Territorial evolution of the Caribbean the Viceroyalty of New Granada and the Captaincy General of Venezuela became the Republic of Gran Colombia organized as a federation of Ecuador, today's Colombia and Venezuela (Panama was part of Colombia). The official name of the country at the time was the Republic of Colombia. Historians adopted the term "Gran Colombia" to distinguish this republic from the present-day Republic of Colombia, which began using the same name in 1863. Spanish Haiti's independence was short-lived, as Haitian forces, led by Jean Pierre Boyer, invaded and took control of the country just nine weeks later in February 1822. After a brief
Gran Colombia title of his archive of his revolutionary activities. Simon Bolívar and other Spanish American revolutionaries also used the word "Colombia" in the continental sense. The establishment in 1819 of a country with the name "Colombia" by the Congress of Angostura gave the term a specific geographic and political reference. The Republic of Colombia comprised more or less the former territories of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1739-1777), which it claimed under the legal principle of "uti possidetis". It united the territories of the former Third Republic of Venezuela, the United Provinces of New Granada, the former Royal Audiencia of Panama