History
The original colony was in the city of Jacagua, which was founded in 1495, but when it was destroyed by an earthquake, it was moved to its present location in 1506. It was devastated by another earthquake in 1562. Santiago de los Caballeros has at times been the capital of the country, and was an important strategic city in the Dominican War of Independence in 1844.
The name of the city, Saint James of the Knights, makes allusion to the Hidalgos de la Isabela, a group of knights who had come from La Isabela city to stay in Santiago. That they were actual knights is clear from the fact that when they got back to Spain they put a formal complaint before the king stating that their horses had been unfairly commissioned as beasts of burden and their weapons had been appropriated by the Columbus brothers (Diego and Bartolome) and that they had been made to do manual labor, something considered beneath their station as knights, who were meant to engage only in battle. The king compensated them for all their loses. Sometimes the city is even called Santiago de los 30 Caballeros (English: Saint James of the 30 Knights).
Read more about this topic: Santiago De Los Caballeros
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)