Mosquitia

Mosquitia, the Mosquito Coast, was the polity of the Caribbean coast of Central America, named for the Miskito people whose country it was, with its seat at Bluefields. The coast had been Spanish by paper since discovery, but in practice the Miskito kingdom stood on its own, and English and Scots intermarried with its ruling line, while English buccaneers of Tortuga and Jamaica sheltered in its bays. Britain traded and fished along the shore for most of the eighteenth century, and the local rulers pressed a standing claim to the coast against Spain. In 1860 Britain negotiated a protectorate over Mosquitia with all its borders, and its control was contested by Spain, which nurtured rival Indian tribes on the coast. The Mexican boundary dispute and the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty pushed the issue to Vienna in 1849. Britain gave up the protectorate in 1894, and its claims over the Mosquito Reserve passed to Nicaragua and Honduras.