Established by Spanish conquistadors in the 1540s, the “captaincy-general” of Chile developed as a small and neglected agrarian colony on the fringe of the Spanish American empire, its isolation enhancing what became after two-and-a-half centuries a distinctive embryonic national culture. The formation of great landed estates sharply stratified colonial society, the predominantly mestizo laboring poor dominated by an upper class modified by eighteenth-century immigration, much of it Basque (Chapter 1). The wars of independence brought the Chilean nation-state into being: its soldiers and sailors played a key role in the emancipation of the viceroyalty of Peru. The quest of the new nation's early leaders for a suitable political order culminated in a comprehensive settlement by Conservative politicians in the 1830s. This gave the country a record of institutional continuity unusual in the upheaval-prone Spanish America of the nineteenth century (Chapters 2 and 3).