Name: Peru
Start: 1821

Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, stands on the western edge of South America between Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile, a megadiverse land running from the arid Pacific plain up over the Andes to the Amazon rainforest, the nineteenth country of the world by area and the third of its continent. Lima is the capital and greatest city. Few countries carry a longer past: the Caral-Supe civilization of the tenth millennium before the common era is the earliest known of the Americas, and after the Nazca, Moche, Wari and Tiwanaku came the Kingdom of Cuzco and the Inca Empire, the largest state of pre-Columbian America. Spain seized it in the sixteenth century and Charles V set the Viceroyalty of Peru at Lima over most of the continent's south. San Martín declared independence at Lima on 28 July 1821, and Bolívar's triumph at Ayacucho in 1824 closed three hundred years of colonial rule. The young republic lived on guano and nitrate wealth, lost the nitrate south to Chile in the War of the Pacific, and entered 1945 as an Andean-Pacific republic of over six million people.

Key facts

San Martín proclaimed independence at Lima on 28 July 1821, and Bolívar's victory at Ayacucho in 1824 ended Spanish rule

Peruvian soil holds the Caral-Supe civilization of the tenth millennium BCE, the earliest known civilization of the Americas

The Inca Empire, the largest pre-Columbian American state, ruled from Cuzco before Pizarro's conquest in the 1530s

Spain governed the south of the continent for nearly three centuries through the Viceroyalty of Peru seated at Lima

The guano and nitrate boom of the nineteenth century financed the early republic before the War of the Pacific

Peru

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