The Last Days of the Mosquito Reservation: The Mosquito Indian Diplomatic Mission to Restore the Mosquito Reservation, 1894–1907

Abstract

Abstract Geopolitical changes taking place in late nineteenth-century Central America laid the pathway for Nicaragua’s long-desired incorporation of the autonomous Mosquito Reservation, which was located on its Caribbean Coast. This article brings to light the diplomatic mission undertaken by Mosquito Indians to restore their reservation using rarely accessed British Foreign Office documents. These sources detail the extensive efforts by the last hereditary chief, Robert Henry Clarence, and a small number of Mosquito delegates living in exile in Jamaica, to persuade Great Britain to restore the autonomy granted to them under the Treaty of Managua (1860). Mosquito appeals for British support drew on notions of shared Anglo culture owing to their long historical association with the British and their conversion to Protestant Christianity from the 1840s. The discussion of Mosquito diplomatic correspondence reveals that they possessed a much more sophisticated understanding of notions of nationhood and international law than is commonly acknowledged. The Mosquitos’ association with the British, which had indeed been empowering during the early nineteenth century, proved to be entirely disempowering as the century drew to a close. The establishment of US hegemony over the isthmus had radically transformed Central America’s diplomatic landscape and had undermined Britain’s ability to intervene on behalf of the Mosquito.