828 buffer state between Argentina and Brazil, the reforms of Batlle y Ordonez, the dictatorship of 1973-1985, and a stable, progressive democracy.

Uruguay's history begins with the Charrua and other Indigenous peoples of the grasslands north of the Rio de la Plata, in a land the Spanish called the Banda Oriental, the eastern bank of the river. For two centuries it was a contested borderland between the Spanish and Portuguese empires, marked by the smuggling port of Colonia del Sacramento and the Spanish founding of Montevideo in 1724-1726. Independence came hard: the federalist hero Jose Gervasio Artigas, Portuguese and Brazilian occupation, the landing of the Thirty-Three Orientals and the declaration of 25 August 1825, and the British-brokered settlement of 1828 that created Uruguay as a buffer state between its giant neighbours. After a turbulent nineteenth century of civil war between Blancos and Colorados, the reforms of Jose Batlle y Ordonez made Uruguay an early welfare-state democracy, before a military dictatorship from 1973 to 1985 gave way to the stable, progressive republic of today.