| abstract
| - The Republic of San Amaros (Spanish: República de San Amaros, commonly shortened to just San Amaros) is a sovereign island nation located in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean Sea. The republic is made up of the island of San Amaro, which constitutes a land area of only 21 square kilometres, making San Amaros the 193rd largest country in the world. The estimated population of 3,543 makes San amaros the second least-populated nation in the world and the smallest in the Americas. San Amaros is a unitary presidential republic with a separated executive and legislature. The President is the head of government and the head of state, with the officeholder maintaining a large amount of power through the Cabinet and the edict system. The Council of Deputies, the national legislature, is a 25-member assembly which serves to formulate policies, though it does not possess legislative supremacy and is constitutionally subject to the edicts and vetoes and the President. As such, legislative power in the government of San Amaros is largely nominal, and most political actions are undertaken by the President. However, the President is subject to the rulings of the High Court, whose membership is appointed by the Council of Deputies, and whose role is to interpret and establish constitutional law. The national system of government was established in 1949, after the Second Sanamarosian Revolution and the creation of the Constitution. Christopher Columbus was the first European to see San Amaros, claiming it for the Spanish Empire in 1493. The Dutch West India Company would ultimately take control of the island as Sint Eustatius in 1693, and by the year 1756, the free port had grown into a valuable point of transhipment between the various surrounding colonial possessions. During the American Revolutionary War, the island was captured by the British in 1781, and the islands, after a Dutch recapture, were sold to the Spanish in 1784, who gave the island its contemporary name. The French-Spanish Don Juan Carlos de Marnes led the settlement of the island in the early 19th century, and his major role in re-colonisation led the development of a stable plantation economy based upon the export of sugar cane, coffee, and rum. Spanish rule over the island was relaxed, and the plantador families exercised a great deal of power over the socioeconomic system. In 1867, the plantation economy was expanded upon by the Spanish government, which began to export criminals from mainland Spain, using the island as a penal colony. The plantador families exploited the criminal labour by extending their sentences arbitrarily, and by 1880, the domestic quality of life was rapidly degrading. The Sanamarosian Penal Revolt of 1883 forced many entrenched families to flee, though order was eventually restored after a direct Spanish intervention. The penal colony system was entirely dismantled by 1888, resulting in many resident Sanamarosians returning to work for the plantations only with increased ideas of what was fair and equitable. The outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 set the First Sanamarosian Revolution into motion after years of rising tensions between colonial elite and common peasants. On 10 May 1898, the Sanamarosian commoners ousted the plantadores and established a republic, and the Spanish agreed to recognise the small nation in the Treaty of Paris on December 10th of that year. The first elections were held in 1898, and Julian Cuevas, the leader of the revolutionary forces, became the country's first President. Cuevas initiated a series of reforms which redistributed land and nationalised the plantations, using revenues to fund development projects. Cuevas was consistently re-elected due to the massive improvements brought about by his progressive reforms. The death of Cuevas in 1929 and the immediate following of the Great Depression caused extreme unrest among even moderates, and this was only exacerbated by the institutional corruption which hindered economic recovery. After years of increasingly authoritarian leadership, the Second Sanamarosian Revolution broke out in 1949, resulting in the ascendency of Juan Ernesto Marnes to the Presidency. Marnes, like Cuevas, would bring about stabilisation through his ability to make compromise with radical factions, and, by 1955, he had succeeded in restoring the economy to its state prior to the Great Depression. The Marnes administration would continue throughout most of the Cold War, a period which brought a massive amount of development to the plantation system of San Amaros, which was semi-privatised in 1971. Marnes would die in 1976, although his political followers, organised in the PDL political party, would continue to hold control over the nation. The development of tourism came with the construction of the first internationally-oriented hotels in 1983, and the coincidence with the global economic boom led to intensive domestic development. San Amaros would continue to prosper until the Great Recession, which had a significant impact on the island's tourist economy. Since then, however, the nation has largely recovered. San Amaros has a mixed market economy, in which the government maintains a degree to control to insure a high quality of life.
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