After playing some Victoria II, I've ventured on to yet another alternate history. This time it'll be about the Kingdom of Chile (1823-1931), how it established itself, expanded into Patagonia, the South Atlantic and reached out to (French) Polynesia. I've been working on the note for a couple of days, so I should start writing the outline soon(er or later).
Empire of the South Seas
- Thread starter The Kiat
- Start date
interesting, in one Victoria 2 game I played as Argentina and over 70 bloody years I conquered all of South America and had a small colony in Africa.
A rather rough outline.
I) Fall of an Empire (1808-31)
The beginning of the end for Spain’s empire in the Americas occurred on May 2, 1808, when thousands of French soldiers crossed the Pyrenees starting the Peninsular War. With major problems in the homeland, Spanish colonies found themselves at a crossroads. If Spain could not defend its own borders, how could it defend its colonies? To further confound problems in the Captain-Generalship of Chile, the poorest of Spain’s American possessions, the royal governor Luis Munoz de Guzman died in the same year as Joseph Bonaparte had the Spanish crown placed upon his head. Rulership over Chile drifted to Francisco Garcia Carrasco, the highest ranking officer in the colony. For a brief time, the wife of the Portuguese King, and sister toe Ferdinand VII, Charlotte plotted to seize control of Chile and Buenos Ares as the only free heir to the Spanish Crown.
Carrasco’s tenure at the helm of Chile was short. His iron-fisted ways alienated the criollo under his command, and a scandal of corruption in 1809 destroyed any moral authority he may have claimed. A provisional government, the First Junta, ruled in the abscence of a king and a Spain free of Bonepartist influence. Carrasco, as well as Carlotists across Spain, those who wished Charlotte to rule, were apprehended by the Junta and deported to Lima. The Junta also pushed for more autonomy within the Spanish Empire and did not hesitate to silence opponents. At the time, there was no drive for independence. Three factions vied for dominance; the Extremists, Moderates and Royalists. The Moderates maintained a majority and pressed for slow reforms. They feared that when Ferdinand VII was back on the throne, he may see their actions as revolutionary and violently roll back any change.
Presiding over the Junta was an eighty-two years old Criollo Mateo de Toro Zambrano. He distributed his cabinet positions equally among the three Parties. Despite his title as President, the real power lay in the hands of his secretary, Juan Martinez de Rozas. The Junta under the Zambrano regime took measures in favor of colonists, such as freedom of trade with all of Spain’s true allies, a militia for the defense of the ‘Kingdom of Chile’ as well as a 134% import tariff on other nations, with the exception presses, books and arms which were exempted from taxation. In order to further extend the Junta’s representatively the call for a National Congress went out in 1811. The Congress would be composed of 42 representatives, popularly elected. Elections were limited to the landed criollos and peninsulars.
Congress was elected early in the year. By March, 36 representatives were already elected in all the major cities save Santiago and Valparaiso. The largest upset of the elections came at Concepcion, where Royalists defeated the supporters of de Rozas. Viewing the Congress as too extreme, Royalists rebelled against the Junta. The Royalists managed to sabotage elections in Santiago, delaying it for weeks. Eventually when the votes were counted, three more Moderates would attend Congress. The Royalists held only three seats and found themselves sidelined. The real fight came between the Moderates, who advocated gradual change and autonomy and the Extremists, who began to speak of severing political ties with the mother country. Despite the best efforts of the Moderates to retain order in Congress, the loud Extremist minority called for complete and instant independence.
Following the conclusion of the Peninsular War, one veteran by the name of Jose Miguel Carrera returned to Chile and was immediately involved in the political intrigues of the Extremists. After two coup attempts, the latter successful, Carrera rested power from de Rozas and declared himself dictator of the new government, with his brothers Juan Jose and Luis as prominent members, as well as Bernardo O’Higgins.
In 1812, Carrera called forth a convention to draft a Constitution for Chile. Not only was the document filled with the liberal ideals of the American and French Revolutions, but it also pulled Chile further from Spain and closer to its own path. While in power, Carrera established the first newspaper in Chile, the La Aurora de Chile, under the editorial control of Friar Camilo Henriquez. Both paper and editor supported the growing Independence Movement. One of the strongest arguments made in favor of independence was Spain’s own occupation by a foreign power. Spain had grown weak over the past century, and if it cannot defend itself from a neighboring nation, how could any Chilean believe Spain could defend their own land? In the opinion of La Aurora, they could not. As well as media, Carrera promoted education in the colony. In 1812 he established both the Insitutito Nacional de Chile and the Nation Library; both institutions survive to the modern day.
Carrera’s activities did not go unnoticed abroad. The rebellions in Chile, as well as the La Plata provinces, unsettled the Viceroy of Peru. In 1813, the Viceroy launched a naval expedition against Chile. Much to the embarrassment of Carrera, Spanish soldiers landed in Concepcion to the applause of the populace. Under the command of Antonio Pareja, the Spanish expedition marched on Santiago. Pareja’s attempt to take the city failed and led to the eventual downfall of Carrera. The dictator’s performance as commander turned out mediocre at beast. It was Bernarndo O’Higgins who led the pro-Independence faction to victory, and ultimately replaced Carrera as their leader. Embarrassed by the usurpation, and hounded from all by all side of Chile’s burgeoning government, Carrera resigned.
Though he resigned as dictator, Carrera continued to lead Extremists soldiers into battle. He and O’Higgins clash again in May, where O’Higgins wished to defend Rancagua while Carrera wanted to make a stand against advancing Spanish soldiers at Angostura. The ensuing battle became known in Chilean history books as the Disaster at of Rancagua. Without the support of Carrera, O’Higgins was forced to meet the Spanish expedition and their Royalists allies without reinforcements. Between October 1 and 2 of 1814, O’Higgins’s forces were virtually wiped out. Less than five hundred of his army of five thousand escaped the disaster. Not long after the defeat, Spanish general Mariano Osorio marched triumphantly into Santiago.
Osorio reigned as governor of Chile for a short time only to be replaced by Francisco Marco de Pont in 1815. During the rule of both men, Spain launched a campaign to persecute the revolutionaries. Extremists, as well as members of the First Junta discovered in Santiago were all arrested and exiled to the Juan Fernandez Islands. The hope was to calm the political situation by removing any perceived agitators. The actions of Vincente San Bruno had the opposite effect. Spanish oppression drove Moderates into the pro-independence camp.
Surviving Extremists, such as Carrera and O’Higgins, fled to the newly independent Argentina. Carrera’s star faded while O’Higgins was favored by Argentina’s leader Jose de San Martin. Carrera would end his illustrious career before a firing squad in 1821, after a failed coup attempt against the new Chilean government. Before his execution, he and O’Higgins rebuilt their army in exile, while Manuel Rodriguez waged a guerilla campaign against Spain. His exploits made him a hero amongst the rebels, and his willingness to fight while others plot across the border rallied Chile unlike any other man. He proved a master of infiltration. One incident he allegedly disguised himself as a beggar and took alms from Del Pont himself, who placed a large bounty on his head.
It was not until 1817, that the Army of the Andes crossed back into Chile. They encountered Royalists forces on the plains of Chacabuco on February 12, 1817. The battle ended in a decisive victory for the Army of the Andes, despite a wound O’Higgins received. Santiago was liberated shortly afterward. The Army proclaimed San Martin as Supreme Director, a post he claimed along with the leadership of Argentina, making him the southern equivalent of Simon Bolivar. Reclaiming the capital was the first step in driving the Spanish from the Andes. Only three months after the victory at Chacabuco, San Martin formally declared independence.
While San Martin handled things in Santiago, O’Higgins marched north to stop the advance of Royalists forces. Momentum from the Army’s invasion of Chile came to a halt at the Second Battle of Cancha Rayada, on March 18, 1818. The Army of the Andes suffered great losses, including its commander. O’Higgins fell from his horse, leaving the soldiers without direction. Panic ensues and the Army began to retreat back to Mendoza. A major disaster swung in the balance, and would have tilted in favor of Spain had Manuel Rodriguez not grabbed the reins of command. He rallied the soldiers with his immortal words ‘There’s still a country, citizens’. Though the battle was lost, Rodríguez prevented the Army of the Andes from splintering.
On April 5, San Martin met and defeated Osorios at Maipu. Following the Battle of Maipu, depleted Royalists forces fled to Concepcion, never again to threaten Santiago. Rodriguez met up with San Martin following the battle, and both men planned an assault on Concepcion. Independence was all but guaranteed at the point, but the question remains to how much land would constitute Chile. Rodríguez wished to push the boundaries all the way to the southern ocean, while San Martin made it clear that he would root out all dissent within the lands already held by Chile before expanding. Neither man saw eye-to-eye and Rodriguez grew suspicious of the Argentine. Though he held more prestige than San Martin, Rodriguez would not risk division in the ranks until Spain was firmly defeated.
San Martin waged a total war against bandits and brigands in the countryside. Somewhere Royalist holdouts, while others were bands of outlaws or Indians that took advantage of the chaos leading up to Chilean Independence. San Martin was ruthless in this endeavor, his soldiers offered no quarter to the bandits they encountered. Only after the countryside around Concepcion was secure did he launch an assault against the final holdout.
The total war had a very detrimental impact on the Chilean economy. Agriculture was hit particularly hard. Between 1818 and 1822, much of Central Chile was pillaged by both bandits and armies. Trade floundered as well for there was no secure means of traveling the countryside anywhere in Chile for the better part of a decade. The wheat industry, a prime export for Chile, did not fully recover until 1825, when the last of the bandits were purged from the land. Even then years would pass before that sector of the economy would regain its pre-independence levels.
Once internal stability was achieved, San Martin turned Rodriguez loose to eliminate external threats. Rodriguez took the time while San Martin hunted bandits to further develop the Chilean Navy. As a country with a long coastline and a reliance on trade, a strong navy was deemed essential to both security and prosperity. In 1820, Rodriguez appointed a Scot by the name of Lord Cochrane to the post of admiral. Under Cochrane’s admiralship, Valdivia and Chiloe were both brought into the Chilean fold, further securing the country from Spanish aggression.
Fears of Spanish aggression were somewhat unfounded. By 1821, Spain lost most of its ability to project power over its fragmenting empire. Spanish hopes for holding Chile were stamped out for good at the Battle of El Toro. While San Martin and Rodriguez seldom saw eye-to-eye, both agree that Chilean independence would not be final until Peru was also free from Spanish yoke. While Spain’s ability to attack remained limited for the moment, there was concern that a recovery of Spanish power could bring them back to the New World in force. Further concerns that Spain might turn to absolutist regimes in Austria and Russia in desperation prompted quick action. While Peru remained a viceroyalty, it could be used as a staging area for any European aggressor.
San Martin set off to Peru with the Chilean Navy, but the Director and Admiral Cochrane clashed on numerous occasions. Cochrane found San Martin to be too cautious, letting the final victory slip from his grasp. In a sense, San Martin did just that. It was not he, but rather Bolivar and the Colombian Army that defeated the last Peruvian Viceroy, securing Peru’s independence in 1824.
San Martin continued to rule as Supreme Director even after Spain was effectively defeated. He refused to step down until a formal peace was declared. As Spain refused to even recognize any of its colonies as nations in their own right, such arbitrary rule could be maintained indefinitely. In 1823, Rodriguez, supported by Cochrane and other revolutionary commanders, ousted San Martin from office. San Martin attempted to escape to Argentina but surrendered before he even left Santiago. A debate in the provisional congress as to San Martin’s fate raged for several days.
Rodriguez argued that his former comrade and rival should be eliminated. If he were exiled, as Moderates desired, there was always the chance he could raise an army and return. Rodriguez reminded all the learned men of Congress that Napoleon was exiled once, only to return before the year was out. The counter-argument that Napoleon’s second exile was still containing the former Emperor did not hold water. The United Kingdom had the ability to transport their enemy to a distant island. Where was Chile to exile San Martin? To Tierra del Fuego? That was out of the question when Rodriguez and Cochrane both agreed Chilean control over the island was vital for trade.
It was agreed on March 30, 1823, that San Martin would stand trial on charges of subverting the revolution. His charges were of treason so vaguely defined that even the best lawyer would find it difficult to defend him. As it was, San Martin made one too many enemies during his time in Chile, and Congress easily swallow the tale of San Martin’s plots to bring Chile under the rule of Argentina. Chile did not fight for years to expel one foreign dictator only to replace it with another. He was ultimately found guilty and executed.
With San Martin removed from power, Rodríguez stepped into the vacuum and declared himself Dictator. With the Army and Navy firmly in his camp, there was little opposition from Congress, even after they sentenced San Martin to death for the acts Rodriguez was arguably committing. Though no formal peace existed between Spain and Chile, the nation was for all intent purposes independent of its long time ruler.
Before the year was out, Rodriguez called for a Constitutional Convention to be held in Santiago in 1824. The 1824 Constitution was far more liberal than other documents in the former Spanish Empire. It called for equality among all citizens from all the former castes. On paper, at least, all Chileans were equal before the law. In reality, the centuries old practice of diving society by racial characteristics continued. The only real change was the marginalization of the Peninsulars. With Spain out of the picture, it mattered not at all if a citizen was born in Spain or Chile. Criollos were still given preference over mestizo in most environments, and Indians were still at the bottom.
There was some debate as to the nature of the new state. Would Chile be federal or unitary? Chile’s size suggested all should be ruled from Santiago. On the other hand, too tight of a grip by the central government might push provinces and cities to rebel. Infighting during the Chilean Revolution nearly brought the war to a premature end on more than one occasion. It was agreed that provinces would have a degree of autonomy, such as the level the Moderates sought in 1811. Provinces would any internal affair ‘not deemed vital to the national interest’. The imprecise wording of the line in the 9th Article of the Constitution brought much tension between provinces and Santiago in the following years, with what did and did not constitute national interest undergoing various levels of interpretation.
In the matter of government, Chile took a radically different approach than most South American nations. Instead of electing Presidents, which more often than not elected by coup, the Kingdom of Chile would continue. The only difference between the old and new kingdom was the man sitting upon the throne. No longer would the Chilean crown be held by a Castilian. With both military and popular support, Rodriguez designed the office of king to suit his own plans. There was no opposition as to who would wear the crown, though there was debate as to whether or not the crown would be elected or inherited. The King of Chile would also have the power to appoint Senators, while the Representatives would be elected by popular election. The term popular is used loosely in this case since initial qualifications required voters to own property worth the equivalent of roughly five hundred seventeen U.S. Dollars.
The original draft of the Constitution made no mention of religion. There were conservative elements of Chilean society that wished to establish Roman Catholicism as a state religion. Other, more liberal members of the Convention pointed towards other constitutions in the Western Hemisphere as examples for religious freedom and toleration. Given that Chile was already a Catholic state; the convention edited the draft of the Constitution to allow for freedom of religion. And why not? There was no fear of a protestant invasion on a Catholic continent. Immigrants from Europe were expected to come from Spain, Portugal and other Catholic states. Protestants typically immigrated to the United States while Catholic Europeans chose the lands further south.
Members of the Convention voted on the Constitution on June 9, 1824, passing it by a margin of two hundred seven to ninety-five. On June 17, 1824, Rodriguez was crowned King Manuel. Immediately after the Constitution was ratified and took effect, opponents to the new government, mostly republican Moderates, rebelled against the new authority. Their claims of not removing one despot only to replace him with another rang through the country. Their battle cry threatened to plunge Chile into more strife and a full-blown civil war.
War was avoided by quick and ruthless action on the part of King Manuel. The very act of rebellion allowed the king to declare martial law and suspend many of the new rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Manuel moved swiftly to crush any and all opposition to the new government. The counter-revolutionaries were routed less than a month after they rose up against the Constitution. No quarter was given during the short battle and the opposition was killed to the last. Anti-monarchal movements were not the only problem plaguing early Chile. Tensions between white Chileans rose as the Peninsulars, those born in Spain and accustomed to sitting at the top, realized their grasp on power faded with every passing day.
Instead of rebelling, Peninsulars took to the streets in Santiago, Concepcion and Valparaiso in large-scale rallies and protests. With martial law still in effect, Manuel wasted no time in sending the army in to stamp out even the smallest ember of rebellion. Though nowhere near as bloody as the Moderate’s uprising, hundreds of Peninsulars were killed when the government brought the hammer down upon their collective heads. Their example dissuaded any other would-be protestors from airing their grievances in public. Martial law was not fully rescinded until the mid-1830s.
While order was maintained at home, Chile began to grab unclaimed and undefended lands to its south. In 1826, Captain Esteban Cabal de Vespa arrived at Tierra del Fuego with seven ships and two thousand men. He was issued a simple directive from Admiral Cochrane; secure Tierra del Fuego and the Strait of Magellan for Chile. His first task was subjugation of the natives of the island. He faced little opposition, for the population of the island had always been low. More so after a small pox outbreak killed half the population in 1810, by shipwrecked sailors.
The Selknam people put up the most resistance to the Chilean invasion, but their stone weapons were little match against steel and gunpowder. Villages were burned and populations massacred as de Vespa swept aside any resistance. Occupation of the island’s interior was of marginal importance, and would not be settled for decades to come. What mattered was the trade route to Europe, and the construction of fortresses upon the shores of the island. Skilled craftsman and engineers arrived the following year to oversee construction, but most of the menial labor was performed by natives conscripted into work gangs. The next two years of hard labor took their toll on the native population, reducing their numbers to less than half that of before the invasion.
Fortresses upon the mainland side of the Strait were constructed largely by prisoners. Manuel and his government decided to put some of the convicts sitting in Chilean jails, as well as political enemies, to a practical use. Penal servitude would remain a popular form of punishment throughout Manuel’s reign. Tens of thousands of dissidents would spend years in the mines or construction projects in distant regions of Chile.
One such popular destination was the Malvinas. Chilean soldiers landed upon the twin islands in the Atlantic in 1828, and claimed them for Chile. Immediately they ran into conflict with neighbors and great powers alike. Argentina held a tenuous claim to the islands, as did distant Spain. The greatest threat for control over the Malvinas came from Britain’s own Royal Navy. The British wanted the islands for their own whaling industry, as well as a place to stock up on provisions for long voyages. The islands had no fruit or vegetables, but livestock released upon the island or abandoned when various European settlements of the 18th Century were abandoned, would fill their needs.
The Chilean and Royal Navies clashed on January 18, 1829, resulting in a sound defeat for Chile. Soldiers already on West Malvinas held out against Royal Marine attempts to dislodge them. The Chilean Navy returned two months later, again failing to achieve victory. The call for war echoed in the halls of Santiago. Did Chile throw out on European imperialist only to have another lay claim to its own soil? The threat of war with Britain over these tiny but strategic islands continued throughout 1829. It was reasoned that if Britain were allowed to control the islands, they could also control the flow of commerce from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and thus hold a knife to the throat of the Chilean economy.
Level heads prevailed as King Manuel and delegates of the British crown met in Santiago during February of 1830 to come to an agreement over the status of the Malvinas/Falklands. Manuel was forced to grant concessions for control of the island, but gained a few bonuses. In exchange for relinquishing claim to the islands, British ships would be guaranteed supply in any Chilean port-of-call. Manuel ran into serious opposition to the guarantee when it became clear that the Chilean taxpayers would be footing the bill for Britain. British fishers and whalers would also be allowed access to the Patagonian Shelf.
Chile and Britain negotiated and signed a trade treaty. Corn Laws aside, the two states would enjoy a free trade agreement. This would eventually be a huge boost to the Chilean economy following the repeal of the Corn Laws and the settling of Patagonia, which opened up large chunks of land to cattle. By the 1860s, Chile would be one of Britain’s largest supplies of grain and beef. Free trade was viewed as a threat to any potential Chilean industrialization. Why expend the capital to develop Chile’s own industry when goods from the British Empire were already available? Industrialization would eventually reach Chilean shores, much of it driven by British investors.
The biggest gain of negotiations with Britain was the negotiations themselves. The fact that a British diplomatic mission even sat in Royal Palace was recognition of Chilean independence by a European power. Spain would continue to refuse such diplomatic measures until 1844, but with British recognition in 1830, France followed suit in 1831 and the Netherlands in 1832. Recognition opened the doors for Chile to play its part on the world stage.
I) Fall of an Empire (1808-31)
The beginning of the end for Spain’s empire in the Americas occurred on May 2, 1808, when thousands of French soldiers crossed the Pyrenees starting the Peninsular War. With major problems in the homeland, Spanish colonies found themselves at a crossroads. If Spain could not defend its own borders, how could it defend its colonies? To further confound problems in the Captain-Generalship of Chile, the poorest of Spain’s American possessions, the royal governor Luis Munoz de Guzman died in the same year as Joseph Bonaparte had the Spanish crown placed upon his head. Rulership over Chile drifted to Francisco Garcia Carrasco, the highest ranking officer in the colony. For a brief time, the wife of the Portuguese King, and sister toe Ferdinand VII, Charlotte plotted to seize control of Chile and Buenos Ares as the only free heir to the Spanish Crown.
Carrasco’s tenure at the helm of Chile was short. His iron-fisted ways alienated the criollo under his command, and a scandal of corruption in 1809 destroyed any moral authority he may have claimed. A provisional government, the First Junta, ruled in the abscence of a king and a Spain free of Bonepartist influence. Carrasco, as well as Carlotists across Spain, those who wished Charlotte to rule, were apprehended by the Junta and deported to Lima. The Junta also pushed for more autonomy within the Spanish Empire and did not hesitate to silence opponents. At the time, there was no drive for independence. Three factions vied for dominance; the Extremists, Moderates and Royalists. The Moderates maintained a majority and pressed for slow reforms. They feared that when Ferdinand VII was back on the throne, he may see their actions as revolutionary and violently roll back any change.
