Central America: independence and the federal experiment

The territories now known as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica declared independence from Spain in September 1821. A union of the five took shape in 1823; the federal constitutional project followed in November 1824. These dates describe different stages, rather than rival answers to a single question about when Central America became independent.

The federation conducted diplomacy as a political union. Its 1825 treaty with the United States addressed peace, commerce and navigation, and came into force in 1826. The document uses the name “Federation of the Centre of America”. Reading a contemporary treaty alongside later country histories helps explain why five present-day states can share an earlier federal diplomatic record.

Civil war accompanied dissolution beginning in 1838. The union was largely defunct by the early 1840s, while diplomatic and legal traces continued longer. The published treaty collection distinguishes practical dissolution in 1839 from complete termination by 1847. The endpoint displayed here follows that distinction rather than implying that a functioning federation governed throughout the entire period.

Heinrich Berghaus’s 1840 map combines Central American geography with volcanic features and Pacific island insets. It is a European cartographic view made during the federation’s dissolution, not a modern political map or a statement of uncontested borders. Belize and Panama need separate histories; the five-member federation did not encompass every territory now grouped under Central America.