Spanish Empire Maps

200 year old battery discovered in Cartagena

A Spanish battery that is more than 200 years old was discovered in the northern Colombian city of Cartagena , El Heraldo reported Wednesday .

The battery was discovered by a local man who looked out from his balcony and noticed stones that looked like a wall arranged in a gull-wing pattern on the beach as the tide went out. A team of workers was sent to investigate and found the remains of an artillery battery built in the mid 18th century by Antonio de Arevalo, a famous military engineer who reinforced Cartagena's famous Castle of San Felipe and served the Spanish Empire for 59 years.

Judith Pinedo, the mayor of Cartagena, was overjoyed at the discovery of the battery. "These bulwarks exist only on maps but no one had ever been given the task of searching for them," said Pinedo. The mayor further stated that the site would be excavated and was located "just where we contemplated making a recreational area."

Cartagena has many well preserved fortifications from its time as a strategic port in the Spanish Empire. The Castle of San Felipe which overlooks the city from a hill, has been listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

The city has also been the location of many battles, as both the English and the French attempted to take the city away from Spain. The most famous battle occurred in the War of Jenkin's Ear in 1741 when the Spanish decisively beat back a British landing force of more than 150 ships and 12,000 soldiers. The British lost nearly 50 ships with many heavily damaged.

Outside the Walls of Intramuros | Philippine Books

Outside the Walls of Intramuros

A work of historical fiction covering America’s colonial war in the Philippines at the turn of the century. The Spanish Empire falls. America rises. The Filipinos get a taste of freedom, then quickly lose it to the Americans.

The story follows the role of Dr. Joaquin Calderon, a personal doctor of revolutionary chief Emilio Aguinaldo, as he struggles to keep a balance between loyalty to the revolutionary cause and recognition of the Americans as the islands’ new colonial master.

It also follows the romance between an American soldier and the doctor’s daughter, which borders on the comic as they have to overcome cultural barriers and political differences.

An epic story of war and adventure, romance and betrayal, filled with dark characters who personify an era of empire-building and strewn with lessons in war politics for the 21st Century.

The novel quaintly portrays the irony in the character of the American soldiers who land by the thousands on the shores of Manila Bay. Dispatched from America to show the flag of an emerging world power, they are mostly farm boys from the cattle ranches and homesteads of the West, or working class men from the grimy factories of the East; coarse, uncouth and uneducated; the sons of the tired, poor and hungry immigrants who for over a century have flooded the shores of the United States from Europe. They have none of the social graces or Latin sophistication of the Spanish colonists they have displaced. Yet, the same poor, ignorant soldiers have at their disposal a modern military machine that has just brought an empire to heel.

What are the secret of their success? What kind of future does their arrival portend on this part of this distant corner of the former Spanish Empire? These are the conundrums that Joaquin Calderon seeks to answer in his dealings with the Americans and tutelage of rebel leader Aguinaldo.

The author populates his story with historical figures that bring back vividly a forgotten era when America fought a colonial war in the Pacific.A work of historical fiction covering America’s colonial war in the Philippines at the turn of the century. The Spanish Empire falls. America rises. The Filipinos get a taste of freedom, then quickly lose it to the Americans.

The story follows the role of Dr. Joaquin Calderon, a personal doctor of revolutionary chief Emilio Aguinaldo, as he struggles to keep a balance between loyalty to the revolutionary cause and recognition of the Americans as the islands’ new colonial master.

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