Presiding over the Junta was an eighty-two years old Criollo Mateo de Toro Zambrano. He distributed his cabinet positions equally among the three Parties. Despite his title as President, the real power lay in the hands of his secretary, Juan Martinez de Rozas. The Junta under the Zambrano regime took measures in favor of colonists, such as freedom of trade with all of Spain’s true allies, a militia for the defense of the ‘Kingdom of Chile’ as well as a 134% import tariff on other nations, with the exception presses, books and arms which were exempted from taxation. In order to further extend the Junta’s representatively the call for a National Congress went out in 1811. The Congress would be composed of 42 representatives, popularly elected. Elections were limited to the landed criollos and peninsulars.
Congress was elected early in the year. By March, 36 representatives were already elected in all the major cities save Santiago and Valparaiso. The largest upset of the elections came at Concepcion, where Royalists defeated the supporters of de Rozas. Viewing the Congress as too extreme, Royalists rebelled against the Junta. The Royalists managed to sabotage elections in Santiago, delaying it for weeks. Eventually when the votes were counted, three more Moderates would attend Congress. The Royalists held only three seats and found themselves sidelined. The real fight came between the Moderates, who advocated gradual change and autonomy and the Extremists, who began to speak of severing political ties with the mother country. Despite the best efforts of the Moderates to retain order in Congress, the loud Extremist minority called for complete and instant independence.
Following the conclusion of the Peninsular War, one veteran by the name of Jose Miguel Carrera returned to Chile and was immediately involved in the political intrigues of the Extremists. After two coup attempts, the latter successful, Carrera rested power from de Rozas and declared himself dictator of the new government, with his brothers Juan Jose and Luis as prominent members, as well as Bernardo O’Higgins.
In 1812, Carrera called forth a convention to draft a Constitution for Chile. Not only was the document filled with the liberal ideals of the American and French Revolutions, but it also pulled Chile further from Spain and closer to its own path. While in power, Carrera established the first newspaper in Chile, the La Aurora de Chile, under the editorial control of Friar Camilo Henriquez. Both paper and editor supported the growing Independence Movement. One of the strongest arguments made in favor of independence was Spain’s own occupation by a foreign power. Spain had grown weak over the past century, and if it cannot defend itself from a neighboring nation, how could any Chilean believe Spain could defend their own land? In the opinion of La Aurora, they could not. As well as media, Carrera promoted education in the colony. In 1812 he established both the Insitutito Nacional de Chile and the Nation Library; both institutions survive to the modern day.
Carrera’s activities did not go unnoticed abroad. The rebellions in Chile, as well as the La Plata provinces, unsettled the Viceroy of Peru. In 1813, the Viceroy launched a naval expedition against Chile. Much to the embarrassment of Carrera, Spanish soldiers landed in Concepcion to the applause of the populace. Under the command of Antonio Pareja, the Spanish expedition marched on Santiago. Pareja’s attempt to take the city failed and led to the eventual downfall of Carrera. The dictator’s performance as commander turned out mediocre at beast. It was Bernarndo O’Higgins who led the pro-Independence faction to victory, and ultimately replaced Carrera as their leader. Embarrassed by the usurpation, and hounded from all by all side of Chile’s burgeoning government, Carrera resigned.
Though he resigned as dictator, Carrera continued to lead Extremists soldiers into battle. He and O’Higgins clash again in May, where O’Higgins wished to defend Rancagua while Carrera wanted to make a stand against advancing Spanish soldiers at Angostura. The ensuing battle became known in Chilean history books as the Disaster at of Rancagua. Without the support of Carrera, O’Higgins was forced to meet the Spanish expedition and their Royalists allies without reinforcements. Between October 1 and 2 of 1814, O’Higgins’s forces were virtually wiped out. Less than five hundred of his army of five thousand escaped the disaster. Not long after the defeat, Spanish general Mariano Osorio marched triumphantly into Santiago.
Osorio reigned as governor of Chile for a short time only to be replaced by Francisco Marco de Pont in 1815. During the rule of both men, Spain launched a campaign to persecute the revolutionaries. Extremists, as well as members of the First Junta discovered in Santiago were all arrested and exiled to the Juan Fernandez Islands. The hope was to calm the political situation by removing any perceived agitators. The actions of Vincente San Bruno had the opposite effect. Spanish oppression drove Moderates into the pro-independence camp.
Surviving Extremists, such as Carrera and O’Higgins, fled to the newly independent Argentina. Carrera’s star faded while O’Higgins was favored by Argentina’s leader Jose de San Martin. Carrera would end his illustrious career before a firing squad in 1821, after a failed coup attempt against the new Chilean government. Before his execution, he and O’Higgins rebuilt their army in exile, while Manuel Rodriguez waged a guerilla campaign against Spain. His exploits made him a hero amongst the rebels, and his willingness to fight while others plot across the border rallied Chile unlike any other man. He proved a master of infiltration. One incident he allegedly disguised himself as a beggar and took alms from Del Pont himself, who placed a large bounty on his head.
It was not until 1817, that the Army of the Andes crossed back into Chile. They encountered Royalists forces on the plains of Chacabuco on February 12, 1817. The battle ended in a decisive victory for the Army of the Andes, despite a wound O’Higgins received. Santiago was liberated shortly afterward. The Army proclaimed San Martin as Supreme Director, a post he claimed along with the leadership of Argentina, making him the southern equivalent of Simon Bolivar. Reclaiming the capital was the first step in driving the Spanish from the Andes. Only three months after the victory at Chacabuco, San Martin formally declared independence.
While San Martin handled things in Santiago, O’Higgins marched north to stop the advance of Royalists forces. Momentum from the Army’s invasion of Chile came to a halt at the Second Battle of Cancha Rayada, on March 18, 1818. The Army of the Andes suffered great losses, including its commander. O’Higgins fell from his horse, leaving the soldiers without direction. Panic ensues and the Army began to retreat back to Mendoza. A major disaster swung in the balance, and would have tilted in favor of Spain had Manuel Rodriguez not grabbed the reins of command. He rallied the soldiers with his immortal words ‘There’s still a country, citizens’. Though the battle was lost, Rodríguez prevented the Army of the Andes from splintering.
On April 5, San Martin met and defeated Osorios at Maipu. Following the Battle of Maipu, depleted Royalists forces fled to Concepcion, never again to threaten Santiago. Rodriguez met up with San Martin following the battle, and both men planned an assault on Concepcion. Independence was all but guaranteed at the point, but the question remains to how much land would constitute Chile. Rodríguez wished to push the boundaries all the way to the southern ocean, while San Martin made it clear that he would root out all dissent within the lands already held by Chile before expanding. Neither man saw eye-to-eye and Rodriguez grew suspicious of the Argentine. Though he held more prestige than San Martin, Rodriguez would not risk division in the ranks until Spain was firmly defeated.
San Martin waged a total war against bandits and brigands in the countryside. Somewhere Royalist holdouts, while others were bands of outlaws or Indians that took advantage of the chaos leading up to Chilean Independence. San Martin was ruthless in this endeavor, his soldiers offered no quarter to the bandits they encountered. Only after the countryside around Concepcion was secure did he launch an assault against the final holdout.
The total war had a very detrimental impact on the Chilean economy. Agriculture was hit particularly hard. Between 1818 and 1822, much of Central Chile was pillaged by both bandits and armies. Trade floundered as well for there was no secure means of traveling the countryside anywhere in Chile for the better part of a decade. The wheat industry, a prime export for Chile, did not fully recover until 1825, when the last of the bandits were purged from the land. Even then years would pass before that sector of the economy would regain its pre-independence levels.
Once internal stability was achieved, San Martin turned Rodriguez loose to eliminate external threats. Rodriguez took the time while San Martin hunted bandits to further develop the Chilean Navy. As a country with a long coastline and a reliance on trade, a strong navy was deemed essential to both security and prosperity. In 1820, Rodriguez appointed a Scot by the name of Lord Cochrane to the post of admiral. Under Cochrane’s admiralship, Valdivia and Chiloe were both brought into the Chilean fold, further securing the country from Spanish aggression.
Fears of Spanish aggression were somewhat unfounded. By 1821, Spain lost most of its ability to project power over its fragmenting empire. Spanish hopes for holding Chile were stamped out for good at the Battle of El Toro. While San Martin and Rodriguez seldom saw eye-to-eye, both agree that Chilean independence would not be final until Peru was also free from Spanish yoke. While Spain’s ability to attack remained limited for the moment, there was concern that a recovery of Spanish power could bring them back to the New World in force. Further concerns that Spain might turn to absolutist regimes in Austria and Russia in desperation prompted quick action. While Peru remained a viceroyalty, it could be used as a staging area for any European aggressor.
San Martin set off to Peru with the Chilean Navy, but the Director and Admiral Cochrane clashed on numerous occasions. Cochrane found San Martin to be too cautious, letting the final victory slip from his grasp. In a sense, San Martin did just that. It was not he, but rather Bolivar and the Colombian Army that defeated the last Peruvian Viceroy, securing Peru’s independence in 1824.
San Martin continued to rule as Supreme Director even after Spain was effectively defeated. He refused to step down until a formal peace was declared. As Spain refused to even recognize any of its colonies as nations in their own right, such arbitrary rule could be maintained indefinitely. In 1823, Rodriguez, supported by Cochrane and other revolutionary commanders, ousted San Martin from office. San Martin attempted to escape to Argentina but surrendered before he even left Santiago. A debate in the provisional congress as to San Martin’s fate raged for several days.
Rodriguez argued that his former comrade and rival should be eliminated. If he were exiled, as Moderates desired, there was always the chance he could raise an army and return. Rodriguez reminded all the learned men of Congress that Napoleon was exiled once, only to return before the year was out. The counter-argument that Napoleon’s second exile was still containing the former Emperor did not hold water. The United Kingdom had the ability to transport their enemy to a distant island. Where was Chile to exile San Martin? To Tierra del Fuego? That was out of the question when Rodriguez and Cochrane both agreed Chilean control over the island was vital for trade.
It was agreed on March 30, 1823, that San Martin would stand trial on charges of subverting the revolution. His charges were of treason so vaguely defined that even the best lawyer would find it difficult to defend him. As it was, San Martin made one too many enemies during his time in Chile, and Congress easily swallow the tale of San Martin’s plots to bring Chile under the rule of Argentina. Chile did not fight for years to expel one foreign dictator only to replace it with another. He was ultimately found guilty and executed.
With San Martin removed from power, Rodríguez stepped into the vacuum and declared himself Dictator. With the Army and Navy firmly in his camp, there was little opposition from Congress, even after they sentenced San Martin to death for the acts Rodriguez was arguably committing. Though no formal peace existed between Spain and Chile, the nation was for all intent purposes independent of its long time ruler.
Before the year was out, Rodriguez called for a Constitutional Convention to be held in Santiago in 1824. The 1824 Constitution was far more liberal than other documents in the former Spanish Empire. It called for equality among all citizens from all the former castes. On paper, at least, all Chileans were equal before the law. In reality, the centuries old practice of diving society by racial characteristics continued. The only real change was the marginalization of the Peninsulars. With Spain out of the picture, it mattered not at all if a citizen was born in Spain or Chile. Criollos were still given preference over mestizo in most environments, and Indians were still at the bottom.
There was some debate as to the nature of the new state. Would Chile be federal or unitary? Chile’s size suggested all should be ruled from Santiago. On the other hand, too tight of a grip by the central government might push provinces and cities to rebel. Infighting during the Chilean Revolution nearly brought the war to a premature end on more than one occasion. It was agreed that provinces would have a degree of autonomy, such as the level the Moderates sought in 1811. Provinces would any internal affair ‘not deemed vital to the national interest’. The imprecise wording of the line in the 9th Article of the Constitution brought much tension between provinces and Santiago in the following years, with what did and did not constitute national interest undergoing various levels of interpretation.
In the matter of government, Chile took a radically different approach than most South American nations. Instead of electing Presidents, which more often than not elected by coup, the Kingdom of Chile would continue. The only difference between the old and new kingdom was the man sitting upon the throne. No longer would the Chilean crown be held by a Castilian. With both military and popular support, Rodriguez designed the office of king to suit his own plans. There was no opposition as to who would wear the crown, though there was debate as to whether or not the crown would be elected or inherited. The King of Chile would also have the power to appoint Senators, while the Representatives would be elected by popular election. The term popular is used loosely in this case since initial qualifications required voters to own property worth the equivalent of roughly five hundred seventeen U.S. Dollars.
The original draft of the Constitution made no mention of religion. There were conservative elements of Chilean society that wished to establish Roman Catholicism as a state religion. Other, more liberal members of the Convention pointed towards other constitutions in the Western Hemisphere as examples for religious freedom and toleration. Given that Chile was already a Catholic state; the convention edited the draft of the Constitution to allow for freedom of religion. And why not? There was no fear of a protestant invasion on a Catholic continent. Immigrants from Europe were expected to come from Spain, Portugal and other Catholic states. Protestants typically immigrated to the United States while Catholic Europeans chose the lands further south.
Members of the Convention voted on the Constitution on June 9, 1824, passing it by a margin of two hundred seven to ninety-five. On June 17, 1824, Rodriguez was crowned King Manuel. Immediately after the Constitution was ratified and took effect, opponents to the new government, mostly republican Moderates, rebelled against the new authority. Their claims of not removing one despot only to replace him with another rang through the country. Their battle cry threatened to plunge Chile into more strife and a full-blown civil war.
War was avoided by quick and ruthless action on the part of King Manuel. The very act of rebellion allowed the king to declare martial law and suspend many of the new rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Manuel moved swiftly to crush any and all opposition to the new government. The counter-revolutionaries were routed less than a month after they rose up against the Constitution. No quarter was given during the short battle and the opposition was killed to the last. Anti-monarchal movements were not the only problem plaguing early Chile. Tensions between white Chileans rose as the Peninsulars, those born in Spain and accustomed to sitting at the top, realized their grasp on power faded with every passing day.
Instead of rebelling, Peninsulars took to the streets in Santiago, Concepcion and Valparaiso in large-scale rallies and protests. With martial law still in effect, Manuel wasted no time in sending the army in to stamp out even the smallest ember of rebellion. Though nowhere near as bloody as the Moderate’s uprising, hundreds of Peninsulars were killed when the government brought the hammer down upon their collective heads. Their example dissuaded any other would-be protestors from airing their grievances in public. Martial law was not fully rescinded until the mid-1830s.
While order was maintained at home, Chile began to grab unclaimed and undefended lands to its south. In 1826, Captain Esteban Cabal de Vespa arrived at Tierra del Fuego with seven ships and two thousand men. He was issued a simple directive from Admiral Cochrane; secure Tierra del Fuego and the Strait of Magellan for Chile. His first task was subjugation of the natives of the island. He faced little opposition, for the population of the island had always been low. More so after a small pox outbreak killed half the population in 1810, by shipwrecked sailors.
The Selknam people put up the most resistance to the Chilean invasion, but their stone weapons were little match against steel and gunpowder. Villages were burned and populations massacred as de Vespa swept aside any resistance. Occupation of the island’s interior was of marginal importance, and would not be settled for decades to come. What mattered was the trade route to Europe, and the construction of fortresses upon the shores of the island. Skilled craftsman and engineers arrived the following year to oversee construction, but most of the menial labor was performed by natives conscripted into work gangs. The next two years of hard labor took their toll on the native population, reducing their numbers to less than half that of before the invasion.
Fortresses upon the mainland side of the Strait were constructed largely by prisoners. Manuel and his government decided to put some of the convicts sitting in Chilean jails, as well as political enemies, to a practical use. Penal servitude would remain a popular form of punishment throughout Manuel’s reign. Tens of thousands of dissidents would spend years in the mines or construction projects in distant regions of Chile.
One such popular destination was the Malvinas. Chilean soldiers landed upon the twin islands in the Atlantic in 1828, and claimed them for Chile. Immediately they ran into conflict with neighbors and great powers alike. Argentina held a tenuous claim to the islands, as did distant Spain. The greatest threat for control over the Malvinas came from Britain’s own Royal Navy. The British wanted the islands for their own whaling industry, as well as a place to stock up on provisions for long voyages. The islands had no fruit or vegetables, but livestock released upon the island or abandoned when various European settlements of the 18th Century were abandoned, would fill their needs.
The Chilean and Royal Navies clashed on January 18, 1829, resulting in a sound defeat for Chile. Soldiers already on West Malvinas held out against Royal Marine attempts to dislodge them. The Chilean Navy returned two months later, again failing to achieve victory. The call for war echoed in the halls of Santiago. Did Chile throw out on European imperialist only to have another lay claim to its own soil? The threat of war with Britain over these tiny but strategic islands continued throughout 1829. It was reasoned that if Britain were allowed to control the islands, they could also control the flow of commerce from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and thus hold a knife to the throat of the Chilean economy.
Level heads prevailed as King Manuel and delegates of the British crown met in Santiago during February of 1830 to come to an agreement over the status of the Malvinas/Falklands. Manuel was forced to grant concessions for control of the island, but gained a few bonuses. In exchange for relinquishing claim to the islands, British ships would be guaranteed supply in any Chilean port-of-call. Manuel ran into serious opposition to the guarantee when it became clear that the Chilean taxpayers would be footing the bill for Britain. British fishers and whalers would also be allowed access to the Patagonian Shelf.
Chile and Britain negotiated and signed a trade treaty. Corn Laws aside, the two states would enjoy a free trade agreement. This would eventually be a huge boost to the Chilean economy following the repeal of the Corn Laws and the settling of Patagonia, which opened up large chunks of land to cattle. By the 1860s, Chile would be one of Britain’s largest supplies of grain and beef. Free trade was viewed as a threat to any potential Chilean industrialization. Why expend the capital to develop Chile’s own industry when goods from the British Empire were already available? Industrialization would eventually reach Chilean shores, much of it driven by British investors.
The biggest gain of negotiations with Britain was the negotiations themselves. The fact that a British diplomatic mission even sat in Royal Palace was recognition of Chilean independence by a European power. Spain would continue to refuse such diplomatic measures until 1844, but with British recognition in 1830, France followed suit in 1831 and the Netherlands in 1832. Recognition opened the doors for Chile to play its part on the world stage.
It's also summarized history, which tends to be really bleh when it comes to writing these things. Well, the point to an outline is to get it all down on paper. Afterwards, I can flesh it out over the years.
Next part of the outline. Starting writing is always more difficult than rewriting/expanding.
II) Rise of a Nation (1831-59)
As population expanded the need for richer land grew as well. There was only so much wheat that could be grown and so many cattle that could be raised on the side of the mountain. Immigrants to Chile, as well as established families looked south and east for new opportunities. Through Chile was not the most popular destination for those eager to flee Europe, some twenty thousand immigrants arrived each year from 1826 to 1831. It soon became clear that there was not enough land to go around. The land-owning Chileans, especially the criollo, were not eager to share their own property with these newcomers.
Instead of waiting for King Manuel and the government to alleviate the problem, immigrants and natives alike soon headed south into what European maps called Terra Nullis. Just because the land was not claimed by any white nation did not mean nations were not already built upon it. The Mapuche or Araucaníans as the Spaniards called them, resisted not only the long arm of the Spanish Empire, but held back the Inca before them. When settlers began to encroach upon their lands, these war-like people pushed them back as well. From 1831 to 1833 Mapuche and settlers fought dozens of skirmished, with one side raiding the other only to have the offended party retaliate.
The tension came to a boiling point on November 7, 1833, when a Mapuche army attacked the Chilean fort of San Rosendo. Though their weapons were primitive by 19th Century standards, the Mapuche vastly outnumbered the defenders of this neglected fort and stormed it. The hundred soldiers manning the fort were killed to the last, as were the settlers taking shelter behind its palisades. After taking what they could carry upon their back, the Mapuche put San Rosendo to the torch and returned to their lands.
In Santiago, a solution to the troubles on the frontier was sought after in Congress and the Royal Palace. Some congressmen sought peace, while others wanted to emulate the reservation system used by the United States. The attitude of the Royal Palace after San Rosendo was quite different and not conciliatory. King Manuel’s answer to the Mapuche Problem was simple; get rid of the Mapuche you get rid of the problem. He pushed Congress for funds to double the size of the army for the conquest of Araucanía, and its incorporation into the Kingdom of Chile.
There was more to the Pacification of Araucanía than crushing the Indians. The Mapuche played their own roll in Chile’s war for independence, and took advantage of the chaos for their own gains. Those Mapuche caught north of the Biobío River were victims of the Total War. No, for Santiago the idea of having unclaimed land in the southern reaches of the continent was just inviting European colonial empires to move in and claim the land for themselves. Congress was convinced that by taking this land, not only would they open up new lands for settlers and thus expand Chile’s economy, they would also secure the country’s borders from the imperialists a world away.
The first battle of the Mapuche War occurred on May 3, 1834, when an army of five thousand Chileans under the command of General Jose Joaquin Prieto engaged a band of Mapuche at the confluence of the Mulchen and Bureo Rivers. The clash was brief and resulted in the near extermination of the Mapuche warband encountered. Three Indian warriors were witnessed escaping. Their departure was part of Prieto’s plan, and he intended for them to bring stories of an unstoppable army on the move.
While a 19th Century Army was certainly a challenge for the Mapuche, its poorly guarded supply lines were another story. The natives took to guerilla warfare, striking at exposed sectors and retreating before Prieto could respond. Frustrated by his inability to trap and destroy and Mapuche army, the general vented his frustration on Indian villages in his path. His army neither asked nor gave quarter to its enemy, massacring all who opposed it. The indiscriminate killing brought the various native peoples of Araucanía together in a way little else could.
