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The British in the Atacama Desert: The Cultural Bases of Economic Imperialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Michael Monteón
Michael Monteón
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Extract

In the nineteenth century, the British were popular throughout the west coast of South America as the cultural and economic allies of the ruling elites. The criollos of Peru and Chile, who had inherited the colonial social order, looked to France in matters of art and fashion but viewed the British as the providers of commerce and economic progress. They welcomed Irish, Welsh, and English immigrants as merchants, artisans, and prospective grooms. In Peru, the British played a key role in developing the market for guano (the fertilizer composed of bird excrement and the precursor of the nitrate, salitre, trade), and British ships took Chile's copper and wheat to England from the 1840's through the early 1870's. By 1870, the development of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and the London Bank of Mexico and South America assured the British dominance of the commerce along the west coast.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 1975 , pp. 117 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1975

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References

1 See Donghi, Tulio Halperin, La Historia Contemporanéa de América Latina (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1969)Google Scholar, especially his chapters on the resurgence of the neo-colonial order.

2 On the guano trade see Levin, Jonathan, The Export Economies: Their Pattern of Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, and Mathew, W. M., “Peru and the British Guano Market, 1840–1870,” The Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XXIII (April 1970).Google Scholar

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14 Bermúdez, Historia, pp. 141 ff., provides the single best history of the early technology of the nitrate oficinas; there is an excellent description of the early steamdriven processing plant in Cole, George R. Fitz-Roy, The Peruvians at Home (London, 1884), pp. 222–229.Google Scholar Cole visited the desert oficinas in 1873. For data on the growth of nitrate exports in the 1860's and 1870's, see Cruchaga, Miguel, Salitre y Guano (Madrid: Editorial Reus, 1929), pp. 171–181.Google Scholar

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17 The essential new work on North's career is by Blakemore, Harold, British Nitrates and Chilean Politics, 1886–1896: Balmaceda and North (London: The Athlone Press, 1974)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

18 See, for example, the report on municipal administration in Iquique in The South Pacific Mail (Callao), Sept. 3, 1872.

19 Melgarejo was one of the most colorful of Bolivia's long series of military dictators. A complete megalomaniac, he helped ruin Bolivia's weak economy with new debts and the constant debasement of the currency; on the economic consequences of his rule, see Markbreit's, L. report in The Despatches from U.S. Ministers to Bolivia, 1848–1906, v. 3, March 4, 1870 (Cochabamba).Google Scholar

20 The elite social life revolved around immigrant clubs; see The Valparaiso and West Coast Mail (Valparaiso), Jan. 25, 1873.Google Scholar

21 Chileans were originally brought to Peru to build the railroads contracted by Henry Meiggs; many of these railroad workers then went to work in the desert. See Stewart, Watt, Henry Meiggs, Yankee Pizarro (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1946), pp. 115–127Google Scholar, and , Stewart's article, “El trabajador chileno y los ferrocarriles del Peru, Revista Chilena de História y Geografía, LXXXV, no. 93 (Julio-Diciembre, 1938), 128–173.Google Scholar

22 Wiener, Charles, Peroú et Bolivie (Paris, 1880)Google Scholar, the opening chapter; see also Cole, Peruvians at Home, pp. 113–114 and 230.

23 Ugarte, Bosquejo, 74.

24 On the yellow fever epidemic, see John W. Caldwell dispatch March 31, 1869 in Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Bolivia, v. 3; on smallpox, see The South Pacific Times, July 4 and Aug. 8, 1872.

25 The London Bank of Mexico and South America building, constructed in Iquique in 1872, burned down in 1874 in a fire that killed six and destroyed thirty buildings. See Valparaiso and West Coast Mail, Jan. 16, 1874. Once established, fire brigades became a favorite pastime of the merchants and elite young men. See El Mercurio (Valparaiso), April 11, 1881.

26 José Toríbio Medina, Una Excursión a Tarapacá, los Juzgados de Tarapacá (Santiago, 1952, reprint of articles that originally ran in El Mercurio, 1880–1881).

27 Knife and gunfights were common in both ports; see, for example, The Valparaiso and West Coast Mail, Aug. 2, 1873.

28 Based on despatches of L. Markbreit in U.S. Ministers in Bolivia, v. 3, Aug. 20 and 28, 1872 (La Paz); the Diario de Noticias (La Paz), Aug. 18 and Sept. 3, 1872; and Arce, Narraciones, pp. 141–45.

29 See Memoria que presenta al Congreso Ordinario de 1878 el Ministro de Gobierno: Policía, Obras Publicas y Educación (Lima, 1878), 110Google Scholar ff.; and Alcazar, Carlos Camprubi, História de los Bancos en el Peru (1860–1879), v. 1 (Lima: n.p., 1957), 218–220.Google Scholar

30 Cruchaga, Salitre.

31 Ugarte, Bosquejo, pp. 150–51.

32 See Bermúdez, Historia de Salitre; and Blakemore, British Nitrates.

33 Paz, Julio, História Económica de Bolivia (La Paz: Imprenta Ayacucho, 1927), 134.Google Scholar

34 The Bolivians argued that the new taxes did not violate the existing treaty because the Antofagasta Nitrate and Railroad Company was a British not a Chilean company. See documents inserted in Pettis dispatch, Sept. 30, 1879, U.S. Ministers to Bolivia, v. 7.

35 For a different interpretation of the origins of the war, see Burr, Robert, By Reason or Force (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965)Google Scholar, in which he argues the war grew out of Chile's balance of power diplomacy.

