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Offa's Dyke, a massive linear earthwork, roughly…

Offa's Dyke, a massive linear earthwork, roughly…

772 CE to 783 CE

Offa's Dyke, a massive linear earthwork, roughly followed by some of the current border between England and Wales, is in places up to sixty-five feet (nineteen point eight meters) wide (including its flanking ditch) and eight feet (two point four meters) high, forms some kind of delineation between the Anglian kingdom of Mercia and the Welsh Kingdom of Powys.

Much of the earthwork can be attributed to Offa, King of Mercia from 757 to 796.

Its structure is not that of a mutual boundary between the Mercians on the one side and the people of Powys on the other.

The earthwork was dug with the displaced soil piled into a bank on the Mercian (eastern) side.

Where the earthwork encounters hills, it passes to the west of them, constantly providing an open view from Mercia into Wales.

The dyke may have been constructed as a defensive earthwork, as well as a political statement of power and intent.

It extends about one hundred and twenty miles (one hundred and ninety-five kilometers) through the Welsh marches from the Bristol Channel in the south to the Dee estuary in the north.

Locations

Clun Shropshire United Kingdom View →

People

Offa of Mercia View →

Groups

Britons (historical) View → Saxons View → Angles View → Anglo-Saxons View → Welsh people View → Mercia, Kingdom of View → Britain, Medieval View → Powys, Welsh Kingdom of View →

Topics

Heptarchy, The View → Offa's Wars View →

Commodities

Weapons View →

Subjects

Commerce View → Engineering View → Labor and Service View → Conflict View → Faith View → Government View → Technology View →

Regions

North Europe

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Subregions

Northwest Europe

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People: Vicente Rocafuerte

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Four intellectuals who had begun publishing El…

Four intellectuals who had begun publishing El Quiteno Libre to denounce the "pillaging of the national treasury by foreigners" are killed in 1833 by the authorities at a time when Flores is absent from Quito.

Although not directly responsible for the killings, Flores inevitably becomes associated with them, and criticism of his regime grows.

In 1834 opponents stage a rebellion in an effort to place José Vicente Rocafuerte y Rodriguez de Bejarano, a member of the Guayaquil aristocracy who had recently returned from fourteen years abroad, into the presidency.

The rebels' effort fails; Flores now co-opts his opponent and sponsors Rocafuerte as a presidential candidate.

For four years following this Machiavellian political move—in effect the nation's first coup d'etat—Flores continues to wield considerable power from behind the scenes as commander of the military.

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President Rocafuerte's most lasting contribution is to…

President Rocafuerte's most lasting contribution is to begin development of a public school system.

Although he had previously condemned Flores's violations of civil liberties, Rocafuerte argues that "the backwardness of Ecuador makes enlightened despotism necessary."

At the end of his term in 1839, Rocafuerte returns to his native Guayaquil as provincial governor, while in Quito Flores is again inaugurated into the presidency.

Flores summons a constitutional convention that writes a new constitution, dubbed "the Charter of Slavery" by his opponents, and elects him to a new eight-year term of office.

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Opposition to Ecuador's president Juan José Flores…

Opposition to Ecuador's president Juan José Flores often manifests itself in unpleasant ways after 1843: in reference to the dark skin of Flores and his fellow Venezuelan and Colombian soldiers, Rocafuerte (by now exiled in Lima) writes that "the white oppressors of the peninsula were less oppressive than the Negro vandals who have replaced them."

A young student named Gabriel García Moreno—later to become the most infamous of all of Ecuador's nineteenth-century dictators—tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Flores.

Discontent has become nationwide by 1845, when an insurrection in Guayaquil forces Flores from the country.

Because their movement triumphs in March (Marzo), the anti-Flores coalition members become known as marcistas.

They are an extremely heterogeneous lot that includes liberal intellectuals, conservative clergymen, and representatives from Guayaquil's successful business community.

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