Prieto’s reign of terror was short-lived. As his army travelled an unimaginative and mostly straight path, the Mapuche chiefs decided to gather their warriors and leap ahead of the Chilean Army. The Chilean Army lost more than half its numbers during the ambush at the sight of modern day Temuco. The Mapuche attacked while Prieto was in the process of crossing the Cautin River. With his forces divided by the waters, those south of the river were hit by Indian raiders, who melted back into the woodlands from where they came. The Chilean Army took up pursuit before it was fully assembled on the southern bank.
Prieto made the decision to move with only half his army because he believed the raiders to be just that, a small band of Mapuche. Instead, what he discovered many kilometers south was an army of various tribes numbering in the thousands. With discipline compromised by the forest, the advantage fell to the Mapuche and their allies. Close range combat negated any advantage of musket fire, forcing Chilean soldiers to fight with bayonet and sword. The Mapuche fought with a variety of weapons, from those of stone to captured arms from raids along the frontier.
Several hundred Chilean soldiers escaped the ambush and fled north, with the Mapuche depleting their numbers every step of the way. Only a handful of the soldiers reached the Cautin River, where the rest of the army already crossed. With their backs to the river, the Chilean soldiers managed to repel the wave of rushing natives with musket and cannon fire. Once the Mapuche melted back into their country, the Chilean Army began its long retreat north, ending yet another attempt by outsiders to subjugate Araucanía.
Or that was the way the Mapuche chiefs believed it to be. Unlike the Inca or Spain, Chile would not let the matter rest. The sight of a broken army returning home in the winter of 1834 enraged King Manuel. There were more calls for peace with the Mapuche in Congress, but the king quickly silenced the speakers. The defeat at Cautin River was a stain upon the honor of the nation, one that must be cleansed with the blood of her enemies. Calls for more volunteers for the Chilean Army went out, but when the Army failed to raise a hundred thousand soldiers for Manuel’s new Total War, the king rammed a conscription bill through Congress.
The call for a hundred thousand man army was totally unrealistic in a time when Chile’s total population barely topped one million. The second invasion of Araucanía involved thirty thousand soldiers, many conscripts and many of those from immigrant families. Their service in the Army, while long, infused these newcomers with a sense of patriotism. As per Section Five of the conscription bill, the soldiers drafted into the Chilean Army would receive some of their payment in the form of land in the newly conquered territories. The same also applied for volunteers. Like with all new countries, land and other commodities held far more value than newly issued currency.
Command of the new army was given to Ramon Freire, a veteran of the Independence War. He came into several personal conflicts with the king over the operation of the war. Manuel knew the man’s record and his loyalty to the regime, but never fully trusted the man. This was partly due to Freire being one of the exiled revolutionaries who eventually returned to Chile in the Army of the Andes with O’Higgins and Carrera. Those who stayed behind to fight Spain while the others rebuilt often had a dim view of the exiles. Upon returning to Chile, these exiles were granted far more credit in winning the country’s freedom than Manuel believed them due. It was guerillas like Manuel who kept the dream of independence alive in those dark years.
Despite his dislike for soldiers of the Army of the Andes, Manuel agreed Freire was a competent and level-headed man, one who would not charge at the enemy like a bull towards a cape. When the Mapuche tried their ambush again, this time while the Chilean army crossed the Cholchol River, Freire did not rise to the bait. Instead, his soldiers picked off the Indians as they ran back for cover. The Indians that returned to their homes informed their chiefs that this second army was far vaster than the first, stretching to the horizon and drinking rivers dry. They were like a plague upon the land, claiming the lives of all it crossed.
In a sense it was true. The Chilean Army lived off the land as much as they could, not because supplies problems existed but to deny the Mapuche food sources. Freire ordered any fields that were not harvested by his soldiers to be put to the torch, as with all native villages encountered. His goal was not so much indiscriminate destruction as to force what passed for the Mapuche army into a decisive battle. The Mapuche refused to play his game, and continued their hit-and-run attack from 1834 to 1837, gradually losing their own warriors while Chile effortlessly replaced any soldiers lost.
What followed was a long, twilight struggle for the peoples who resisted Incan and Spanish might for centuries. What followed in the 1840s has been labeled by some historians as the Mapuche Genocide. Frustrated by years of campaigning, soldiers from lowly privates up to General Freire took out frustrations on any Indians they encountered, Mapuche or otherwise. Tens of thousands of Indians were killed, some heavily armed while other not armed at all. Entire village populations were massacred in the wake of Freire.
News of the bloodshed reached Santiago with mixed reviews. Many in Congress wanted to put an end to the killings, as did the general population. Popular support for the war gradually declined, despite the fact that the number of applications for land grants in Araucanía increased every year. The people did not wish to see the Mapuche extinct, but they had no problem settling the lands the tribes once called home. King Manuel fully backed Friere’s actions, stating that if the Mapuche were not dealt with now they would only cause trouble in the future.
The Mapuche warriors made their last stand on March 15, 1845, in a mountain pass near modern day El Tunque. Less than a thousand warriors remained of the determined foe, and they found themselves trapped by an army that could divide itself with impunity. With Friere’s retirement two years earlier, the killing blow fell upon General Augusto del la Rosa, one of the first Chilean generals who did not take part in the revolution. He used no relish or style with his plan, he simply placed two divisions of five thousand soldiers each at both ends of the pass and had them march towards each other. Their goal was to kill all Mapuche they encountered before they met each other in the middle. To their credit, the Mapuche held out to the last, never once considering surrender.
Despite the label of genocide, the Mapuche were not entirely wiped out. Their culture was dead, but some of their children lived. Despite the hardened heart of their king, not all of the Chilean soldiers could bring themselves to kill the children of their foe. The Catholic Church cried out against the massacre of the natives, but to little avail. Many of the now orphaned youths found themselves in orphanages ran either by the state or by the Church, given either a secular or religious education, and otherwise assimilated into Chilean society.
The natives of Patagonia received a far gentler treatment. Although disease did take its toll, there was no active attempt by the Chilean government to exterminate the population. That did not mean conflict between native and settler did not arise, far from it. The first Chilean settlers crossed the southern Andes and reached Patagonia in 1835. Settlers from Chile, along with immigrants from Europe seeking new opportunities and land of their own, gradually pushed eastward towards the Atlantic. Great tracks of land were given over to the raising of livestock. Cattle dominated the northern ranches of Patagonia while sheep ranchers moved into the south, as well as Tierra del Fuego. Some enterprising settlers attempted to round up wild rhea and raise them like chickens.
When conflict did arise with the natives, usually over the choicest spots of land, the Chilean Army moved into Patagonia. The army established forts and patrols intended to protect Chilean citizens against marauding Indians. The Tehuelche proved less hostile than the Mapuche, but would still wage war when their hunting grounds were encroached upon. Trade was conducted with the nomadic natives, with the settlers trading iron tools and trinkets for hides. The level of trade never reached that of the trappers of North America, but overall the two sides coexisted in relative peace.
The same could not be said about the natives of Buenos Ares. Argentina paid little attention to settlers moving into the region, but sat up and took notice when part of the Chilean Army marched across the Andes and began to establish itself in Patagonia. Argentina grew concerned that Chile might try to box them into the north. Before 1838, Argentina took little notice in Patagonia, preferring to focus on the Pampas closer to home. In July 1838, plans were set into motion in Buenos Ares to eject the Chilean Army from Patagonia during the summer of 1838-39.
An Argentine Army of seven thousand marched south, initiating the first “battle” of the brief Patagonian War by attacking Fort O’Higgins on the upper stretches of the Rio Colorado. The forty Chilean soldiers on guard in the region surrendered with only a few shots fired for the sake of Chilean honor. The soldiers were disarmed and sent back across the Andes after swearing oaths that they would never return. The Argentines strengthened the fort and left one hundred men to garrison it.
Argentina’s goal was not conquest of Patagonia. With so much land to the north to settle, land with a far more civilized climate, there was little desire to settle the southern reaches in the 1830s. Buenos Ares was even content to leave the Chilean settlers to their own devices. They were not, however, content to stand idle as a foreign army based itself in a region where it could attack Argentina with ease. It was better to have Chile and its King locked up on the west side of the Andes. The popular image of King Manuel to Argentine eyes was that of a blood-thirsty tyrant, one who ran down any who stood in his path.
King Manuel, still waging war against the Mapuche, did not take kindly to the attack on Fort O’Higgins. During his reign and the revolution, Manuel held a low opinion of his neighbors to the east. It started first with the exiles that formed the Army of the Andes, and followed by the appearance of San Martin into Chilean affairs. The Chilean King would never forget San Martin the Argentine’s attempts to rule Chile himself. The attack upon a frontier outpost was seen as yet another attempt by Argentines to rob Chile of what was its rightful inheritance. On December 8, 1838, he asked Congress to declare a state of war with Argentina.
Despite the attack on a Chilean fort, the declaration was not a foregone conclusion. Hundreds of thousands of pesos and tens of thousands of men were already invested in the subjugation of Araucanía, and Chile could ill-afford a second war. Such talk did not impress the king, but talk of foreign debt did strike a chord with Manuel. If Chile indebted itself to any European creditor, there was always a threat that the creditor might come in force to take what it was lawfully owed. The king remained adamant that it was vital to Chile’s security and future that Chile takes control of Patagonia before someone else does.
As Spain had yet to recognize Chile as an independent state, the specter of their return loomed in the air. There was also the threat that Britain or France could lay claim to the land. Argentina, a country that has been reduced in size since its independence would be an easier for to defeat than the might of the French Army or Royal Navy. Alessandro Mendoza, a member of the Moderate Party, a name leftover from the revolution, proposed partitioning Patagonia with Rio Chubut as the new border. The proposal would split Patagonia fairly, and secure Chile’s trade routes to Europe.
There was one slight flaw in the plan; the majority of recent settlements in Patagonia lay between Rio Chubut and Rio Colorado. Dividing the land to the south would force the settlers either to relocate or become Argentine citizens. The settlers were not keen on moving, though some were indifferent towards to which country they would belong. Manuel was not indifferent, and he refused to “abandon” Chilean citizens to any foreign ruler. After some debate in Congress, a state of war was declared on December 16.
The Patagonian War lacked the ferocity of the Mapuche War, as well as the longevity. Only a handful of skirmishes were fought between Chilean and Argentine soldiers, none really worthy of being called a battle. When the army of Argentina began to force settlers to leave, the settlers formed their own militia units and fought back. A few quickly forgot what they fought for and devolved into bandits, plaguing both sides of the dispute for years to come.
War weariness set in Buenos Ares first. With the Pampas still in need of full pacification, as well as threats from the north, Argentine Congressmen wondered why they were fighting Chile for the chilly lands to the south. In a somewhat short-sighted move, Argentine negotiators met with and agreed to King Manuel’s proposal for partitioning the southern lands at Rio Colorado and the Chilean guarantee not to extend its borders eastward into the Pampas. In June 1839, the two belligerents stood down and returned to fighting within their own borders.
In effect, Chile doubled in size as a result of the brief war. Claiming the land and actually holding it proved to be two different beasts. In order to cement Chilean control of Patagonia, Congress passed a set of homesteading laws in 1840, opening up the land to all at a price of an acre for three pesos. The opening of the land caused both a population and an economic explosion within Chile. Between 1840 and 1870, over four hundred thousand Europeans immigrated to Chile and filled up the land, elevating Chile to the largest grain and beef producer in South America.
In 1842, King Manuel’s health took a turn for the worst. During the winter of that year, he contracted pneumonia, effectively removing him from the political light. He issued instructions through his son and heir Carlos. Upon his death in October, Carlos was nominated to succeed him. On November 5, Carlos Rodriguez was inaugurated King Manuel II. His first act was to push through Congress what he called the whitening of Chile. Like his father, Manuel II never trusted the Indians living within Chile. Unlike his father, he extended his mistrust to the Mestizo population.
Homesteading laws were rewritten, altering the price of land to two pesos per acre for European immigrants and white Chileans, while raising it to five per acre for the Mestizo, shutting out a large proportion of their numbers to new lands in Patagonia and Araucaria. Protests from the few Mestizos in Congress fell on deaf ears.
Manuel II hoped to bring many immigrants from to Chile. A few did arrive, but not in the numbers the King had desired. With lands further north open to immigrants, Spaniards opted to settle in warmer climates. Advertisements across Europe attracted a great many German and Scandinavian settlers. Southern, and Catholic, Germans were welcomed with open arms. Protestants from further north faced a more hesitant welcoming to Chile. While the Chilean Constitution proclaimed religious freedom, it was assumed the country would always remain a Catholic one, and no such laws strengthening the Church were required. When Lutherans began to arrive in large numbers, Manuel II faced a crisis.
When Mexico allowed a number of non-Catholic settlers into its borders, they revolted, establishing the Republic of Texas. Manuel II and not a single member of Congress wanted to see a Protestant Republic of Patagonia appearing within the next ten years. Learning from Mexico’s mistake, it was decided that immigrants would be forced to conform to Chilean culture. In short, they would convert to Catholicism. The Constitution was amended in 1849, declaring Catholicism to be Chile’s state religion. Though other religions were allowed, they did not enjoy the tax-free status of the Church. To further encourage Catholics across Central Europe to immigrate, the price of land was reduced to nothing in 1855, and only the condition of improving the land within five years was placed on Catholic immigrants.
A silver rush in the 1830s brought in miners and prospectors from around the world. Manuel fought to keep the silver within Chile, and managed to pass laws through Congress outlawing the exportation of silver. The measures failed to keep foreigners from making their fortunes and leaving for home after selling the silver. Most miners came in search of the precious metal and found very little. Many could not afford the return trip to their homes and stayed in Chile. Those enterprising enough to make the most of their meager hauls purchased the newly opened lands. Other, less fortunate souls spent their days as vagabonds and vagrants. Within four years of the start of the silver rush, the Chilean government took over the operation of abandoned mines.
In 1837, a convict labor bill was introduced to Congress as a means of dealing with petty criminals in the city. Most immigrants to Chile came in search of a new life and worked both hard and honest. Others not so much. Crime in the mining camps was always high, with both greed and little law enforcement driving the regime. Port cities such as Concepcion suffered from the same political plagues as London and New York, albeit on a smaller scale. Esteban Xavier Philippe, Congressman from Concepcion introduced the penal labor bill in hopes of cleaning up his city. He believed that through hard labor the criminal minded could be reformed. One of the requirements for reformation was surviving incarceration, which was not always the case in the state-ran mines.
While Chile’s agricultural sector grew in leaps and bounds, its marine economy already shone like a beacon across the South Seas. By 1840, Chile sported one of the largest whaling fleets in the world, with ships ranging across the southern reached of the Atlantic and Pacific. Thousands of whales were taken from the sea on an annual basis, making Chile the largest exporter of whale oil in the world. Its fishing fleet more than doubled between 1830 and 1840, taking advantage of rich fisheries surrounding the southern Continent. 1853 saw one of the most insane experiments in Chilean history.
In an attempt to best harvest the bounty of the sea, Manuel II proposed in 1849, that a colony be established on the Antarctic Peninsula. Chile claimed the Peninsular, as well as the sub-Antarctic islands as both national territory and economic zone. Fishing and whaling boats ventured into sight of the frozen continent during the summer. The islands surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula were used as whaling stations, the largest being on South Georgia. In order to further strengthen Chilean claim and hold in Antarctica, the establishment Ciudad de la Aurora Australis was a doomed project from the start.
Aurora’s first and only settlers arrived in the summer of 1852-53, and used the brief warm period to build their lodging. With no trees on the continent, stone was used in its place. This proved highly inadequate in keeping out the cold, forcing colonists to burn a disproportionally high amount of fuel to keep warm, and that was in the summer months. Most of the summer was spent in building the town, and not in economic activities. It was not until April 1853, that the city was “complete”. Seventy-five adventurous colonists would call Aurora home initially, but it was hoped that the harvesting of the sea would attract more people. Exports of fish, crab and seal fur left on the two ships used to transport the colonists in May. The ship would not return until November, leaving the seventy-five colonists the most isolated people in the world.
At first, life was tolerable. The sea provided food for all, be it fish, seal or bird. Blubber was used as fuel for fires, and was poorly rationed. Due to the low quality insulation of stone dwellings, much of the fuel was spent in the first two months of the southern winter. To make matters worse, the sea froze over, blocking access to the primary source of food. To supply the colony’s needs, hunters and fishers were forced to take longer and longer treks with each passing day. Eventually, the colonists were reduced to raiding Emperor Penguin nesting grounds.
Over the winter months, most of the colonists succumbed to the cold. When the first ship of spring arrived with much needed supplies, only twenty-one of the original colonists remained all in poor health. Instead of offloading supplies and returning to working hard, the colonists boarded the ship and refused to leave. They had enough of Antarctic and were eager to return to civilization. Attempts to recruit new colonists failed when stories of the hardships of Aurora circulated through Santiago, Concepcion and Valesperio.
II) Rise of a Nation (1831-59)
As population expanded the need for richer land grew as well. There was only so much wheat that could be grown and so many cattle that could be raised on the side of the mountain. Immigrants to Chile, as well as established families looked south and east for new opportunities. Through Chile was not the most popular destination for those eager to flee Europe, some twenty thousand immigrants arrived each year from 1826 to 1831. It soon became clear that there was not enough land to go around. The land-owning Chileans, especially the criollo, were not eager to share their own property with these newcomers.
Instead of waiting for King Manuel and the government to alleviate the problem, immigrants and natives alike soon headed south into what European maps called Terra Nullis. Just because the land was not claimed by any white nation did not mean nations were not already built upon it. The Mapuche or Araucaníans as the Spaniards called them, resisted not only the long arm of the Spanish Empire, but held back the Inca before them. When settlers began to encroach upon their lands, these war-like people pushed them back as well. From 1831 to 1833 Mapuche and settlers fought dozens of skirmished, with one side raiding the other only to have the offended party retaliate.
The tension came to a boiling point on November 7, 1833, when a Mapuche army attacked the Chilean fort of San Rosendo. Though their weapons were primitive by 19th Century standards, the Mapuche vastly outnumbered the defenders of this neglected fort and stormed it. The hundred soldiers manning the fort were killed to the last, as were the settlers taking shelter behind its palisades. After taking what they could carry upon their back, the Mapuche put San Rosendo to the torch and returned to their lands.
In Santiago, a solution to the troubles on the frontier was sought after in Congress and the Royal Palace. Some congressmen sought peace, while others wanted to emulate the reservation system used by the United States. The attitude of the Royal Palace after San Rosendo was quite different and not conciliatory. King Manuel’s answer to the Mapuche Problem was simple; get rid of the Mapuche you get rid of the problem. He pushed Congress for funds to double the size of the army for the conquest of Araucanía, and its incorporation into the Kingdom of Chile.
There was more to the Pacification of Araucanía than crushing the Indians. The Mapuche played their own roll in Chile’s war for independence, and took advantage of the chaos for their own gains. Those Mapuche caught north of the Biobío River were victims of the Total War. No, for Santiago the idea of having unclaimed land in the southern reaches of the continent was just inviting European colonial empires to move in and claim the land for themselves. Congress was convinced that by taking this land, not only would they open up new lands for settlers and thus expand Chile’s economy, they would also secure the country’s borders from the imperialists a world away.
The first battle of the Mapuche War occurred on May 3, 1834, when an army of five thousand Chileans under the command of General Jose Joaquin Prieto engaged a band of Mapuche at the confluence of the Mulchen and Bureo Rivers. The clash was brief and resulted in the near extermination of the Mapuche warband encountered. Three Indian warriors were witnessed escaping. Their departure was part of Prieto’s plan, and he intended for them to bring stories of an unstoppable army on the move.
While a 19th Century Army was certainly a challenge for the Mapuche, its poorly guarded supply lines were another story. The natives took to guerilla warfare, striking at exposed sectors and retreating before Prieto could respond. Frustrated by his inability to trap and destroy and Mapuche army, the general vented his frustration on Indian villages in his path. His army neither asked nor gave quarter to its enemy, massacring all who opposed it. The indiscriminate killing brought the various native peoples of Araucanía together in a way little else could.
Prieto’s reign of terror was short-lived. As his army travelled an unimaginative and mostly straight path, the Mapuche chiefs decided to gather their warriors and leap ahead of the Chilean Army. The Chilean Army lost more than half its numbers during the ambush at the sight of modern day Temuco. The Mapuche attacked while Prieto was in the process of crossing the Cautin River. With his forces divided by the waters, those south of the river were hit by Indian raiders, who melted back into the woodlands from where they came. The Chilean Army took up pursuit before it was fully assembled on the southern bank.
Prieto made the decision to move with only half his army because he believed the raiders to be just that, a small band of Mapuche. Instead, what he discovered many kilometers south was an army of various tribes numbering in the thousands. With discipline compromised by the forest, the advantage fell to the Mapuche and their allies. Close range combat negated any advantage of musket fire, forcing Chilean soldiers to fight with bayonet and sword. The Mapuche fought with a variety of weapons, from those of stone to captured arms from raids along the frontier.
Several hundred Chilean soldiers escaped the ambush and fled north, with the Mapuche depleting their numbers every step of the way. Only a handful of the soldiers reached the Cautin River, where the rest of the army already crossed. With their backs to the river, the Chilean soldiers managed to repel the wave of rushing natives with musket and cannon fire. Once the Mapuche melted back into their country, the Chilean Army began its long retreat north, ending yet another attempt by outsiders to subjugate Araucanía.