36 There are several accounts of the War of the Pacific. For two brief ones, see Bulnes, Gonzalo, Chile and Peru: The Causes of the War of the Pacific (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria, 1920)Google Scholar, based on Bulnes' longer work La Querra del Pacífico, 3 v. (Valparaiso: Imprenta Universo, 1911–1918)Google Scholar; and Dennis, W. J., Tacna and Arica: an account of the Chile-Peru boundary dispute and the arbitration of the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931).Google Scholar

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38 The best Chilean inquiry into the nation's early development is Encina, Francisco A., Nuestra Inferioridad Económica, Sus Causas, Sus Consequencias, 2 v. (Santiago: Imprenta Universitaria, 1912).Google Scholar

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40 Michels, Semper i, La Industria del Salitre en Chile, translated from the German by Gandarillas, Javier and Salas, O. Ghigliotto (Santiago: Imprenta Barcelona, 1908), table p. 329.Google Scholar

41 El Mercurio, June 29, 1880.

42 Billinghurst, Guillermo, Legislación sobre Salitre y Borax en Tarapacá (Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes, 1903), 458–465.Google Scholar

43 Necochea, Hernán Ramírez, Historia del Imperialismo en Chile (Santiago: Editorial Austral, 1970), 100–101.Google Scholar

44 Billinghurst, Guillermo, Los Capitales Salttreros de Tarapacá (Santiago, 1889), pp. 50Google Scholar ff.

45 See Blakemore, British Nitrates, and his article, “John Thomas North, the Nitrate King,” History Today, XII (July 1962)Google Scholar; Rippy, J. Fred, “Economic Enterprises of the ‘Nitrate King’ and His Associates in Chile,” Pacific Historical Review, XVII (November 1948)Google Scholar; and Billinghurst, Guillermo, El Abastecimiento de Agua Potable del Puerto de Iquique (Iquique, 1887), pp. 58–78.Google Scholar

46 See particularly The Economist (August 1, 1896), 999.

47 Brown, Joseph R., “Nitrate Crises, Combinations, and the Chilean Government in the Nitrate Age,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XLIII (May 1963)Google Scholar; see also El Ministerio de Hacienda, La Industria de Salitre en Chile (Santiago: Imprenta Universo, 1933–1934), IGoogle Scholar, 7–8 and 23.

48 Droguett, Claudio y P., Legislatión Salitrera: su pasada, su presente, su porvenir (Valparaiso, 1897), pp. 33–4.Google Scholar

49 Olivar, Francisco A., La Combinación Salitrera y Sus Hechuras (Valparaiso, 1893), p. 4.Google Scholar

50 Semper i Michels, La Industria, pp. 137 ff.

51 Ministerio de Hacienda, Antecedentes sobre la Industria Salitrera (Santiago: Imprenta Universo, 1925), table 21Google Scholar; see also Emiliano , López S., Consideraciones sobre la Industria del Salitre (Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes, 1925), p. 64.Google Scholar

52 Sesto Censo Jeneral de la Población de Chile, 26 de Noviembre, 1885 (Valparaiso, 1889), IGoogle Scholar, xxxix; and Séptimo Censo Jeneral de la Población de Chile, 28 de Noviembre, 1895Google Scholar (Valparaiso, 1900), I, 45, and II, 94 and 354.

53 See my thesis, “The Nitrate Miners and the Origins of the Chilean Left, 1880–1925” (unpublished, Harvard University, 1974).Google Scholar The first three chapters discuss the British in the Atacama desert and the organization of the labor force there.

54 See my thesis, “The Nitrate Miners and the Origins of the Chilean Left, 1880–1925” (unpublished, Harvard University, 1974).Google Scholar The first three chapters discuss the British in the Atacama desert and the organization of the labor force there.

55 Semper i Michels, La Industria, p. 137.

56 Cruz, Anfbal Pinto Santa, Tres Ensayos sobre Chile y América Latina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Solar, 1971).Google Scholar

57 Necochea, Hernán Ramírez in Balmaceda y la Contrarevolución de 1891 (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1958Google Scholar) has written the most important attempt to document North's alliance with reactionary elements of the Congress against Balmaceda; Blakemore's work is essentially a response to Ramírez Necochea. Other Marxist works that support the conspiracy thesis are Jobet, Julio César, Ensayo Crítico del Desarrollo Económico-Social de Chile (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1955)Google Scholar, and Segall, Marcelo, Desarrollo del Capitalismo en Chile, Cinco Ensayos Dialécticos (Santiago: Editorial del Pacífico, 1953).Google Scholar

58 Blakemore, British Nitrates: see also his article, “The Chilean Revolution of 1891 and Its Historiography,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XLV (August 1965).Google Scholar

59 Vicuña, Santiago Marín, Los Ferrocariles de Chile (Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes, 1916), p. 35Google Scholar; and Brown, Joseph R., “The Chilean Nitrate Railways Controversy,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XXXVIII (November 1958), p. 465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 I am indebted to Professor Davis of Cornell University who in his critique of this paper forced me to clarify this last section; the phrase is that of David Landes and emerged during an excellent general discussion of this paper and that of Professor Reynolds.

61 Platt, D. C. M., Latin America and the British Trade, 1806–1914 (London: A. and C. Black, 1972).Google Scholar The concluding chapter discusses the impact of the Baring crisis on British investment in Latin America.