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 the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)