Or that was the way the Mapuche chiefs believed it to be. Unlike the Inca or Spain, Chile would not let the matter rest. The sight of a broken army returning home in the winter of 1834 enraged King Manuel. There were more calls for peace with the Mapuche in Congress, but the king quickly silenced the speakers. The defeat at Cautin River was a stain upon the honor of the nation, one that must be cleansed with the blood of her enemies. Calls for more volunteers for the Chilean Army went out, but when the Army failed to raise a hundred thousand soldiers for Manuel’s new Total War, the king rammed a conscription bill through Congress.
The call for a hundred thousand man army was totally unrealistic in a time when Chile’s total population barely topped one million. The second invasion of Araucanía involved thirty thousand soldiers, many conscripts and many of those from immigrant families. Their service in the Army, while long, infused these newcomers with a sense of patriotism. As per Section Five of the conscription bill, the soldiers drafted into the Chilean Army would receive some of their payment in the form of land in the newly conquered territories. The same also applied for volunteers. Like with all new countries, land and other commodities held far more value than newly issued currency.
Command of the new army was given to Ramon Freire, a veteran of the Independence War. He came into several personal conflicts with the king over the operation of the war. Manuel knew the man’s record and his loyalty to the regime, but never fully trusted the man. This was partly due to Freire being one of the exiled revolutionaries who eventually returned to Chile in the Army of the Andes with O’Higgins and Carrera. Those who stayed behind to fight Spain while the others rebuilt often had a dim view of the exiles. Upon returning to Chile, these exiles were granted far more credit in winning the country’s freedom than Manuel believed them due. It was guerillas like Manuel who kept the dream of independence alive in those dark years.
Despite his dislike for soldiers of the Army of the Andes, Manuel agreed Freire was a competent and level-headed man, one who would not charge at the enemy like a bull towards a cape. When the Mapuche tried their ambush again, this time while the Chilean army crossed the Cholchol River, Freire did not rise to the bait. Instead, his soldiers picked off the Indians as they ran back for cover. The Indians that returned to their homes informed their chiefs that this second army was far vaster than the first, stretching to the horizon and drinking rivers dry. They were like a plague upon the land, claiming the lives of all it crossed.
In a sense it was true. The Chilean Army lived off the land as much as they could, not because supplies problems existed but to deny the Mapuche food sources. Freire ordered any fields that were not harvested by his soldiers to be put to the torch, as with all native villages encountered. His goal was not so much indiscriminate destruction as to force what passed for the Mapuche army into a decisive battle. The Mapuche refused to play his game, and continued their hit-and-run attack from 1834 to 1837, gradually losing their own warriors while Chile effortlessly replaced any soldiers lost.
What followed was a long, twilight struggle for the peoples who resisted Incan and Spanish might for centuries. What followed in the 1840s has been labeled by some historians as the Mapuche Genocide. Frustrated by years of campaigning, soldiers from lowly privates up to General Freire took out frustrations on any Indians they encountered, Mapuche or otherwise. Tens of thousands of Indians were killed, some heavily armed while other not armed at all. Entire village populations were massacred in the wake of Freire.
News of the bloodshed reached Santiago with mixed reviews. Many in Congress wanted to put an end to the killings, as did the general population. Popular support for the war gradually declined, despite the fact that the number of applications for land grants in Araucanía increased every year. The people did not wish to see the Mapuche extinct, but they had no problem settling the lands the tribes once called home. King Manuel fully backed Friere’s actions, stating that if the Mapuche were not dealt with now they would only cause trouble in the future.
The Mapuche warriors made their last stand on March 15, 1845, in a mountain pass near modern day El Tunque. Less than a thousand warriors remained of the determined foe, and they found themselves trapped by an army that could divide itself with impunity. With Friere’s retirement two years earlier, the killing blow fell upon General Augusto del la Rosa, one of the first Chilean generals who did not take part in the revolution. He used no relish or style with his plan, he simply placed two divisions of five thousand soldiers each at both ends of the pass and had them march towards each other. Their goal was to kill all Mapuche they encountered before they met each other in the middle. To their credit, the Mapuche held out to the last, never once considering surrender.
Despite the label of genocide, the Mapuche were not entirely wiped out. Their culture was dead, but some of their children lived. Despite the hardened heart of their king, not all of the Chilean soldiers could bring themselves to kill the children of their foe. The Catholic Church cried out against the massacre of the natives, but to little avail. Many of the now orphaned youths found themselves in orphanages ran either by the state or by the Church, given either a secular or religious education, and otherwise assimilated into Chilean society.
The natives of Patagonia received a far gentler treatment. Although disease did take its toll, there was no active attempt by the Chilean government to exterminate the population. That did not mean conflict between native and settler did not arise, far from it. The first Chilean settlers crossed the southern Andes and reached Patagonia in 1835. Settlers from Chile, along with immigrants from Europe seeking new opportunities and land of their own, gradually pushed eastward towards the Atlantic. Great tracks of land were given over to the raising of livestock. Cattle dominated the northern ranches of Patagonia while sheep ranchers moved into the south, as well as Tierra del Fuego. Some enterprising settlers attempted to round up wild rhea and raise them like chickens.
When conflict did arise with the natives, usually over the choicest spots of land, the Chilean Army moved into Patagonia. The army established forts and patrols intended to protect Chilean citizens against marauding Indians. The Tehuelche proved less hostile than the Mapuche, but would still wage war when their hunting grounds were encroached upon. Trade was conducted with the nomadic natives, with the settlers trading iron tools and trinkets for hides. The level of trade never reached that of the trappers of North America, but overall the two sides coexisted in relative peace.
The same could not be said about the natives of Buenos Ares. Argentina paid little attention to settlers moving into the region, but sat up and took notice when part of the Chilean Army marched across the Andes and began to establish itself in Patagonia. Argentina grew concerned that Chile might try to box them into the north. Before 1838, Argentina took little notice in Patagonia, preferring to focus on the Pampas closer to home. In July 1838, plans were set into motion in Buenos Ares to eject the Chilean Army from Patagonia during the summer of 1838-39.
An Argentine Army of seven thousand marched south, initiating the first “battle” of the brief Patagonian War by attacking Fort O’Higgins on the upper stretches of the Rio Colorado. The forty Chilean soldiers on guard in the region surrendered with only a few shots fired for the sake of Chilean honor. The soldiers were disarmed and sent back across the Andes after swearing oaths that they would never return. The Argentines strengthened the fort and left one hundred men to garrison it.
Argentina’s goal was not conquest of Patagonia. With so much land to the north to settle, land with a far more civilized climate, there was little desire to settle the southern reaches in the 1830s. Buenos Ares was even content to leave the Chilean settlers to their own devices. They were not, however, content to stand idle as a foreign army based itself in a region where it could attack Argentina with ease. It was better to have Chile and its King locked up on the west side of the Andes. The popular image of King Manuel to Argentine eyes was that of a blood-thirsty tyrant, one who ran down any who stood in his path.
King Manuel, still waging war against the Mapuche, did not take kindly to the attack on Fort O’Higgins. During his reign and the revolution, Manuel held a low opinion of his neighbors to the east. It started first with the exiles that formed the Army of the Andes, and followed by the appearance of San Martin into Chilean affairs. The Chilean King would never forget San Martin the Argentine’s attempts to rule Chile himself. The attack upon a frontier outpost was seen as yet another attempt by Argentines to rob Chile of what was its rightful inheritance. On December 8, 1838, he asked Congress to declare a state of war with Argentina.
Despite the attack on a Chilean fort, the declaration was not a foregone conclusion. Hundreds of thousands of pesos and tens of thousands of men were already invested in the subjugation of Araucanía, and Chile could ill-afford a second war. Such talk did not impress the king, but talk of foreign debt did strike a chord with Manuel. If Chile indebted itself to any European creditor, there was always a threat that the creditor might come in force to take what it was lawfully owed. The king remained adamant that it was vital to Chile’s security and future that Chile takes control of Patagonia before someone else does.
As Spain had yet to recognize Chile as an independent state, the specter of their return loomed in the air. There was also the threat that Britain or France could lay claim to the land. Argentina, a country that has been reduced in size since its independence would be an easier for to defeat than the might of the French Army or Royal Navy. Alessandro Mendoza, a member of the Moderate Party, a name leftover from the revolution, proposed partitioning Patagonia with Rio Chubut as the new border. The proposal would split Patagonia fairly, and secure Chile’s trade routes to Europe.
There was one slight flaw in the plan; the majority of recent settlements in Patagonia lay between Rio Chubut and Rio Colorado. Dividing the land to the south would force the settlers either to relocate or become Argentine citizens. The settlers were not keen on moving, though some were indifferent towards to which country they would belong. Manuel was not indifferent, and he refused to “abandon” Chilean citizens to any foreign ruler. After some debate in Congress, a state of war was declared on December 16.
The Patagonian War lacked the ferocity of the Mapuche War, as well as the longevity. Only a handful of skirmishes were fought between Chilean and Argentine soldiers, none really worthy of being called a battle. When the army of Argentina began to force settlers to leave, the settlers formed their own militia units and fought back. A few quickly forgot what they fought for and devolved into bandits, plaguing both sides of the dispute for years to come.
War weariness set in Buenos Ares first. With the Pampas still in need of full pacification, as well as threats from the north, Argentine Congressmen wondered why they were fighting Chile for the chilly lands to the south. In a somewhat short-sighted move, Argentine negotiators met with and agreed to King Manuel’s proposal for partitioning the southern lands at Rio Colorado and the Chilean guarantee not to extend its borders eastward into the Pampas. In June 1839, the two belligerents stood down and returned to fighting within their own borders.
In effect, Chile doubled in size as a result of the brief war. Claiming the land and actually holding it proved to be two different beasts. In order to cement Chilean control of Patagonia, Congress passed a set of homesteading laws in 1840, opening up the land to all at a price of an acre for three pesos. The opening of the land caused both a population and an economic explosion within Chile. Between 1840 and 1870, over four hundred thousand Europeans immigrated to Chile and filled up the land, elevating Chile to the largest grain and beef producer in South America.
In 1842, King Manuel’s health took a turn for the worst. During the winter of that year, he contracted pneumonia, effectively removing him from the political light. He issued instructions through his son and heir Carlos. Upon his death in October, Carlos was nominated to succeed him. On November 5, Carlos Rodriguez was inaugurated King Manuel II. His first act was to push through Congress what he called the whitening of Chile. Like his father, Manuel II never trusted the Indians living within Chile. Unlike his father, he extended his mistrust to the Mestizo population.
Homesteading laws were rewritten, altering the price of land to two pesos per acre for European immigrants and white Chileans, while raising it to five per acre for the Mestizo, shutting out a large proportion of their numbers to new lands in Patagonia and Araucaria. Protests from the few Mestizos in Congress fell on deaf ears.
Manuel II hoped to bring many immigrants from to Chile. A few did arrive, but not in the numbers the King had desired. With lands further north open to immigrants, Spaniards opted to settle in warmer climates. Advertisements across Europe attracted a great many German and Scandinavian settlers. Southern, and Catholic, Germans were welcomed with open arms. Protestants from further north faced a more hesitant welcoming to Chile. While the Chilean Constitution proclaimed religious freedom, it was assumed the country would always remain a Catholic one, and no such laws strengthening the Church were required. When Lutherans began to arrive in large numbers, Manuel II faced a crisis.
When Mexico allowed a number of non-Catholic settlers into its borders, they revolted, establishing the Republic of Texas. Manuel II and not a single member of Congress wanted to see a Protestant Republic of Patagonia appearing within the next ten years. Learning from Mexico’s mistake, it was decided that immigrants would be forced to conform to Chilean culture. In short, they would convert to Catholicism. The Constitution was amended in 1849, declaring Catholicism to be Chile’s state religion. Though other religions were allowed, they did not enjoy the tax-free status of the Church. To further encourage Catholics across Central Europe to immigrate, the price of land was reduced to nothing in 1855, and only the condition of improving the land within five years was placed on Catholic immigrants.
A silver rush in the 1830s brought in miners and prospectors from around the world. Manuel fought to keep the silver within Chile, and managed to pass laws through Congress outlawing the exportation of silver. The measures failed to keep foreigners from making their fortunes and leaving for home after selling the silver. Most miners came in search of the precious metal and found very little. Many could not afford the return trip to their homes and stayed in Chile. Those enterprising enough to make the most of their meager hauls purchased the newly opened lands. Other, less fortunate souls spent their days as vagabonds and vagrants. Within four years of the start of the silver rush, the Chilean government took over the operation of abandoned mines.
In 1837, a convict labor bill was introduced to Congress as a means of dealing with petty criminals in the city. Most immigrants to Chile came in search of a new life and worked both hard and honest. Others not so much. Crime in the mining camps was always high, with both greed and little law enforcement driving the regime. Port cities such as Concepcion suffered from the same political plagues as London and New York, albeit on a smaller scale. Esteban Xavier Philippe, Congressman from Concepcion introduced the penal labor bill in hopes of cleaning up his city. He believed that through hard labor the criminal minded could be reformed. One of the requirements for reformation was surviving incarceration, which was not always the case in the state-ran mines.
While Chile’s agricultural sector grew in leaps and bounds, its marine economy already shone like a beacon across the South Seas. By 1840, Chile sported one of the largest whaling fleets in the world, with ships ranging across the southern reached of the Atlantic and Pacific. Thousands of whales were taken from the sea on an annual basis, making Chile the largest exporter of whale oil in the world. Its fishing fleet more than doubled between 1830 and 1840, taking advantage of rich fisheries surrounding the southern Continent. 1853 saw one of the most insane experiments in Chilean history.
In an attempt to best harvest the bounty of the sea, Manuel II proposed in 1849, that a colony be established on the Antarctic Peninsula. Chile claimed the Peninsular, as well as the sub-Antarctic islands as both national territory and economic zone. Fishing and whaling boats ventured into sight of the frozen continent during the summer. The islands surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula were used as whaling stations, the largest being on South Georgia. In order to further strengthen Chilean claim and hold in Antarctica, the establishment Ciudad de la Aurora Australis was a doomed project from the start.
Aurora’s first and only settlers arrived in the summer of 1852-53, and used the brief warm period to build their lodging. With no trees on the continent, stone was used in its place. This proved highly inadequate in keeping out the cold, forcing colonists to burn a disproportionally high amount of fuel to keep warm, and that was in the summer months. Most of the summer was spent in building the town, and not in economic activities. It was not until April 1853, that the city was “complete”. Seventy-five adventurous colonists would call Aurora home initially, but it was hoped that the harvesting of the sea would attract more people. Exports of fish, crab and seal fur left on the two ships used to transport the colonists in May. The ship would not return until November, leaving the seventy-five colonists the most isolated people in the world.
At first, life was tolerable. The sea provided food for all, be it fish, seal or bird. Blubber was used as fuel for fires, and was poorly rationed. Due to the low quality insulation of stone dwellings, much of the fuel was spent in the first two months of the southern winter. To make matters worse, the sea froze over, blocking access to the primary source of food. To supply the colony’s needs, hunters and fishers were forced to take longer and longer treks with each passing day. Eventually, the colonists were reduced to raiding Emperor Penguin nesting grounds.
Over the winter months, most of the colonists succumbed to the cold. When the first ship of spring arrived with much needed supplies, only twenty-one of the original colonists remained all in poor health. Instead of offloading supplies and returning to working hard, the colonists boarded the ship and refused to leave. They had enough of Antarctic and were eager to return to civilization. Attempts to recruit new colonists failed when stories of the hardships of Aurora circulated through Santiago, Concepcion and Valesperio.
III) Sunrise on the Pacific (1859-80)
Economic troubles of 1857-58 spilled over into 1859. With the opening of the American prairie, foreign sources of wheat began to overwhelm Chile’s meager export. Though the central lands between Valparaiso and Concepcion were the most fertile west of Patagonia, American States such as Iowa and Illinois cultivated larger tracts of land within their border for wheat than all of western Chile. Profits fell to their lowest point since Independence and with them tax revenue declined. The lack of disposable income caused less activity amongst the Chilean consumer and thus less income from import tariffs. The Chilean government faced a budget crisis.
The wars against the Mapuche drained Chilean coffers, forcing the government to take out foreign loans, mostly from trusted European partners such as Britain. With the Mapuche threat eliminated and Patagonia pacified and secure, the Congress looked towards Chile’s large army as a target of the budgetary axe. King Manuel II reluctantly agreed that the army’s budget could be reduced, but refused to budge when it came to the navy. Chilean trade depended on a strong navy to secure routes to Europe, and by the 1850s to China.
Congress went further in their demands that the armed forced be given over completely to civilian rule, i.e. to that of Congress. For decades the Chilean Army and Navy answered to the king, but after Manuel I’s excessed, there were those who did not trust a king with too much power. Many Chileans saw a large, standing army as anathema to liberty. Chile should have only a small professional army with militia to be called up in the event of war. It made sense to reduce the army in both numbers and power.
One man was quite opposed to having the army shackled and declawed. Manuel II’s brother, Ferdinand Rodriguez served as a general as well as Minister of War. He did not like the path his brother took. With the Indian threat removed and the demographic of Chile whitened to the point of rendering the now minority Mestizo irrelevant, Manuel II believed the army could relax and take a well-earned leave. Ferdinand warned his brother that those threats within are no more, but the threats without continue. He referred to the growing power to the north in the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation. Or as he saw it, a revived Incan Empire in its infancy. The Mapuche may be no more, but the Quecha had yet to be broken. Despite centuries of rule by Spain, elements of the old cultures remained largely untouched.
Ferdinand also saw his brother’s actions as signs of a weakening monarchy. Congress demands control of the army today, but what will come tomorrow? Will they call for elections of the Senate? Perhaps they would reduce Chile’s king to a figurehead like the British monarch, or abolish it altogether. Ferdinand refused to let that happen. On June 18, 1859, two days before Congress would vote on the budget, Ferdinand and officers loyal to him stormed the palace in Santiago. A pitched battle followed between Ferdinand’s soldiers and the Royal Guard, with only the most devout guardsmen falling in battle.
The following day, King Manuel II abdicated in favor of his brother. Though wisdom dictated the only good former king was a dead one, King Ferdinand would not end the life of his brother. Instead, the deposed king and his immediate family were sent into exile. Manuel was not allowed entry into any state neighboring Chile, nor would his pride allow him to flee to Europe. After a running through a short list of destinations, Manuel left Chile to spend the rest of his days in Colombia. Ferdinand ordered the army to block the halls of Congress, preventing any from entering to vote on the budget. Each Congressman was encouraged to reject the plan and leave the Army at its present strength and status.
Taking the throne was the easy part of the coup; holding it was another matter. Instead of rejoicing at the removal of a weakening king, the people rose up in anger against Ferdinand. Protestors took to the street in the capital, demanding the return of Manuel II. In Valparaiso, protests turned into riots and the city’s garrison put down the riot at the cost of three hundred seventeen protestors dead. Ferdinand faced the real possibility of civil war erupting in Chile, and all the nation’s enemies taking advantage of the chaos.
In response, his issued an address to the people where he cited the Quecha menace to the north as his reason for ceasing the throne. The Inca invaded Chile once, centuries ago, and who was to say a reborn empire would not do so again? Only with a powerful army would Chile be able to retain its independence. The path that his dear brother took would have led the country to ruins. The new regime ran a vigorous propaganda campaign, one that painted Peru-Bolivia as the antichrist. The new king did believe in the threat, but he also used it to distract the people from growing opposition.
Ferdinand justified his initial oppression as a means of rooting out Quecha sympathizers. Four member of Congress were removed from the assembly and charged as Quecha agents, traitors who planned to open the country’s gate from within. The fact that these four were staunch opponents to Ferdinand never crossed the mind of the average Chilean. Ferdinand’s propaganda machine generated enough fear that neighbor began to distrust neighbor in Central Chile.
The settlers of Patagonia cared little for threats in the distant Andes. As long as distant Santiago let them farm and ranch, a majority of the recently arrived immigrants could not care less who sat upon the throne. That was not to say the region did not lack its own problems. Settlers from metropolitan Chile were suspicious of immigrants from northern Europe. While many did convert to Catholicism, it was widely believe they did little more than pay lip service to the Church in order to purchase land at reduced prices. Chilean officials responsible for land sells did their best to prevent any Protestant settlers from forming large communities of their own, but it met only with marginal success.
In larger settlements, such as along the Negros and Chubut Rivers land sells managed to mix recently converted Catholics in with true believers. It was as much an attempt to assimilate non-Spanish speakers as it was to keep an eye on the converts. In the deep south, mostly immigrants of Swedish origin settled. The land was deemed too cold and worthless for immigrants from Spain or Italy to settle. The Swedes did not convert, preferring to keep their faith and pay a higher price for more marginal lands. Ferdinand used these distant settlers as fuel to the fire of fear. Not only were the Quecha among us, but so too were Lutherans. The underlying message remained that Chile was surrounded by enemies.
Surrounded turned out to be too strong a word. While consolidating power, Ferdinand turned to the only other monarchy in South America; Brazil. If Chile had enemies on all sides, it made sense that her enemies should also be surrounded. Brazil covered a good portion of the continent and possessed a wealth of resources Chile could not hope to match. Instead of having Pedro II as a foe, Ferdinand wanted him and Brazil’s power as an ally. Delegates from Brazil met with the King in Santiago to hammer out a treaty of alliance.
On April 11, 1860, a treaty of alliance was presented to Congress, not to debate but simply to ratify. For one of the few times in Ferdinand’s reign, Congress acted more out of genuine national interest than fear. The treaty passed with a vote of 138 for and only 17 against. One of the articles of the treaty called for a marriage of state between Ferdinand and Dona Isabella. Ferdinand would wait two years for the marriage to a princess more than twenty years his junior. Only at the age of sixteen was Isabella allowed to depart Brazil.
