Republic of Costa Rica República de Costa Rica | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1848–1948 | |||||||||
Capital | San José | ||||||||
Official languages | Spanish | ||||||||
Government | Presidential republic
| ||||||||
President | |||||||||
• 1848-1948 | List | ||||||||
Legislature | Constitutional Congress | ||||||||
Historical era | Liberal State | ||||||||
August 31, 1848 | |||||||||
12 March to 24 April 1948 | |||||||||
Currency | Costa Rican peso | ||||||||
|
The First Costa Rican Republic is the name given to the historical period between the proclamation of the Republic of Costa Rica in the 1848 reformed Constitution and the official decree by then President José María Castro Madriz on 31 August 1848 and the Costa Rican Civil War of 1948 which ended with the enactment of the current 1949 Constitution on 7 November 1949 starting the Second Costa Rican Republic.[1][2]
The First Costa Rican Republic marked the dominion of the liberal ideology and the hegemony of a very powerful liberal oligarchy that ruled the country for most of its history. The liberal hegemony was so prevalent that the period between 1870 and 1940 is known as the Liberal State. However, the exhaustion of the model and discontent from the working classes would result in a series of left-leaning social-reformist governments in the 1930s and 1940s and the consequent civil war.