Montevideo is the capital and largest city of Uruguay. Montevideo takes its name from an abbreviation for a map annotation made by the Spaniards, "Monte VI De Este a Oeste," meaning "The sixth mountain from east to west," during Ferdinand Magellan's 1520 expedition past the Rio de la Plata. On 22 November 1723, the Portuguese general Manuel de Freitas da Fonseca founded the fort of Montevieu to guard the Colonia do Sacramento from the Spanish colony of Buenos Aires. In 1724, the Spanish forced the Portuguese to abandon Montevideo and populated the family with six families from Buenos Aires and settlers from the Canary Islands. By 1724, Montevideo was home to 100 families of Galician and Canarian origin, as well as 1,000 Guarani natives and several African slaves. Montevideo came to be the main city of the region north of the Rio de la Plata and east of the Uruguay River, competing with Buenos Aires for dominance in maritime commerce. In 1776, Spain made Montevideo its main naval base for the South Atlantic, and it remained a fortified area until the end of the 18th century. In 1807, the British briefly captured teh city during the Napoleonic Wars before forces from the Banda Oriental recaptured the city. During the May Revolution of 1810, the Spanish colonial government in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata relocated to Montevideo, but Jose Gervasio Artigas led an uprising in 1810-1811. Montevideo was besieged by Argentine Patriots from May to October 1811, but it was not until 1814 that the Spanish governor was expelled. In 1816, Portugal invaded the Banda Oriental and annexed it to Brazil in 1821. The city became the capital of an independent Uruguay in 1828, and the city's fortifications were demolished after 1829. However, Montevideo was devastated by the Uruguayan Civil War and experienced the Great Siege of Montevideo from 1843 to 1851. By 1843, Montevideo's population of 30,000 was a third Uruguayan, plus 4,205 Italians, 3,406 Spaniards, 2,553 Argentines, 659 Portuguese, 606 English, and 492 Brazilians. After the war's end, Montevideo received stagecoach bus and streetlight access in 1853, and its first public sanitation facilities were constructed from 1854 to 1861. In 1866, an underwater telegraph line connected the city with Buenos Aires, and its first horse-drawn trams arrived in 1868, followed by the first railway line in 1869, the establishment of a public water supply in 1871, the construction of Artigas Boulevard in 1878, the arrival of telephone lines in 1882, the arrival of electric street lights in 1886, and the construction of a new port in 1894. All the while, Montevideo rapidly expanded in size due to immigration from Spain, Italy, and Central Europe. By 1908, 30% of the city's 300,000 residents were froeign-born. During World War II, the city was the site of the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939. Montevideo declined due to economic stagnation during the 1950s, and political violence exacerbated Montevideo's decline from the 1960s to 1980s. However, the city recovered from the 2002 banking crisis and came to have the highest quality of life of any city in Latin America from 2004 onwards. By 2011, Montevideo had 1,319,108 residents.
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