Supporters of Ferdinand spared no expense on the most elaborate and elegant marriage in the history of South America. Thousands of guests from around the world attended, including delegates from royal houses in Europe and ambassadors from across the Americas. More than one hundred thousand pesos went into the affair. Every newspaper in the country cared front page stories on the affair. Many Chileans were pleased to see their country ally with another powerful state, but those same people shook their heads in dismay at the cost of the marriage. All agreed that the money could have been spent better elsewhere.
Even after Chile formally allied with Brazil, Ferdinand’s rhetoric concerning Peru-Bolivian remained just that. It was not until the discovery of silver deposits in the Atacama Desert did talk turn to action. Before politicians could even think of negotiations, Chilean and immigrants backed by Chile flooded into the Atacama region in search of silver. Much of the metal lay north of Chile’s border in Bolivia’s Pacific Coast, and prospectors mined without regard to international agreement.
When mining firms began to move into the region, tensions rose. The initial sparks of war was not over silver or copper, but rather over saltpeter. The Antofagasta Nitrate Company found itself at the center of the crisis. This Chilean company set up operations on the Bolivian side of the border. Common sense would dictate that a company working within the boundaries of one state would also be under the jurisdiction of said state’s laws, and more importantly, tax codes. The Nitrate Company refused to pay Bolivian taxes, and in March 1865, the Bolivian Army ceased the company’s assets.
In response, Colonel Luis Artega led a Chilean regiment of one thousand soldiers across the border at took Antofagasta with a minimal loss of life. Only seven Chilean and sixteen Bolivian soldiers died in the brief battle on May 2, 1865, as the Bolivian commander surrendered once it was clear he lacked backup. As Antofagasta’s population was 86% Chilean, Artega faced no opposition from the local civilians. The Nitrate Company’s offices and property within the city was returned to company control, but its mines still lay in Bolivian hands.
Six days following the capture of Antofagasta, Ferdinand delivered a message to Congress asking that if Bolivia did not return Chilean property to its rightful owner within one week, that the Chilean Army was authorized to liberate the captured mines. While Congress listened and awaited Bolivia’s response, Ferdinand sent for the Brazilian ambassador, asking how fast Brazil could mobilize to honor its alliance. Brazil’s problem was not manpower of weapons, but accessibility. Mountains and jungle separated if from Chile’s immediate neighbors. A small army could be shipped through the Strait of Magellan in weeks, but for larger aid months may be required for them to arrive at the war. By then, the war might already have concluded.
Ferdinand did not give up totally on Brazilian aid, but did not expect it to arrive in time. He concluded his meeting by requesting that the ambassador send word to Rio de Janerio immediately. If Brazilian aid arrived in time, fine. If not; the King remained confident the Chilean Army could handle the Confederation on its own. The deadline arrived and departed without word from either La Paz or Lima. Righteous indignation filled the halls of Congress, but was Chile’s honor enough to start a war? For many it was so, but even after nearly six years on the throne, not everyone fully trusted Ferdinand to act on honor alone. The King always had an ulterior motive, and war with the Confederation would be no different. The question some Congressmen asked was just how much stronger would the King be after leading Chile to victory?
All of their concerns were for another day. In the case for war against the Quecha Menace, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor. On May 11, Chile declared a state of war with the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia. While time ticked away on the ultimatum, the King ordered the army into place along the northern border. He never expected Bolivia to give in and wasted no time in preparing to take that which was denied.
Once war was declared, Artega’s small force saw an influx of reinforcements, bolstering his army to twenty thousand men. For his part in taking Antofagasta, Artega was promoted to General and granted the assignment of conquering Atacama. On his march to Calama, more soldiers died from the environment than from the upcoming battle. Conditions were harsh in the Atacama Desert. With no local sources of water or forage, all of the army’s supplies were delivered by caravan. Convoys of wagon trains stretched for over a kilometer and were often victim to attack by Bolivian partisans.
Banditry forced a good portion of his army on permanent guard duty, removing them from front line action. Of the original twenty thousand, less than half reached Calama. The city was the center of communication as well as regional administration. Only four thousand Bolivian soldiers defended the city. Unlike the Chilean soldiers who were armed with Dreyse needle guns, the Bolivians still relied upon muzzle-loading rifles and muskets a few dating back to their wars against Spain. It was a common theme throughout the War of the Atacama; better armed and trained Chilean soldiers facing inferior opposition in quality if not quantity.
The morning of July 17, saw Artega lay siege to Calama. Though the Bolivian commander found himself outnumbered and outgunned, he held out for three weeks in hope that reinforcements would arrive. Twenty-three days after the siege began, only a lone messenger arrived in Calama, bringing word that reinforcements would not arrive for more than a month. The garrison’s supplies would not last that long, and despite the effect of Bolivian snipers, the Chileans would continue to outnumber the defenders. Calama held out until August 15, when Artega ordered the city stormed. The battle was not as bloody as the siege, and demoralized Bolivian soldiers surrendered in masse. The city was firmly in Chilean hands the next day.
The captive soldiers were marched across the desert back to prisoner camps along the coast. As with the march into Calama, the march out saw many soldiers fall along the way. Newspapers across the continent erupted in outrage at the forced march. The road from Calama to Antofagasta was dubbed El Camino de Cráneos by newspapers in La Paz, though only ten percent of the prisoners died from exposure. Conditions in prisoners’ camps proved to be far more benign.
While Artega secured the interior, General Pedro Lagos took an army of ten thousands on a port-hopping campaign. He attacked Bolivian and Peruvians ports north of Antofagasta directly, coming in from the sea, landing and capturing the cities. Iquique was the first to fall on July 29, followed by Arica on August 18. Arica put up stiffer resistance than Iquique, which was taken totally by surprise. Artillery from land and sea rained down upon the defenders, setting dozens of fires across the city. As with Calama, Arica was taken by storm, its Peruvian defenders overwhelmed by numbers. Of the attackers, some three hundred fifteen were killed in the storming, compared to only one hundred eighty-six Peruvian soldiers killed in action. Lagos was widely criticized by the Chilean press for his excessive losses. His response was only that what good was superior manpower if one did not use it.
Within the space of just over a month, Chile was effectively in control of the Atacama, yet its foes refused to recognize this fact. They continued the war in the Atacama mostly in the form of hit-and-run attack on outposts and supply lines. Congress pressed the King to issue his demands for peace, namely the annexation of Peruvian and Bolivian regions of the Atacama. King Ferdinand was not content with just taking the land. He wanted to see Quecha power broken for good. His goal was nothing less than the dissolution of the Confederation.
While the war on land ground to a halt as winter passed to spring, the war at sea raged without pause. Chilean monitors plied the Pacific Coast, preying upon Confederation commerce. Products of the recent American Civil War influenced naval designers in Valparaiso and Concepcion. Shipyards in the latter, which rapidly was growing into Chile’s primary industrial center, produced iron-clad ships of more traditional design as well as the new turreted monitors. Though slow and unable to perform in rough seas, the monitors still took their toll on the enemy.
One such battle occurred on November 1. The Battle at Angamos saw the Chilean monitor Blanco Encalada challenge the Bolivian frigate Huascar. The frigate, while plated in iron, was still largely a wooden steamer, a relic from a bygone age. The Huascar survived the battle mostly because the Encalada’s lone turret could not fire enough rounds to sink the vessel. After a battle lasting over an hour, and unable to escape, the Huascar’s second officer (both Captain and Executive Officer were killed in the battle) struck the colors. The Bolivian frigate was one of the few ships captured in the war. Despite their manpower potential, the Confederation lacked a large navy. Overall, Chilean ships outnumbered their foes three-to-two.
Brazilian intervention arrived in the summer of 1866, when an expeditionary force marched across Southern Brazil and invaded Bolivia. The invasion met with only marginal success, and lost more men to disease than combat. The Brazilian threat drew away Bolivian soldiers, freeing the Chilean Army for an advance further north. While Lagos continued to lead his army into Peru, a second, smaller army under the command of Mariano Stauffen assembled in Valparaiso to board a small fleet. This fleet, under the command of Admiral Wilhelm Doza.
Stauffen and Doza spent weeks planning an invasion at the heart of Peru. On April 17, 1866, Doza landed Stauffen and five thousand soldiers at Callao, a city outside of Lima. Instead of marching across all of Peru, the fight would be taken directly to the capital. With the bulk of the Peruvian army in the south fighting against Lagos, Stauffen’s landing was largely unopposed. Local militia broke and ran at the sight of thousands of well-armed and discipline soldiers marching upon them. Fortunately, some of the fleeing militiamen had sense enough to flee to Lima and warn the government that the Chileans were coming.
Despite such a short warning, Peru’s President managed to call out nearly one thousand militiamen and volunteers from Lima to face down the advancing soldiers. While some eventually broken and ran, the remainder fought hard against overwhelming odds, earning them the respect of the Chilean soldiers. Respect alone does not win battles, and the Battle of Lima was no exception. At most, the militia and volunteers delayed the inevitable by two days. On April 29, Stauffen entered Peru’s Capital Building and laid down terms in front of the remaining members of Peru’s Congress. The country’s President and more than half of Congress fled the advancing Chileans.
Because Peru and Bolivia were in Confederation, taking one capital did not mean the end of the war. There was still La Paz to capture. Before 1851, when North and South Peru were united into a single unit, there would have been three capitals in the Confederation to capture. To complicate political matters further, it was the Bolivian President who was also President of the Confederation at the time of the War of the Atacama. Capturing the Peruvian President would not end the war, but it was hoped his surrender could help break the Confederation.
Stauffen was under orders to capture the Peruvian President. President Juan Pezet was not without his supporters. He hid on a farm outside of Peru for the first week of Lima’s occupation, but when it was obvious that Chilean soldiers were out for him, he bid his hosts farewell and moved further inland. He eluded capture fore thirteen days, taking shelter with four different families. One family that was discovered to have hid the wanted President was summarily executed. Pezet fell into Chilean hands on May 14, while on the move with a band of volunteer soldiers.
Before the end of May, most of Peru’s Congressmen and its President were prisoners of war. Without a functioning government, regions of Peru either fell under the control of local administrators or fell into anarchy. Further south, the Peruvian Army was trapped between two dilemmas. On one hand, the need to liberate Lima rang to the hearts of every soldier. On the other hand, the Chilean Army before them was not about to let them simply march back home. They held out as long as supplies continued to flow in, but after four months of fighting, Peruvian General Mariano Prado ordered his men to lay down their arms.
The war should have ended then and there, but a stubborn Bolivia held out for another year. Invading Peru was a simple enough affair; soldiers could be resupplied by sea thanks to Chilean naval supremacy. Marching inland and taking La Paz, which sat high in the mountains, was quite another matter. The city never did fall to either Brazilian or Chilean Armies, but the will of its inhabitants eroded when victory was all but impossible. By 1867, Bolivia’s Congress decided it should cut its losses and sue for peace.
The first demand of Chile was for Bolivian and Peru to cede their parts of Atacama to Chile, which was agreed to without hesitation. The region was firmly in Chilean hands, and with Peru knocked out of the war, Bolivia had no hope of regaining it. The Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation was to be dissolved, and both states were forbidden to re-establish it. To further the divide, Chile installed a puppet king on the newly established Peruvian throne. King Esteban, second cousin of King Ferdinand would rule Peru more in the British style as that country did all it could legally do to curtain monarchal powers.
Brazil took its own slice of land in the form of Acre from Bolivia. Treaty provisions allowed Dom Pedro II to install a puppet ruler in La Paz, but with domestic issues plaguing his reign, Brazil elected to leave Bolivia a republic, albeit one surrounded by monarchies. The sudden split between Bolivia and Peru opened up a number of border disputes. While the two were in Confederation, where exactly one state ended and another began was nothing more than a trivial matter. Resources were pooled and shared by both nationalities. With newly found independence, resolving the border climbed the ladder to the top of Congressional priorities. While no war broke out between the two, skirmishes did occur and soured relations between Lima and La Paz.
With its position as the greater power in South America secure, Chilean interests began to look across the Pacific. In 1868, Chile formally annexed Rapa Nui. The population of Easter Island as non-Polynesians called the island declined over the decades to one hundred seven people by the time of annexation. The decline was partly caused by introduced diseases and partly raids from Peruvian slavers. Once in Chilean hands, the island was handed over to naval jurisdiction.
Chile’s gaze to the west did not stop with Easter and the Juan Fernandez Islands. It continued into the Polynesian Archipelago, where French interests were well entrenched by the 1870s. Chile’s first acquisition in Polynesia was that of the tiny Pitcairn Islands. While nominally a British colony since 1838, colonists began to outstrip the island and seek assistance from afar. London was their first choice, but Santiago proved far closer and trading firms displayed an interest in using the island as a way station on the long voyage to the Orient.
As their population continued to grow, many of the islanders elected to immigrate to Chile where land was plentiful and climate not quite as tropical. Most that immigrated eventually settled on Tierra del Fuego, a polar opposite to Pitcairn in regards with weather. By 1871, Pitcairn itself was home to no more than seventeen people, none of which opposed formal annexation. The neighboring island of Henderson fell into Chilean possession later that year. Miniscule Oeno and Ducie, both uninhabited atolls, were swept up with the world not even noticing. It was not until Chilean expansion reached Mangareva.
French interests in the Gambier Islands took exception to Chilean ships. The French Navy intercepted two Chilean clippers in 1873 that used Bora Bora as a stopping over point. Their crime was nothing more than taking on provisions and trading with the natives. In response, the Chilean Navy sent warships to patrol the islands and escort commerce vessels. In the 1870s, another wave of naval modernization produced some of the highest quality ironclads in the world, and the quality of training of Chilean seamen and officers allowed its ships to go toe-to-toe with any other ship in the world. The French Navy was still by far larger, but it was not all based in the southeast Pacific.
On January 11, 1874, the two navies collided when the Chilean frigate Independencia encountered the French ship Griffon operating out of Tahiti. The two ships passed within gun range some thirty-seven kilometers northwest of Mangareva. Both Tahiti and Bora Bora to the west were firmly in French hands for decades, with the protectorate for Tahiti dating back to 1841. France firmly believed Polynesia lay in their sphere of influence. When Independencia refused to allow French sailors to board her, Griffon opened fire on the Chilean frigate. The battle was brief, with damage and loss of life on both sides. In the end, Independencia was forced to retreat from the action and make her way back to Concepcion.
Reaction in Chile to this attack on the high seas was decidedly anti-French. Chileans on both sides of the Andes demanded vengeance to this slight on their national honor. King Ferdinand, who was utterly confident in his kingdom’s ability to fight foes on his continent, was not so sure about waging war against France. Personally, he thought it folly. Publicly, he had little choice. He deposed his own brother for alleged weakness. If he failed to take action, his weakness would not be alleged. His reaction to the Tahitian Crisis as the Chilean press dubbed it was slow. The King signed an embargo against France into law, a bill that passed Congress without Ferdinand even having to twist any arms. A number of protectionist measures existed against French goods, such as wine, and the French percentage of total imports never grew above five percent. The embargo had little to no effect on the French economy, but it did send a message to Europe.
While France barely noticed the embargo, they did take a great deal of interest to further Chilean activity in Polynesia. Along with the Gambier Islands where Mangareva lay, Chilean soldiers landed on several of the Marquises Islands, planting the Chilean flag on their shores. Before London planted itself between Santiago and Paris, plans within the Chilean Chief of Staff office were drawn up for the invasion of Tahiti itself. The plans were stop-gap measures at the most, for unlike Spain, France would come back with a larger army if expelled.
In 1875, Chilean and French delegates met in London to discuss the crisis in Polynesia. France insisted the islands were within her sphere of influence, while Chile insisted that all of Polynesia lay within her natural borders, i.e. the southeastern Pacific. By 1875, Britain imported a majority of its beef from Chile as well as a great deal of grain. A war between Chile and France would impact British commerce, and more importantly, the nation’s food supply. While Britain could survive on imports from Canada and the United States, London preferred to deal with Santiago rather than Washington.
Britain’s Foreign Minister proposed a compromise to the territorial dispute. Instead of rewarding the islands to any one party, he proposed Polynesia be partitioned between the two. The Gambier and Marquises Islands would remain under Chilean control, but Chile would not progress further west. While France would retain the larger slice of Polynesia, France’s Foreign Minister was against the partition. The Gambier Islands could be ceded, but not the Marquises; those were not even under Chilean control at the time of ‘the incident’.
Once Chile agreed to the partition, the real battle shifted to one of wills between London and Paris. While the French were prepared to go to war to retain all of Polynesia, the United Kingdom declared in no uncertain terms that they would not look kindly upon a war against Chile, and implied British aid to Santiago would flow. While confident they could handle Chile, France was not so sure about battling the most powerful navy in the world as well. Would war between Britain and France have broken out over Chile? Possibly. While not allied with Chile, London found having at least one friendly power in South America to be advantageous, especially when that power could dominate the political climate over a good portion of the continent.
On August 23, 1875, delegates from Chile and France signed a treaty that partitioned Polynesia and spelled out plainly where the influence of one nation ended and the others began. King Ferdinand presented the treaty to the Chilean public as a victory against another Imperialist power. That an even greater Imperialist power aided Chile was omitted from the King’s speech; he saw little point in fretting over minor details when speaking to his people.
While 1875 marked the high water point for Chile’s size, it marked the beginning of industrialization in the country. A great deal of mineral wealth was extracted from Chilean mountains annually, and for much of its history to date these minerals were exported. The first steel mill opened in Concepcion in 1867. At first, the domestic production of steel proved more expensive than importation of finished products. When it became clear that Chilean steel was not competitive on the international market, the factory owners decided to sell off their interests and cut their losses. It was the House of Rodriguez that purchased the mills, and operated them with the aid of government subsidies.
Corruption and graft were endemic in Chilean economic and industrial policies. Wealthy and politically prominent families ran most of the country’s economy. These families retained monopolies on various industrial. The Rodriguez family, and hence that state, retained a monopoly on steel production and ship building, both deemed vital to the national interests. The only sector of Chile’s economy exempt from these practices was that of agriculture. Farming and ranching remained in the hands of various individuals and companies.
The monopolistic nature of Chilean industry was a mixed blessing. On one hand, the sheer size of the companies in question meant they could sell at lower prices than a dozen smaller firms and make a profit off sheer bulk. On the other hand, the lack of competition coupled with protectionist tariffs meant the firms could charge and pay whatever they desired. In rapidly growing industrial centers at Valparaiso and Concepcion, tens of thousands of workers had little choice but to toil in factories for meager wages. They were lucky; those that worked in the mines sometimes were not paid. Often, the state leased out convict labor to mining magnate to help reduce their payroll and increase profits.
The practice of patronage continued under the reign of Manuel III, who took the throne in 1881 after the death of his father. Under his rule, the government itself was divided amongst a handful of powerful families. In the beginning, it was quite possible for any man to run for Congress and get elected if his message appealed to enough voters. By the 1880s, only political important or royally favored families held seats in Congress. Chile began to look less and less like the ideals of 1818 and more and more like the Spanish system from which it broke away.
In 1882, Manuel III was handed a large crisis, one that distracted him from rewarding royal favorites. Pedro II, after a decade of poor economic practice and openly political corrupt practices, was ousted from his office. The conspirators, backed by a portion of the Brazilian Army went further and declared Brazil a Republic on October 4, 1882. The Emperor and a good portion of Brazil’s nobility mobilized their own forces and struck back at the Republicans.
With corruption at home rampant, Manuel III realized a serious economic depression could spell the end of his own regime. Though Chile’s monarchy was somewhat more popular than their Brazilian counterpart, the King saw no reason to take chances. With a Brazilian princess as his mother, Manuel also held a personal stake in Brazilian affairs. Unlike his father, he did not demand action but rather addressed Congress and asked them to grant aid to Dom Pedro II. The politically elite decided that a foreign war would serve also to distract the growing dissatisfied working class and agreed to aid.
In early 1883, an expeditionary force of nine thousand soldiers under the command of General Jose Balmaceda embarked in Valparaiso for the voyage to Rio de Janerio. For two years the expedition fought along its Brazilian allies in vain. As casualties mounted, the King demanded reinforcements be shipped to Brazil to shore up sagging Imperial forces. No amount of money or soldiers was sufficient to keep the monarchy in Brazil. Following the decisive 1887 defeat of Imperialists forces, where thousands of Imperial soldiers, including Pedro II himself fell in battle, Congressional support for intervention in the civil war waned. With domestic troubles threatening to boil over, even the King was forced to abandon his ally as Chile’s attention turned inward.
Economic troubles of 1857-58 spilled over into 1859. With the opening of the American prairie, foreign sources of wheat began to overwhelm Chile’s meager export. Though the central lands between Valparaiso and Concepcion were the most fertile west of Patagonia, American States such as Iowa and Illinois cultivated larger tracts of land within their border for wheat than all of western Chile. Profits fell to their lowest point since Independence and with them tax revenue declined. The lack of disposable income caused less activity amongst the Chilean consumer and thus less income from import tariffs. The Chilean government faced a budget crisis.
The wars against the Mapuche drained Chilean coffers, forcing the government to take out foreign loans, mostly from trusted European partners such as Britain. With the Mapuche threat eliminated and Patagonia pacified and secure, the Congress looked towards Chile’s large army as a target of the budgetary axe. King Manuel II reluctantly agreed that the army’s budget could be reduced, but refused to budge when it came to the navy. Chilean trade depended on a strong navy to secure routes to Europe, and by the 1850s to China.
Congress went further in their demands that the armed forced be given over completely to civilian rule, i.e. to that of Congress. For decades the Chilean Army and Navy answered to the king, but after Manuel I’s excessed, there were those who did not trust a king with too much power. Many Chileans saw a large, standing army as anathema to liberty. Chile should have only a small professional army with militia to be called up in the event of war. It made sense to reduce the army in both numbers and power.
One man was quite opposed to having the army shackled and declawed. Manuel II’s brother, Ferdinand Rodriguez served as a general as well as Minister of War. He did not like the path his brother took. With the Indian threat removed and the demographic of Chile whitened to the point of rendering the now minority Mestizo irrelevant, Manuel II believed the army could relax and take a well-earned leave. Ferdinand warned his brother that those threats within are no more, but the threats without continue. He referred to the growing power to the north in the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation. Or as he saw it, a revived Incan Empire in its infancy. The Mapuche may be no more, but the Quecha had yet to be broken. Despite centuries of rule by Spain, elements of the old cultures remained largely untouched.
Ferdinand also saw his brother’s actions as signs of a weakening monarchy. Congress demands control of the army today, but what will come tomorrow? Will they call for elections of the Senate? Perhaps they would reduce Chile’s king to a figurehead like the British monarch, or abolish it altogether. Ferdinand refused to let that happen. On June 18, 1859, two days before Congress would vote on the budget, Ferdinand and officers loyal to him stormed the palace in Santiago. A pitched battle followed between Ferdinand’s soldiers and the Royal Guard, with only the most devout guardsmen falling in battle.
The following day, King Manuel II abdicated in favor of his brother. Though wisdom dictated the only good former king was a dead one, King Ferdinand would not end the life of his brother. Instead, the deposed king and his immediate family were sent into exile. Manuel was not allowed entry into any state neighboring Chile, nor would his pride allow him to flee to Europe. After a running through a short list of destinations, Manuel left Chile to spend the rest of his days in Colombia. Ferdinand ordered the army to block the halls of Congress, preventing any from entering to vote on the budget. Each Congressman was encouraged to reject the plan and leave the Army at its present strength and status.
Taking the throne was the easy part of the coup; holding it was another matter. Instead of rejoicing at the removal of a weakening king, the people rose up in anger against Ferdinand. Protestors took to the street in the capital, demanding the return of Manuel II. In Valparaiso, protests turned into riots and the city’s garrison put down the riot at the cost of three hundred seventeen protestors dead. Ferdinand faced the real possibility of civil war erupting in Chile, and all the nation’s enemies taking advantage of the chaos.
In response, his issued an address to the people where he cited the Quecha menace to the north as his reason for ceasing the throne. The Inca invaded Chile once, centuries ago, and who was to say a reborn empire would not do so again? Only with a powerful army would Chile be able to retain its independence. The path that his dear brother took would have led the country to ruins. The new regime ran a vigorous propaganda campaign, one that painted Peru-Bolivia as the antichrist. The new king did believe in the threat, but he also used it to distract the people from growing opposition.
Ferdinand justified his initial oppression as a means of rooting out Quecha sympathizers. Four member of Congress were removed from the assembly and charged as Quecha agents, traitors who planned to open the country’s gate from within. The fact that these four were staunch opponents to Ferdinand never crossed the mind of the average Chilean. Ferdinand’s propaganda machine generated enough fear that neighbor began to distrust neighbor in Central Chile.
The settlers of Patagonia cared little for threats in the distant Andes. As long as distant Santiago let them farm and ranch, a majority of the recently arrived immigrants could not care less who sat upon the throne. That was not to say the region did not lack its own problems. Settlers from metropolitan Chile were suspicious of immigrants from northern Europe. While many did convert to Catholicism, it was widely believe they did little more than pay lip service to the Church in order to purchase land at reduced prices. Chilean officials responsible for land sells did their best to prevent any Protestant settlers from forming large communities of their own, but it met only with marginal success.
In larger settlements, such as along the Negros and Chubut Rivers land sells managed to mix recently converted Catholics in with true believers. It was as much an attempt to assimilate non-Spanish speakers as it was to keep an eye on the converts. In the deep south, mostly immigrants of Swedish origin settled. The land was deemed too cold and worthless for immigrants from Spain or Italy to settle. The Swedes did not convert, preferring to keep their faith and pay a higher price for more marginal lands. Ferdinand used these distant settlers as fuel to the fire of fear. Not only were the Quecha among us, but so too were Lutherans. The underlying message remained that Chile was surrounded by enemies.
Surrounded turned out to be too strong a word. While consolidating power, Ferdinand turned to the only other monarchy in South America; Brazil. If Chile had enemies on all sides, it made sense that her enemies should also be surrounded. Brazil covered a good portion of the continent and possessed a wealth of resources Chile could not hope to match. Instead of having Pedro II as a foe, Ferdinand wanted him and Brazil’s power as an ally. Delegates from Brazil met with the King in Santiago to hammer out a treaty of alliance.
On April 11, 1860, a treaty of alliance was presented to Congress, not to debate but simply to ratify. For one of the few times in Ferdinand’s reign, Congress acted more out of genuine national interest than fear. The treaty passed with a vote of 138 for and only 17 against. One of the articles of the treaty called for a marriage of state between Ferdinand and Dona Isabella. Ferdinand would wait two years for the marriage to a princess more than twenty years his junior. Only at the age of sixteen was Isabella allowed to depart Brazil.
Supporters of Ferdinand spared no expense on the most elaborate and elegant marriage in the history of South America. Thousands of guests from around the world attended, including delegates from royal houses in Europe and ambassadors from across the Americas. More than one hundred thousand pesos went into the affair. Every newspaper in the country cared front page stories on the affair. Many Chileans were pleased to see their country ally with another powerful state, but those same people shook their heads in dismay at the cost of the marriage. All agreed that the money could have been spent better elsewhere.
Even after Chile formally allied with Brazil, Ferdinand’s rhetoric concerning Peru-Bolivian remained just that. It was not until the discovery of silver deposits in the Atacama Desert did talk turn to action. Before politicians could even think of negotiations, Chilean and immigrants backed by Chile flooded into the Atacama region in search of silver. Much of the metal lay north of Chile’s border in Bolivia’s Pacific Coast, and prospectors mined without regard to international agreement.
When mining firms began to move into the region, tensions rose. The initial sparks of war was not over silver or copper, but rather over saltpeter. The Antofagasta Nitrate Company found itself at the center of the crisis. This Chilean company set up operations on the Bolivian side of the border. Common sense would dictate that a company working within the boundaries of one state would also be under the jurisdiction of said state’s laws, and more importantly, tax codes. The Nitrate Company refused to pay Bolivian taxes, and in March 1865, the Bolivian Army ceased the company’s assets.
In response, Colonel Luis Artega led a Chilean regiment of one thousand soldiers across the border at took Antofagasta with a minimal loss of life. Only seven Chilean and sixteen Bolivian soldiers died in the brief battle on May 2, 1865, as the Bolivian commander surrendered once it was clear he lacked backup. As Antofagasta’s population was 86% Chilean, Artega faced no opposition from the local civilians. The Nitrate Company’s offices and property within the city was returned to company control, but its mines still lay in Bolivian hands.
Six days following the capture of Antofagasta, Ferdinand delivered a message to Congress asking that if Bolivia did not return Chilean property to its rightful owner within one week, that the Chilean Army was authorized to liberate the captured mines. While Congress listened and awaited Bolivia’s response, Ferdinand sent for the Brazilian ambassador, asking how fast Brazil could mobilize to honor its alliance. Brazil’s problem was not manpower of weapons, but accessibility. Mountains and jungle separated if from Chile’s immediate neighbors. A small army could be shipped through the Strait of Magellan in weeks, but for larger aid months may be required for them to arrive at the war. By then, the war might already have concluded.
Ferdinand did not give up totally on Brazilian aid, but did not expect it to arrive in time. He concluded his meeting by requesting that the ambassador send word to Rio de Janerio immediately. If Brazilian aid arrived in time, fine. If not; the King remained confident the Chilean Army could handle the Confederation on its own. The deadline arrived and departed without word from either La Paz or Lima. Righteous indignation filled the halls of Congress, but was Chile’s honor enough to start a war? For many it was so, but even after nearly six years on the throne, not everyone fully trusted Ferdinand to act on honor alone. The King always had an ulterior motive, and war with the Confederation would be no different. The question some Congressmen asked was just how much stronger would the King be after leading Chile to victory?
All of their concerns were for another day. In the case for war against the Quecha Menace, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor. On May 11, Chile declared a state of war with the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia. While time ticked away on the ultimatum, the King ordered the army into place along the northern border. He never expected Bolivia to give in and wasted no time in preparing to take that which was denied.
Once war was declared, Artega’s small force saw an influx of reinforcements, bolstering his army to twenty thousand men. For his part in taking Antofagasta, Artega was promoted to General and granted the assignment of conquering Atacama. On his march to Calama, more soldiers died from the environment than from the upcoming battle. Conditions were harsh in the Atacama Desert. With no local sources of water or forage, all of the army’s supplies were delivered by caravan. Convoys of wagon trains stretched for over a kilometer and were often victim to attack by Bolivian partisans.
Banditry forced a good portion of his army on permanent guard duty, removing them from front line action. Of the original twenty thousand, less than half reached Calama. The city was the center of communication as well as regional administration. Only four thousand Bolivian soldiers defended the city. Unlike the Chilean soldiers who were armed with Dreyse needle guns, the Bolivians still relied upon muzzle-loading rifles and muskets a few dating back to their wars against Spain. It was a common theme throughout the War of the Atacama; better armed and trained Chilean soldiers facing inferior opposition in quality if not quantity.
The morning of July 17, saw Artega lay siege to Calama. Though the Bolivian commander found himself outnumbered and outgunned, he held out for three weeks in hope that reinforcements would arrive. Twenty-three days after the siege began, only a lone messenger arrived in Calama, bringing word that reinforcements would not arrive for more than a month. The garrison’s supplies would not last that long, and despite the effect of Bolivian snipers, the Chileans would continue to outnumber the defenders. Calama held out until August 15, when Artega ordered the city stormed. The battle was not as bloody as the siege, and demoralized Bolivian soldiers surrendered in masse. The city was firmly in Chilean hands the next day.
The captive soldiers were marched across the desert back to prisoner camps along the coast. As with the march into Calama, the march out saw many soldiers fall along the way. Newspapers across the continent erupted in outrage at the forced march. The road from Calama to Antofagasta was dubbed El Camino de Cráneos by newspapers in La Paz, though only ten percent of the prisoners died from exposure. Conditions in prisoners’ camps proved to be far more benign.
While Artega secured the interior, General Pedro Lagos took an army of ten thousands on a port-hopping campaign. He attacked Bolivian and Peruvians ports north of Antofagasta directly, coming in from the sea, landing and capturing the cities. Iquique was the first to fall on July 29, followed by Arica on August 18. Arica put up stiffer resistance than Iquique, which was taken totally by surprise. Artillery from land and sea rained down upon the defenders, setting dozens of fires across the city. As with Calama, Arica was taken by storm, its Peruvian defenders overwhelmed by numbers. Of the attackers, some three hundred fifteen were killed in the storming, compared to only one hundred eighty-six Peruvian soldiers killed in action. Lagos was widely criticized by the Chilean press for his excessive losses. His response was only that what good was superior manpower if one did not use it.
Within the space of just over a month, Chile was effectively in control of the Atacama, yet its foes refused to recognize this fact. They continued the war in the Atacama mostly in the form of hit-and-run attack on outposts and supply lines. Congress pressed the King to issue his demands for peace, namely the annexation of Peruvian and Bolivian regions of the Atacama. King Ferdinand was not content with just taking the land. He wanted to see Quecha power broken for good. His goal was nothing less than the dissolution of the Confederation.
While the war on land ground to a halt as winter passed to spring, the war at sea raged without pause. Chilean monitors plied the Pacific Coast, preying upon Confederation commerce. Products of the recent American Civil War influenced naval designers in Valparaiso and Concepcion. Shipyards in the latter, which rapidly was growing into Chile’s primary industrial center, produced iron-clad ships of more traditional design as well as the new turreted monitors. Though slow and unable to perform in rough seas, the monitors still took their toll on the enemy.
One such battle occurred on November 1. The Battle at Angamos saw the Chilean monitor Blanco Encalada challenge the Bolivian frigate Huascar. The frigate, while plated in iron, was still largely a wooden steamer, a relic from a bygone age. The Huascar survived the battle mostly because the Encalada’s lone turret could not fire enough rounds to sink the vessel. After a battle lasting over an hour, and unable to escape, the Huascar’s second officer (both Captain and Executive Officer were killed in the battle) struck the colors. The Bolivian frigate was one of the few ships captured in the war. Despite their manpower potential, the Confederation lacked a large navy. Overall, Chilean ships outnumbered their foes three-to-two.
Brazilian intervention arrived in the summer of 1866, when an expeditionary force marched across Southern Brazil and invaded Bolivia. The invasion met with only marginal success, and lost more men to disease than combat. The Brazilian threat drew away Bolivian soldiers, freeing the Chilean Army for an advance further north. While Lagos continued to lead his army into Peru, a second, smaller army under the command of Mariano Stauffen assembled in Valparaiso to board a small fleet. This fleet, under the command of Admiral Wilhelm Doza.
Stauffen and Doza spent weeks planning an invasion at the heart of Peru. On April 17, 1866, Doza landed Stauffen and five thousand soldiers at Callao, a city outside of Lima. Instead of marching across all of Peru, the fight would be taken directly to the capital. With the bulk of the Peruvian army in the south fighting against Lagos, Stauffen’s landing was largely unopposed. Local militia broke and ran at the sight of thousands of well-armed and discipline soldiers marching upon them. Fortunately, some of the fleeing militiamen had sense enough to flee to Lima and warn the government that the Chileans were coming.
Despite such a short warning, Peru’s President managed to call out nearly one thousand militiamen and volunteers from Lima to face down the advancing soldiers. While some eventually broken and ran, the remainder fought hard against overwhelming odds, earning them the respect of the Chilean soldiers. Respect alone does not win battles, and the Battle of Lima was no exception. At most, the militia and volunteers delayed the inevitable by two days. On April 29, Stauffen entered Peru’s Capital Building and laid down terms in front of the remaining members of Peru’s Congress. The country’s President and more than half of Congress fled the advancing Chileans.
Because Peru and Bolivia were in Confederation, taking one capital did not mean the end of the war. There was still La Paz to capture. Before 1851, when North and South Peru were united into a single unit, there would have been three capitals in the Confederation to capture. To complicate political matters further, it was the Bolivian President who was also President of the Confederation at the time of the War of the Atacama. Capturing the Peruvian President would not end the war, but it was hoped his surrender could help break the Confederation.
Stauffen was under orders to capture the Peruvian President. President Juan Pezet was not without his supporters. He hid on a farm outside of Peru for the first week of Lima’s occupation, but when it was obvious that Chilean soldiers were out for him, he bid his hosts farewell and moved further inland. He eluded capture fore thirteen days, taking shelter with four different families. One family that was discovered to have hid the wanted President was summarily executed. Pezet fell into Chilean hands on May 14, while on the move with a band of volunteer soldiers.
Before the end of May, most of Peru’s Congressmen and its President were prisoners of war. Without a functioning government, regions of Peru either fell under the control of local administrators or fell into anarchy. Further south, the Peruvian Army was trapped between two dilemmas. On one hand, the need to liberate Lima rang to the hearts of every soldier. On the other hand, the Chilean Army before them was not about to let them simply march back home. They held out as long as supplies continued to flow in, but after four months of fighting, Peruvian General Mariano Prado ordered his men to lay down their arms.
The war should have ended then and there, but a stubborn Bolivia held out for another year. Invading Peru was a simple enough affair; soldiers could be resupplied by sea thanks to Chilean naval supremacy. Marching inland and taking La Paz, which sat high in the mountains, was quite another matter. The city never did fall to either Brazilian or Chilean Armies, but the will of its inhabitants eroded when victory was all but impossible. By 1867, Bolivia’s Congress decided it should cut its losses and sue for peace.
The first demand of Chile was for Bolivian and Peru to cede their parts of Atacama to Chile, which was agreed to without hesitation. The region was firmly in Chilean hands, and with Peru knocked out of the war, Bolivia had no hope of regaining it. The Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation was to be dissolved, and both states were forbidden to re-establish it. To further the divide, Chile installed a puppet king on the newly established Peruvian throne. King Esteban, second cousin of King Ferdinand would rule Peru more in the British style as that country did all it could legally do to curtain monarchal powers.
Brazil took its own slice of land in the form of Acre from Bolivia. Treaty provisions allowed Dom Pedro II to install a puppet ruler in La Paz, but with domestic issues plaguing his reign, Brazil elected to leave Bolivia a republic, albeit one surrounded by monarchies. The sudden split between Bolivia and Peru opened up a number of border disputes. While the two were in Confederation, where exactly one state ended and another began was nothing more than a trivial matter. Resources were pooled and shared by both nationalities. With newly found independence, resolving the border climbed the ladder to the top of Congressional priorities. While no war broke out between the two, skirmishes did occur and soured relations between Lima and La Paz.
With its position as the greater power in South America secure, Chilean interests began to look across the Pacific. In 1868, Chile formally annexed Rapa Nui. The population of Easter Island as non-Polynesians called the island declined over the decades to one hundred seven people by the time of annexation. The decline was partly caused by introduced diseases and partly raids from Peruvian slavers. Once in Chilean hands, the island was handed over to naval jurisdiction.
Chile’s gaze to the west did not stop with Easter and the Juan Fernandez Islands. It continued into the Polynesian Archipelago, where French interests were well entrenched by the 1870s. Chile’s first acquisition in Polynesia was that of the tiny Pitcairn Islands. While nominally a British colony since 1838, colonists began to outstrip the island and seek assistance from afar. London was their first choice, but Santiago proved far closer and trading firms displayed an interest in using the island as a way station on the long voyage to the Orient.
As their population continued to grow, many of the islanders elected to immigrate to Chile where land was plentiful and climate not quite as tropical. Most that immigrated eventually settled on Tierra del Fuego, a polar opposite to Pitcairn in regards with weather. By 1871, Pitcairn itself was home to no more than seventeen people, none of which opposed formal annexation. The neighboring island of Henderson fell into Chilean possession later that year. Miniscule Oeno and Ducie, both uninhabited atolls, were swept up with the world not even noticing. It was not until Chilean expansion reached Mangareva.
French interests in the Gambier Islands took exception to Chilean ships. The French Navy intercepted two Chilean clippers in 1873 that used Bora Bora as a stopping over point. Their crime was nothing more than taking on provisions and trading with the natives. In response, the Chilean Navy sent warships to patrol the islands and escort commerce vessels. In the 1870s, another wave of naval modernization produced some of the highest quality ironclads in the world, and the quality of training of Chilean seamen and officers allowed its ships to go toe-to-toe with any other ship in the world. The French Navy was still by far larger, but it was not all based in the southeast Pacific.
On January 11, 1874, the two navies collided when the Chilean frigate Independencia encountered the French ship Griffon operating out of Tahiti. The two ships passed within gun range some thirty-seven kilometers northwest of Mangareva. Both Tahiti and Bora Bora to the west were firmly in French hands for decades, with the protectorate for Tahiti dating back to 1841. France firmly believed Polynesia lay in their sphere of influence. When Independencia refused to allow French sailors to board her, Griffon opened fire on the Chilean frigate. The battle was brief, with damage and loss of life on both sides. In the end, Independencia was forced to retreat from the action and make her way back to Concepcion.
Reaction in Chile to this attack on the high seas was decidedly anti-French. Chileans on both sides of the Andes demanded vengeance to this slight on their national honor. King Ferdinand, who was utterly confident in his kingdom’s ability to fight foes on his continent, was not so sure about waging war against France. Personally, he thought it folly. Publicly, he had little choice. He deposed his own brother for alleged weakness. If he failed to take action, his weakness would not be alleged. His reaction to the Tahitian Crisis as the Chilean press dubbed it was slow. The King signed an embargo against France into law, a bill that passed Congress without Ferdinand even having to twist any arms. A number of protectionist measures existed against French goods, such as wine, and the French percentage of total imports never grew above five percent. The embargo had little to no effect on the French economy, but it did send a message to Europe.
While France barely noticed the embargo, they did take a great deal of interest to further Chilean activity in Polynesia. Along with the Gambier Islands where Mangareva lay, Chilean soldiers landed on several of the Marquises Islands, planting the Chilean flag on their shores. Before London planted itself between Santiago and Paris, plans within the Chilean Chief of Staff office were drawn up for the invasion of Tahiti itself. The plans were stop-gap measures at the most, for unlike Spain, France would come back with a larger army if expelled.
In 1875, Chilean and French delegates met in London to discuss the crisis in Polynesia. France insisted the islands were within her sphere of influence, while Chile insisted that all of Polynesia lay within her natural borders, i.e. the southeastern Pacific. By 1875, Britain imported a majority of its beef from Chile as well as a great deal of grain. A war between Chile and France would impact British commerce, and more importantly, the nation’s food supply. While Britain could survive on imports from Canada and the United States, London preferred to deal with Santiago rather than Washington.
Britain’s Foreign Minister proposed a compromise to the territorial dispute. Instead of rewarding the islands to any one party, he proposed Polynesia be partitioned between the two. The Gambier and Marquises Islands would remain under Chilean control, but Chile would not progress further west. While France would retain the larger slice of Polynesia, France’s Foreign Minister was against the partition. The Gambier Islands could be ceded, but not the Marquises; those were not even under Chilean control at the time of ‘the incident’.
Once Chile agreed to the partition, the real battle shifted to one of wills between London and Paris. While the French were prepared to go to war to retain all of Polynesia, the United Kingdom declared in no uncertain terms that they would not look kindly upon a war against Chile, and implied British aid to Santiago would flow. While confident they could handle Chile, France was not so sure about battling the most powerful navy in the world as well. Would war between Britain and France have broken out over Chile? Possibly. While not allied with Chile, London found having at least one friendly power in South America to be advantageous, especially when that power could dominate the political climate over a good portion of the continent.
On August 23, 1875, delegates from Chile and France signed a treaty that partitioned Polynesia and spelled out plainly where the influence of one nation ended and the others began. King Ferdinand presented the treaty to the Chilean public as a victory against another Imperialist power. That an even greater Imperialist power aided Chile was omitted from the King’s speech; he saw little point in fretting over minor details when speaking to his people.
While 1875 marked the high water point for Chile’s size, it marked the beginning of industrialization in the country. A great deal of mineral wealth was extracted from Chilean mountains annually, and for much of its history to date these minerals were exported. The first steel mill opened in Concepcion in 1867. At first, the domestic production of steel proved more expensive than importation of finished products. When it became clear that Chilean steel was not competitive on the international market, the factory owners decided to sell off their interests and cut their losses. It was the House of Rodriguez that purchased the mills, and operated them with the aid of government subsidies.
Corruption and graft were endemic in Chilean economic and industrial policies. Wealthy and politically prominent families ran most of the country’s economy. These families retained monopolies on various industrial. The Rodriguez family, and hence that state, retained a monopoly on steel production and ship building, both deemed vital to the national interests. The only sector of Chile’s economy exempt from these practices was that of agriculture. Farming and ranching remained in the hands of various individuals and companies.
The monopolistic nature of Chilean industry was a mixed blessing. On one hand, the sheer size of the companies in question meant they could sell at lower prices than a dozen smaller firms and make a profit off sheer bulk. On the other hand, the lack of competition coupled with protectionist tariffs meant the firms could charge and pay whatever they desired. In rapidly growing industrial centers at Valparaiso and Concepcion, tens of thousands of workers had little choice but to toil in factories for meager wages. They were lucky; those that worked in the mines sometimes were not paid. Often, the state leased out convict labor to mining magnate to help reduce their payroll and increase profits.
The practice of patronage continued under the reign of Manuel III, who took the throne in 1881 after the death of his father. Under his rule, the government itself was divided amongst a handful of powerful families. In the beginning, it was quite possible for any man to run for Congress and get elected if his message appealed to enough voters. By the 1880s, only political important or royally favored families held seats in Congress. Chile began to look less and less like the ideals of 1818 and more and more like the Spanish system from which it broke away.
In 1882, Manuel III was handed a large crisis, one that distracted him from rewarding royal favorites. Pedro II, after a decade of poor economic practice and openly political corrupt practices, was ousted from his office. The conspirators, backed by a portion of the Brazilian Army went further and declared Brazil a Republic on October 4, 1882. The Emperor and a good portion of Brazil’s nobility mobilized their own forces and struck back at the Republicans.
With corruption at home rampant, Manuel III realized a serious economic depression could spell the end of his own regime. Though Chile’s monarchy was somewhat more popular than their Brazilian counterpart, the King saw no reason to take chances. With a Brazilian princess as his mother, Manuel also held a personal stake in Brazilian affairs. Unlike his father, he did not demand action but rather addressed Congress and asked them to grant aid to Dom Pedro II. The politically elite decided that a foreign war would serve also to distract the growing dissatisfied working class and agreed to aid.
In early 1883, an expeditionary force of nine thousand soldiers under the command of General Jose Balmaceda embarked in Valparaiso for the voyage to Rio de Janerio. For two years the expedition fought along its Brazilian allies in vain. As casualties mounted, the King demanded reinforcements be shipped to Brazil to shore up sagging Imperial forces. No amount of money or soldiers was sufficient to keep the monarchy in Brazil. Following the decisive 1887 defeat of Imperialists forces, where thousands of Imperial soldiers, including Pedro II himself fell in battle, Congressional support for intervention in the civil war waned. With domestic troubles threatening to boil over, even the King was forced to abandon his ally as Chile’s attention turned inward.
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IV) The Wild South
With much of Santiago’s attention turned north and west, Patagonia lay larger neglected by the Chilean central government. To the average settler before 1890, the only sign of any national authority came from the string of forts along Patagonia’s rivers. These forts were built more for holding the land against external threat than for policing the land between rivers. Unlike the American West, Patagonia lacked large, armed and angry bands of Indians to terrorize settlers and clash with soldiers.
At first, lawlessness was not a problem for the settlers. In 1840, land was plentiful and space between homesteads sometimes great. As is human nature, many of these homesteads were close enough together that their communities eventually evolved into towns and later cities. The towns of Patagonia were no different than towns anywhere in the Americas. Honest people lived their lives and worked hard while other, not-so-honest individuals sought easy means to earn a living. Petty crime was a problem the locals solved themselves. Settlers formed their own town governments, established a means to enforce the law and held trials for those incapable of following the rules.
Lacking funds for jails, minor offenders received community service sentences. It was hoped through honest work these criminals would rehabilitate and be absorbed into the community. For more violent offenders, only two realistic options lay open; exile or death. Exile was the standard punishment for such crimes, unless the court deemed the offender simply too dangerous. These condemned, along with any who break their exile, were executed by hanging to death.
More often than not, individuals or groups of individuals took the law into their own hands when it came to crime. Vigilantism grew in popularity as Patagonia’s population swelled from 1840 to 1870. By 1880, over a million settlers called Patagonia home, spread out from Rio Colorado to the Strait of Magellan. Most of the homesteads were small lots, no more than two hundred forty acres. These lots were owned by families who farmed or ranched their land. Larger tracks of land fell into the hands of other individuals, by legal and extralegal means. The further south one travelled, the fewer settlers were found. These southern reaches were suited more for ranches and farms and by 1880, were the domains of the Cattle Dons.
The individual rancher could not hope to contend with the Dons. When Company men, a euphemism for the Dons’ associates, came knocking, the poor homesteader had little choice but to sell out, pack up and leave. Wanting to avoid the wrath of any government officials that might take notice, the Dons did purchase the land and its deed, though for often insultingly low prices. A few Dons grew powerful enough that they could simply have law changed to favor the large cattle companies.
The most powerful of the Cattle Dons was the son of Italian immigrants named Don Juan Carlos de Fiore. It is unlikely that de Fiore was his true name, yet it is the name engraved in the annuals of history. His family originated in what was then the Two Sicilies and though unproven to this date, it is widely believed they were connected with the Sicilian Mafia. True or not, immigration from Sicily did eventually give rise to the Chilean Mafia in the 20th Century.
Operating from his manor in San Carlos de Negros, Don Juan Carlos funded campaigns for various politicians in Patagonia. Where many Dons sought to bribe local officials to turn a blind eye, the truly wealthy and powerful Dons struck at the source of the problem; the laws themselves. Not only were land laws changed to favor the wealthy, Juan Carlos used his influence to gain favors from corrupt officials, primarily in the form of large land grants.
The de Fiore family was not alone in their quest for more land. Other cattle companies imitated the Don, gaining politicians of their own, as well as conflicting claims to de Fiore land. Instead of settling the disputes in long, drawn-out legal battles—pointless since a portion of their gains were ill-gotten—the companies settled matters in a more permanent way. In October 1881, de Fiore men attacked ranch hands of the Espendosa family grazing their cattle on de Fiore lands. With the killing of the ranchers and seizure of livestock, Patagonia’s Cattle Wars began.
These wars lasted throughout the 1880s, and claimed the lives of thousands. So chaotic the scene in southern Patagonia, Santiago was forced to send in the army in fear of the region devolving into petty warlord states. Even then the Dons responsible for the violence eluded justice. The war ended not with them put out of business and their lands open to the general public but rather by treaties between the companies formally establishing the boundaries for each family’s ranching territory. The Dons would continue to dominate regional politics until the 1930s when the new government closed their operations.
Grazing lands were not the only prize to be found in the south. In 1883, gold was discovered on Tierra del Fuego, attracting tens of thousands of would-be prospectors to the island. As with gold rushes elsewhere in the world, miners had no regard for the current occupants of the land. Instead of Indians that were faced in the American West, prospectors found themselves in conflict with the island’s sheep ranchers, a far better armed lot than the drifters were accustom to facing. To police the lawlessness that mining camps brought with it, the citizens of the island formed their own vigilante bands. Unlike on the mainland, the largely British population of Tierra del Fuego did not bother using exile as punishment.
Justice in this frontier was swift and permanent but it was far from arbitrary. The accused faced trials by jury, and the burden of proven guilt was placed upon prosecutors. Most who faced town trials were found not guilty and set free. In the case of prospectors, they were encouraged to leave. Those found guilty often swung from a tree or lamp post if a proper gallows was unavailable. Santiago seldom troubled itself with individual gold miners, but it often involved itself in disputes between miners and mining companies.
While gold was precious, coal was a far more strategic resource in southern Chile. A sizable coaling station industry grew up around the Strait of Magellan since the advent of steam power on ships. Along with other supplies such as food and fresh water, ports in the south grew prosperous off their dealings with ships transiting between oceans. Coal mining was not a get-rich-quick scheme like gold, and took great investments of capital before any return was seen.
To increase their profits, the mine owners often cut corners and paid as little as possible. Mine collapses were a common enough event in the late 19th Century, as were fires, explosions and other accidents that would kill and maim. If a miner was wounded in the line of work, then he was discarded and replaces. Working conditions were never good in general, but were horrid at the southern tip of the mainland. Conditions outside of the mine were cold and isolated. Any food that was not meat was imported from elsewhere in Chile and controlled by the mine owners. If a miner wished to purchase bread or potatoes, then he must do so through the company store.
While modern revisionist historians accuse the mine owners of actively trying to suppress the working man, this was not the case. The owners cared not at all for the miners beyond their productivity. Often, while living in something approaching luxury in the more civilized regions of the country, they would not think of the miners at all. The industrialist seldom gave his producers much thought. There supreme indifference proved even more destructive than active suppression.
In the 1880s, miners began to organize themselves into unions, a task the mine owners did not appreciate. It was only when the workers began to take matters into their own hands did the owners pay attention to them. In the early years, strikes were usually broken by hired help. In 1887, the owners of the mines on Riesco Island called Santiago for assistance. The Elena and Josefina mines on the island supplied coaling stations throughout the Strait, and once the supply of coal ceased, ports ran on reserves. Once those were exhausted, refueling transoceanic voyages became problematic.
King Manuel III had little option but to send in the army to break the strike and reopen the flow of coal. At first, some of the strikers dared to hope the army arrived to aid them. A few miners divined their true purpose and left the picket line before shots were fired. February 29, 1888, became known as the Leap Year Massacre when hundreds of miners were wounded and seventy-four killed. The mines reopened the following month, but soldiers were called in again in 1890 and 1891. After the third time, King Manuel presented a plan before Congress to nationalize the Riesco Island mines.
When miners shut down the mine a third time, to similar yet less bloody results, it became painfully clear something was not right with the mines. The King decided he could not trust the mine owners with such an important deposit of coal. Despite lobbying efforts by mine owners across Chile, who feared their operations may be next, Riesco mines fell into control of Santiago in 1892 after the mine owners were compensated for their losses. Any miner hoping for improvement left disappointed as the government used convict labor to fill any shortage in mines. Honest, hardworking coal miners gradually packed up and left the mines, though most lacked the money to leave the island. Within ten years, the island was effectively transformed into a penal colony.
During the same decade of miner strikes, Santiago faced a problem of Patagonia growing more and more distant. With the Andes cutting the country in two, the primary means of communication was by ship. As was the primary means of trade. There were few viable means of herding cattle from the pasture to the Santiago region. Nor was it practical to ship beef there and turn around an export it to Europe. Ranchers and settlers banded together to build their own port facilities and trade directly with European partners. The largest of these privately founded ports was that of Santa Domingo de la Chubui.
Built seventy kilometers from the mouth of the Chubui River, Santa Domingo became a hub of activity between the Negros and Colorado Rivers. Ranchers drove cattle for hundreds of kilometers to reach the port. By the time they arrived, the herd were put back to pasture to fatten them up after the long march. In 1871, the first railroad constructed snaked north from Santa Domingo, allowing easier access to the port for ranchers. Three more line ran between north and south by the start of 1880. It was rapidly becoming clear that the settlers of Patagonia viewed Santa Domingo rather than Santiago as the center of their political world.
Back in Santiago, while Chile found itself saddled with aiding the fallen Brazilian Monarch, both King and Congress faced a larger problem from within. Was Santa Domingo simply a port of convenience for shipping to Europe or was it a seed of sedition that would one day blossom into secessionism? The first measure taken was establishing a garrison in the city, nominally to protect it from foreign attack. Relations between Chile and France never truly recovered after the division of Polynesia, and the King claimed that Santa Domingo made a tempting target.
It was largely pretext and only a stop-gap measure. A true solution did not present itself until after Chilean soldiers left Brazil. In 1889, Representative Jose Bjornson from the city in question proposed a railroad to connect the capital with Santa Domingo. In effect, it would be a transcontinental railroad, albeit at a rather narrow part of the continent. Congress passed the proposal as well as the funding to begin the project. The eastern portion of the railroad, from Santa Domingo northwest to the Andes took less than a year to complete. The western portion, carving its way from Santiago and through the Andean passes took much longer, and cost twice the original price tag.
The completion of the railroad in 1897 served as both economic and symbolic roles. The Andes always served a division between east and west, despite the relatively short distance by sea, a route that could not always be counted upon during the winter months. The railroad not only united the country, but shortened the line of communication. Instead of weeks, the central government could dispatch envoys in days. Alongside the railroad, telegraph and later telephone lines, shorted the lines of communication down to nothing.
By the start of the 20th Century, Patagonia was largely settled and firmly under the control of Santiago. Chilean prospects for the upcoming century looked bright, but dreams of holding the mantle World Power crumbled as fast as they formed. Before the first decade was out, Chile would see its dream slowly receding as the nation slipped from the pinnacle of its power.
IV) The Wild South
With much of Santiago’s attention turned north and west, Patagonia lay larger neglected by the Chilean central government. To the average settler before 1890, the only sign of any national authority came from the string of forts along Patagonia’s rivers. These forts were built more for holding the land against external threat than for policing the land between rivers. Unlike the American West, Patagonia lacked large, armed and angry bands of Indians to terrorize settlers and clash with soldiers.
At first, lawlessness was not a problem for the settlers. In 1840, land was plentiful and space between homesteads sometimes great. As is human nature, many of these homesteads were close enough together that their communities eventually evolved into towns and later cities. The towns of Patagonia were no different than towns anywhere in the Americas. Honest people lived their lives and worked hard while other, not-so-honest individuals sought easy means to earn a living. Petty crime was a problem the locals solved themselves. Settlers formed their own town governments, established a means to enforce the law and held trials for those incapable of following the rules.
Lacking funds for jails, minor offenders received community service sentences. It was hoped through honest work these criminals would rehabilitate and be absorbed into the community. For more violent offenders, only two realistic options lay open; exile or death. Exile was the standard punishment for such crimes, unless the court deemed the offender simply too dangerous. These condemned, along with any who break their exile, were executed by hanging to death.
More often than not, individuals or groups of individuals took the law into their own hands when it came to crime. Vigilantism grew in popularity as Patagonia’s population swelled from 1840 to 1870. By 1880, over a million settlers called Patagonia home, spread out from Rio Colorado to the Strait of Magellan. Most of the homesteads were small lots, no more than two hundred forty acres. These lots were owned by families who farmed or ranched their land. Larger tracks of land fell into the hands of other individuals, by legal and extralegal means. The further south one travelled, the fewer settlers were found. These southern reaches were suited more for ranches and farms and by 1880, were the domains of the Cattle Dons.
The individual rancher could not hope to contend with the Dons. When Company men, a euphemism for the Dons’ associates, came knocking, the poor homesteader had little choice but to sell out, pack up and leave. Wanting to avoid the wrath of any government officials that might take notice, the Dons did purchase the land and its deed, though for often insultingly low prices. A few Dons grew powerful enough that they could simply have law changed to favor the large cattle companies.
The most powerful of the Cattle Dons was the son of Italian immigrants named Don Juan Carlos de Fiore. It is unlikely that de Fiore was his true name, yet it is the name engraved in the annuals of history. His family originated in what was then the Two Sicilies and though unproven to this date, it is widely believed they were connected with the Sicilian Mafia. True or not, immigration from Sicily did eventually give rise to the Chilean Mafia in the 20th Century.
Operating from his manor in San Carlos de Negros, Don Juan Carlos funded campaigns for various politicians in Patagonia. Where many Dons sought to bribe local officials to turn a blind eye, the truly wealthy and powerful Dons struck at the source of the problem; the laws themselves. Not only were land laws changed to favor the wealthy, Juan Carlos used his influence to gain favors from corrupt officials, primarily in the form of large land grants.
The de Fiore family was not alone in their quest for more land. Other cattle companies imitated the Don, gaining politicians of their own, as well as conflicting claims to de Fiore land. Instead of settling the disputes in long, drawn-out legal battles—pointless since a portion of their gains were ill-gotten—the companies settled matters in a more permanent way. In October 1881, de Fiore men attacked ranch hands of the Espendosa family grazing their cattle on de Fiore lands. With the killing of the ranchers and seizure of livestock, Patagonia’s Cattle Wars began.
These wars lasted throughout the 1880s, and claimed the lives of thousands. So chaotic the scene in southern Patagonia, Santiago was forced to send in the army in fear of the region devolving into petty warlord states. Even then the Dons responsible for the violence eluded justice. The war ended not with them put out of business and their lands open to the general public but rather by treaties between the companies formally establishing the boundaries for each family’s ranching territory. The Dons would continue to dominate regional politics until the 1930s when the new government closed their operations.
Grazing lands were not the only prize to be found in the south. In 1883, gold was discovered on Tierra del Fuego, attracting tens of thousands of would-be prospectors to the island. As with gold rushes elsewhere in the world, miners had no regard for the current occupants of the land. Instead of Indians that were faced in the American West, prospectors found themselves in conflict with the island’s sheep ranchers, a far better armed lot than the drifters were accustom to facing. To police the lawlessness that mining camps brought with it, the citizens of the island formed their own vigilante bands. Unlike on the mainland, the largely British population of Tierra del Fuego did not bother using exile as punishment.
Justice in this frontier was swift and permanent but it was far from arbitrary. The accused faced trials by jury, and the burden of proven guilt was placed upon prosecutors. Most who faced town trials were found not guilty and set free. In the case of prospectors, they were encouraged to leave. Those found guilty often swung from a tree or lamp post if a proper gallows was unavailable. Santiago seldom troubled itself with individual gold miners, but it often involved itself in disputes between miners and mining companies.
While gold was precious, coal was a far more strategic resource in southern Chile. A sizable coaling station industry grew up around the Strait of Magellan since the advent of steam power on ships. Along with other supplies such as food and fresh water, ports in the south grew prosperous off their dealings with ships transiting between oceans. Coal mining was not a get-rich-quick scheme like gold, and took great investments of capital before any return was seen.
To increase their profits, the mine owners often cut corners and paid as little as possible. Mine collapses were a common enough event in the late 19th Century, as were fires, explosions and other accidents that would kill and maim. If a miner was wounded in the line of work, then he was discarded and replaces. Working conditions were never good in general, but were horrid at the southern tip of the mainland. Conditions outside of the mine were cold and isolated. Any food that was not meat was imported from elsewhere in Chile and controlled by the mine owners. If a miner wished to purchase bread or potatoes, then he must do so through the company store.
While modern revisionist historians accuse the mine owners of actively trying to suppress the working man, this was not the case. The owners cared not at all for the miners beyond their productivity. Often, while living in something approaching luxury in the more civilized regions of the country, they would not think of the miners at all. The industrialist seldom gave his producers much thought. There supreme indifference proved even more destructive than active suppression.
In the 1880s, miners began to organize themselves into unions, a task the mine owners did not appreciate. It was only when the workers began to take matters into their own hands did the owners pay attention to them. In the early years, strikes were usually broken by hired help. In 1887, the owners of the mines on Riesco Island called Santiago for assistance. The Elena and Josefina mines on the island supplied coaling stations throughout the Strait, and once the supply of coal ceased, ports ran on reserves. Once those were exhausted, refueling transoceanic voyages became problematic.
King Manuel III had little option but to send in the army to break the strike and reopen the flow of coal. At first, some of the strikers dared to hope the army arrived to aid them. A few miners divined their true purpose and left the picket line before shots were fired. February 29, 1888, became known as the Leap Year Massacre when hundreds of miners were wounded and seventy-four killed. The mines reopened the following month, but soldiers were called in again in 1890 and 1891. After the third time, King Manuel presented a plan before Congress to nationalize the Riesco Island mines.
When miners shut down the mine a third time, to similar yet less bloody results, it became painfully clear something was not right with the mines. The King decided he could not trust the mine owners with such an important deposit of coal. Despite lobbying efforts by mine owners across Chile, who feared their operations may be next, Riesco mines fell into control of Santiago in 1892 after the mine owners were compensated for their losses. Any miner hoping for improvement left disappointed as the government used convict labor to fill any shortage in mines. Honest, hardworking coal miners gradually packed up and left the mines, though most lacked the money to leave the island. Within ten years, the island was effectively transformed into a penal colony.
During the same decade of miner strikes, Santiago faced a problem of Patagonia growing more and more distant. With the Andes cutting the country in two, the primary means of communication was by ship. As was the primary means of trade. There were few viable means of herding cattle from the pasture to the Santiago region. Nor was it practical to ship beef there and turn around an export it to Europe. Ranchers and settlers banded together to build their own port facilities and trade directly with European partners. The largest of these privately founded ports was that of Santa Domingo de la Chubui.
Built seventy kilometers from the mouth of the Chubui River, Santa Domingo became a hub of activity between the Negros and Colorado Rivers. Ranchers drove cattle for hundreds of kilometers to reach the port. By the time they arrived, the herd were put back to pasture to fatten them up after the long march. In 1871, the first railroad constructed snaked north from Santa Domingo, allowing easier access to the port for ranchers. Three more line ran between north and south by the start of 1880. It was rapidly becoming clear that the settlers of Patagonia viewed Santa Domingo rather than Santiago as the center of their political world.
Back in Santiago, while Chile found itself saddled with aiding the fallen Brazilian Monarch, both King and Congress faced a larger problem from within. Was Santa Domingo simply a port of convenience for shipping to Europe or was it a seed of sedition that would one day blossom into secessionism? The first measure taken was establishing a garrison in the city, nominally to protect it from foreign attack. Relations between Chile and France never truly recovered after the division of Polynesia, and the King claimed that Santa Domingo made a tempting target.
It was largely pretext and only a stop-gap measure. A true solution did not present itself until after Chilean soldiers left Brazil. In 1889, Representative Jose Bjornson from the city in question proposed a railroad to connect the capital with Santa Domingo. In effect, it would be a transcontinental railroad, albeit at a rather narrow part of the continent. Congress passed the proposal as well as the funding to begin the project. The eastern portion of the railroad, from Santa Domingo northwest to the Andes took less than a year to complete. The western portion, carving its way from Santiago and through the Andean passes took much longer, and cost twice the original price tag.
The completion of the railroad in 1897 served as both economic and symbolic roles. The Andes always served a division between east and west, despite the relatively short distance by sea, a route that could not always be counted upon during the winter months. The railroad not only united the country, but shortened the line of communication. Instead of weeks, the central government could dispatch envoys in days. Alongside the railroad, telegraph and later telephone lines, shorted the lines of communication down to nothing.
By the start of the 20th Century, Patagonia was largely settled and firmly under the control of Santiago. Chilean prospects for the upcoming century looked bright, but dreams of holding the mantle World Power crumbled as fast as they formed. Before the first decade was out, Chile would see its dream slowly receding as the nation slipped from the pinnacle of its power.
Fin.
V) The New Century
The beginning of the end for the South Sea Empire occurred in 1902; when the United States and Colombia sat down to negotiate constructing a shortcut from the Atlantic to Pacific. The Panama Canal would prove to be a serious blow to the Chilean economy, diverting shipping that otherwise would round the tip of the continent and provision in Chilean ports to a much shorter, direct route between Europe and Asia. It was a situation Panama would face in the 21st Century when shipping began to traverse the Arctic Ocean for an even shorter route.
King Manuel IV put considerable pressure on Bogotá to resist American offers. The King put forth a proposal to Congress that Chile help Colombia build the canal. Not only would these keep the Anglo-Americans out of Latin American affairs, but it would put Chile in the position of being part owner of the canal and recouping the losses the canal would cause in the Deep South. Colombia favored Chile’s approach and attempted to rebuff American advances in the project, telling the American president that their aid was not required.
Instead of taking no for an answer, the United States began arming a separatist movement in the department of Panama. Since 1899, Panamanian rebels fought the Colombian government and would have proved a hindrance to any canal project. The struggle for Independence dated back to fall of the Spanish Empire, when Panama joined Grand Colombia of its own accord. Not all Panamanians were in favor of being part of Colombia, and the United States gave much aid to these rebels. In exchange for their assistance, the new government of Panama would lease a tract of land across the isthmus to the Americans for the construction of an inter-ocean canal.
Santiago and Bogotá saw the situation differently. Both King and Congress were suspicious of American motives and expected them to try and annex Panama. In a letter sent to the American embassy on May 19, 1902, the King made it plainly clear that Chile would not tolerate such an action. Had that been the totality of the message, events might have simmered down. Instead, the King went further in his letter condemning American intervention in the internal affairs of Colombia and accused them of trying to destabilize the whole region. Thus began a heated exchange between the two governments that threatened to spiral out of control.
In late 1902, King Manuel issued a mobilization decree. Though he needed the Congress to declare war, Manuel did not waste any time in putting his country on war-time standing. The Chilean Navy assembled a fleet of battleships equal to American power. Though their navy was slightly larger on paper, the United States Navy recently emerged victorious against Spain and its sailors and officers held more experience. A naval war would be fairly evenly matched. The land war would be a different affair. Without Brazil as an ally, the Chilean Navy would have a long voyage to reach the Caribbean whereas the United States would have a short hop from ports such as New Orleans to land its army in Panama.
Chile’s Chief of Staff told the King what he did not want to hear; that there was no way Chile could prevent an American landing in Panama. If war came, the Chilean Army would have to land on the pacific coast of the wayward department and dislodge the United States Army. Given that the Americans had a great number of combat veterans in their army, many more so than the paltry few Chilean soldiers that served in the Brazilian Civil War, defeating them would be the greatest challenge the Chilean Army ever faced.
As tensions escalated, France (who tried and failed to build their own canal in the 1870s) stepped in to place peacemaker. The French Foreign Minister made it clear to all parties involved in Panama that the European powers favored peace in the Americas. France’s peace proposal favored the Americans too greatly for Santiago’s taste. Chile turned to their traditional friend in Europe for backing, but the British were busy with their own problems, chiefly South Africa. They advised against a war, for any war would ultimately benefit the Americans with their larger population and industrial base.
With no friends or allies backing them, Chile agreed to sit down with French, American and Colombian officials to work out a peaceful solution. The United States would receive a majority share in the canal, with Colombia and Chile owning their own smaller pieces of the project. The profit Chile would earn from its share would not offset the financial losses the canal would cause to its own economy. In the end, it would be the Americans who would suffer the most in Panama. Feeling betrayed by the Americans when a canal treaty did not involve an independent Panama, the rebels took to attacking work crews and sabotaging the progress on the Panama Canal.
As was predicted, when the Canal opened in 1915, shipping through the Strait of Magellan and around Cape Horn dwindled. Any ship that could shave days or weeks of their journey steamed for Panama and paid the transit fee. Former bustling ports in southern Chile stagnated and coaling stations sat idle and full of coal. With a demand in coal reduced, coal mines wound down their production and miners began to lose their jobs. The diversion of shipping saw Chile’s exports decline as well. Even before the Panama Canal opened, the wheat market stagnated. So much wheat was produced in the United States and Canada, that when shipping diverted to the north, Chile’s exports to Europe falters. Beef exports remained high, and the local economy remained strong in Patagonia, but Chile’s Pacific provinces suffered.
Export of copper and nitrates began to slide in 1909. After a brief peak during the Great War, the slide continued, making mines unprofitable and forcing more miners out of work. Chile’s aggressive actions in the 19th Century began to return to haunt them as their manufacturing sector took additional hits. Though Peru was still nominally a puppet, Chile’s other neighbors began to import cheaper goods from abroad. Again, the Great War caused a brief spike in Chile’s economy, but it did little to stop the decline of the Kingdom.
With the economy and turmoil, Manuel IV decided to step down in favor of his son. On January 12, 1910, Manuel V was crowned as Chile’s final king. The people had hopes that a new leader could turn the nation around, but were inevitably disappointed as Manuel V proved an inept manager and a poor politician. As with his father, his economic policy favored prominent families and royal favorites much to the detriment of the population as a whole. The Oligarchs that dominated Chile’s economy grew richer with his policies even when the economic continued to sink. It would be an oversimplification of the problem to blame the Panama Canal for the depression. While the Canal did hurt Chile, it was poor domestic policies and corruption that sank what should have been the dominate economy of South America.
Manuel V’s first diplomatic crisis struck in 1914 when Europe dove headlong into war. Congress was divided on a response as well. Some Congressmen, despite Britain’s apparent abandonment of Chile in 1902, favored entering the war on Britain’s side. With war in gear, the demand for nitrates skyrocketed; cause a boom in the nitrate mining industry. The demand for food and other necessities of war fueled a minor and temporary economic recovery in Chile as they supplied Britain’s needs. Other Congressmen, conscious that their constituents were either German immigrants or descendants of Germans favored a more pro-Central Power policy. If they aided Germany, it was hoped Chile might be rewarded by gaining European possessions in the Pacific.
Manuel V did what he did best in a crisis situation; nothing. Chile would remain neutral in the Great War, supplying both sides with the goods they required. Trade with Germany did dry up as the British blockade turned back Chilean freighters. As the war progressed and Chilean cargo vessels became victims of German submarines, the pro-German attitude began to fade. When the war ended, and economic recession hit the belligerents, Chile’s economy saw its bottom fell out as exports shrunk to a trickle. Again, the King did little to nothing to remedy the problem. Just what exactly he could do to fix Chile was never made clear, but that the people wanted something done was obvious.
The King finally stepped up to take action in 1920, when a dock strike in Valparaiso turned into a riot. With revolutions hitting Europe, the King feared a socialist takeover of his own country. Instead of inaction, he ordered the army to move and put down the riot. Hundreds of riots were killed in the dockside massacres that shocked even the monarchy’s staunchest supporters. From April 17, 1921 onward, the King’s response to protests turned heavy-handed quickly. He would take no chances that his crown would go the way of the Tsar or the Kaiser.
The crackdown had opposite the desired effects. Instead of quieting, the people grew louder in their discontent. Martial law was declared in all the major cities and patrolling soldiers were given orders to shoot on sight at the first sign of troublemaking. Repression turned the populace as a whole against not just the king, but the crown as well. By 1923, with several more massacres behind them, the poorly paid enlisted soldiers refused to carry out any more acts of violence. On December 14, 1923, units of the Chilean Army holding down Concepcion mutinied and joined a growing uprising that quickly brought the city under the control of self-proclaimed republicans.
Not all republicans had the same idea of what constituted a republic. A majority of them wished for a democratic republic much like the other nations of the Americas. They believed an elected president would be held more accountable for his actions than a life-long king. Other, smaller groups took a lesson from the Red Russians and wished to establish a socialist state. Not only would they abolish the monarchy, but they would tear down the whole corrupt system and start anew. Both sides would spend a great deal of energy fighting in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s.
Further mutinies in Valparaiso threatened to encircle the capital. With the whole army apparently in revolt, Manuel V was at a loss as what to do next. His first act involved sending his family away from the capital. They pleaded for him to escape, but the king refused to abandon his throne while is still rested beneath his seat. He would fight to hold on to power as long as he thought it possible. Unfortunately for the king, his judgment was as poor in this case as most of situations during his reign. While his royal guard remained loyal, the mutinies and uprisings took on a life of their own, exploding into a full-blown revolution by February.
The first week of March saw Santiago under siege. Entire divisions of the Chilean Army failed to heed his call for relief. Within one hundred kilometers of the capital, only the loyalty of the navy and air force could be relied upon. The Navy was useless in defending Santiago, but the Chilean Air Force managed to hold back the inevitable march of the revolutionaries. Their efforts were in vain, for at 1035 on March 15, 1924, rebel artillery moved within range of the royal palace, firing the first of hundreds of rounds that leveled the complex.
Fires raged until the next day, when rebels stormed the ruins to find not a sign of King Manuel V. Hundreds of bodies lay beneath the rubble, some completely unidentifiable. One hand was found to have a royal ring upon its finger, but this proved nothing to the rebels. For twenty years to come, rumors than Manuel V survived, either in hiding within Chile or in exile, circulated through Central Chile. It is now widely believed that the hand did indeed belong to the king and that he died in the bombardment of his palace.
Upon the ruins of the palace, the rebel leaders declared the Republic of Chile. Only three days after their common foe was dead, republican and socialists elements of the revolution turned upon each other and plunged Chile into a sixteen year long civil war. Chile would never reclaim the place in the sun it held in the 19th Century, and three decades of communist rule brought the country close to disintegration. It was not until open, multipartisan elections were held in 1971 did Chile finally climb back on the rails towards recovery.
V) The New Century
The beginning of the end for the South Sea Empire occurred in 1902; when the United States and Colombia sat down to negotiate constructing a shortcut from the Atlantic to Pacific. The Panama Canal would prove to be a serious blow to the Chilean economy, diverting shipping that otherwise would round the tip of the continent and provision in Chilean ports to a much shorter, direct route between Europe and Asia. It was a situation Panama would face in the 21st Century when shipping began to traverse the Arctic Ocean for an even shorter route.
King Manuel IV put considerable pressure on Bogotá to resist American offers. The King put forth a proposal to Congress that Chile help Colombia build the canal. Not only would these keep the Anglo-Americans out of Latin American affairs, but it would put Chile in the position of being part owner of the canal and recouping the losses the canal would cause in the Deep South. Colombia favored Chile’s approach and attempted to rebuff American advances in the project, telling the American president that their aid was not required.
Instead of taking no for an answer, the United States began arming a separatist movement in the department of Panama. Since 1899, Panamanian rebels fought the Colombian government and would have proved a hindrance to any canal project. The struggle for Independence dated back to fall of the Spanish Empire, when Panama joined Grand Colombia of its own accord. Not all Panamanians were in favor of being part of Colombia, and the United States gave much aid to these rebels. In exchange for their assistance, the new government of Panama would lease a tract of land across the isthmus to the Americans for the construction of an inter-ocean canal.
Santiago and Bogotá saw the situation differently. Both King and Congress were suspicious of American motives and expected them to try and annex Panama. In a letter sent to the American embassy on May 19, 1902, the King made it plainly clear that Chile would not tolerate such an action. Had that been the totality of the message, events might have simmered down. Instead, the King went further in his letter condemning American intervention in the internal affairs of Colombia and accused them of trying to destabilize the whole region. Thus began a heated exchange between the two governments that threatened to spiral out of control.
In late 1902, King Manuel issued a mobilization decree. Though he needed the Congress to declare war, Manuel did not waste any time in putting his country on war-time standing. The Chilean Navy assembled a fleet of battleships equal to American power. Though their navy was slightly larger on paper, the United States Navy recently emerged victorious against Spain and its sailors and officers held more experience. A naval war would be fairly evenly matched. The land war would be a different affair. Without Brazil as an ally, the Chilean Navy would have a long voyage to reach the Caribbean whereas the United States would have a short hop from ports such as New Orleans to land its army in Panama.
Chile’s Chief of Staff told the King what he did not want to hear; that there was no way Chile could prevent an American landing in Panama. If war came, the Chilean Army would have to land on the pacific coast of the wayward department and dislodge the United States Army. Given that the Americans had a great number of combat veterans in their army, many more so than the paltry few Chilean soldiers that served in the Brazilian Civil War, defeating them would be the greatest challenge the Chilean Army ever faced.
As tensions escalated, France (who tried and failed to build their own canal in the 1870s) stepped in to place peacemaker. The French Foreign Minister made it clear to all parties involved in Panama that the European powers favored peace in the Americas. France’s peace proposal favored the Americans too greatly for Santiago’s taste. Chile turned to their traditional friend in Europe for backing, but the British were busy with their own problems, chiefly South Africa. They advised against a war, for any war would ultimately benefit the Americans with their larger population and industrial base.
With no friends or allies backing them, Chile agreed to sit down with French, American and Colombian officials to work out a peaceful solution. The United States would receive a majority share in the canal, with Colombia and Chile owning their own smaller pieces of the project. The profit Chile would earn from its share would not offset the financial losses the canal would cause to its own economy. In the end, it would be the Americans who would suffer the most in Panama. Feeling betrayed by the Americans when a canal treaty did not involve an independent Panama, the rebels took to attacking work crews and sabotaging the progress on the Panama Canal.
As was predicted, when the Canal opened in 1915, shipping through the Strait of Magellan and around Cape Horn dwindled. Any ship that could shave days or weeks of their journey steamed for Panama and paid the transit fee. Former bustling ports in southern Chile stagnated and coaling stations sat idle and full of coal. With a demand in coal reduced, coal mines wound down their production and miners began to lose their jobs. The diversion of shipping saw Chile’s exports decline as well. Even before the Panama Canal opened, the wheat market stagnated. So much wheat was produced in the United States and Canada, that when shipping diverted to the north, Chile’s exports to Europe falters. Beef exports remained high, and the local economy remained strong in Patagonia, but Chile’s Pacific provinces suffered.
Export of copper and nitrates began to slide in 1909. After a brief peak during the Great War, the slide continued, making mines unprofitable and forcing more miners out of work. Chile’s aggressive actions in the 19th Century began to return to haunt them as their manufacturing sector took additional hits. Though Peru was still nominally a puppet, Chile’s other neighbors began to import cheaper goods from abroad. Again, the Great War caused a brief spike in Chile’s economy, but it did little to stop the decline of the Kingdom.
With the economy and turmoil, Manuel IV decided to step down in favor of his son. On January 12, 1910, Manuel V was crowned as Chile’s final king. The people had hopes that a new leader could turn the nation around, but were inevitably disappointed as Manuel V proved an inept manager and a poor politician. As with his father, his economic policy favored prominent families and royal favorites much to the detriment of the population as a whole. The Oligarchs that dominated Chile’s economy grew richer with his policies even when the economic continued to sink. It would be an oversimplification of the problem to blame the Panama Canal for the depression. While the Canal did hurt Chile, it was poor domestic policies and corruption that sank what should have been the dominate economy of South America.
Manuel V’s first diplomatic crisis struck in 1914 when Europe dove headlong into war. Congress was divided on a response as well. Some Congressmen, despite Britain’s apparent abandonment of Chile in 1902, favored entering the war on Britain’s side. With war in gear, the demand for nitrates skyrocketed; cause a boom in the nitrate mining industry. The demand for food and other necessities of war fueled a minor and temporary economic recovery in Chile as they supplied Britain’s needs. Other Congressmen, conscious that their constituents were either German immigrants or descendants of Germans favored a more pro-Central Power policy. If they aided Germany, it was hoped Chile might be rewarded by gaining European possessions in the Pacific.
Manuel V did what he did best in a crisis situation; nothing. Chile would remain neutral in the Great War, supplying both sides with the goods they required. Trade with Germany did dry up as the British blockade turned back Chilean freighters. As the war progressed and Chilean cargo vessels became victims of German submarines, the pro-German attitude began to fade. When the war ended, and economic recession hit the belligerents, Chile’s economy saw its bottom fell out as exports shrunk to a trickle. Again, the King did little to nothing to remedy the problem. Just what exactly he could do to fix Chile was never made clear, but that the people wanted something done was obvious.
The King finally stepped up to take action in 1920, when a dock strike in Valparaiso turned into a riot. With revolutions hitting Europe, the King feared a socialist takeover of his own country. Instead of inaction, he ordered the army to move and put down the riot. Hundreds of riots were killed in the dockside massacres that shocked even the monarchy’s staunchest supporters. From April 17, 1921 onward, the King’s response to protests turned heavy-handed quickly. He would take no chances that his crown would go the way of the Tsar or the Kaiser.
The crackdown had opposite the desired effects. Instead of quieting, the people grew louder in their discontent. Martial law was declared in all the major cities and patrolling soldiers were given orders to shoot on sight at the first sign of troublemaking. Repression turned the populace as a whole against not just the king, but the crown as well. By 1923, with several more massacres behind them, the poorly paid enlisted soldiers refused to carry out any more acts of violence. On December 14, 1923, units of the Chilean Army holding down Concepcion mutinied and joined a growing uprising that quickly brought the city under the control of self-proclaimed republicans.
Not all republicans had the same idea of what constituted a republic. A majority of them wished for a democratic republic much like the other nations of the Americas. They believed an elected president would be held more accountable for his actions than a life-long king. Other, smaller groups took a lesson from the Red Russians and wished to establish a socialist state. Not only would they abolish the monarchy, but they would tear down the whole corrupt system and start anew. Both sides would spend a great deal of energy fighting in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s.
Further mutinies in Valparaiso threatened to encircle the capital. With the whole army apparently in revolt, Manuel V was at a loss as what to do next. His first act involved sending his family away from the capital. They pleaded for him to escape, but the king refused to abandon his throne while is still rested beneath his seat. He would fight to hold on to power as long as he thought it possible. Unfortunately for the king, his judgment was as poor in this case as most of situations during his reign. While his royal guard remained loyal, the mutinies and uprisings took on a life of their own, exploding into a full-blown revolution by February.
The first week of March saw Santiago under siege. Entire divisions of the Chilean Army failed to heed his call for relief. Within one hundred kilometers of the capital, only the loyalty of the navy and air force could be relied upon. The Navy was useless in defending Santiago, but the Chilean Air Force managed to hold back the inevitable march of the revolutionaries. Their efforts were in vain, for at 1035 on March 15, 1924, rebel artillery moved within range of the royal palace, firing the first of hundreds of rounds that leveled the complex.
Fires raged until the next day, when rebels stormed the ruins to find not a sign of King Manuel V. Hundreds of bodies lay beneath the rubble, some completely unidentifiable. One hand was found to have a royal ring upon its finger, but this proved nothing to the rebels. For twenty years to come, rumors than Manuel V survived, either in hiding within Chile or in exile, circulated through Central Chile. It is now widely believed that the hand did indeed belong to the king and that he died in the bombardment of his palace.
Upon the ruins of the palace, the rebel leaders declared the Republic of Chile. Only three days after their common foe was dead, republican and socialists elements of the revolution turned upon each other and plunged Chile into a sixteen year long civil war. Chile would never reclaim the place in the sun it held in the 19th Century, and three decades of communist rule brought the country close to disintegration. It was not until open, multipartisan elections were held in 1971 did Chile finally climb back on the rails towards recovery.