War of the Pacific
Chile fought Bolivia and Peru from 1879 to 1884 over bird droppings and saltpetre, and took a coastline off Bolivia permanently. The Atacama desert had been worthless until nitrates and guano turned out to be the fertiliser and explosive feedstock of the industrial world, and the borders in that empty region had never been settled with any precision. Chilean companies with British capital worked deposits in Bolivian and Peruvian territory under concessions. The war began when Bolivia raised the export tax on a Chilean company in breach of a treaty, the company refused to pay, Bolivia moved to confiscate it, and Chile occupied the port of Antofagasta in February 1879. Peru was bound to Bolivia by a secret defensive alliance and was drawn in. The war was decided at sea first. The Peruvian ironclad Huáscar under Miguel Grau raided Chilean shipping for six months in a campaign still studied, and was cornered and taken at Angamos in October 1879, after which Chile could move armies by water and its enemies could not. The land campaigns took the nitrate provinces, then Lima in January 1881, which was occupied for three years while Peruvian irregulars fought on in the sierra. Bolivia lost its entire coast and has demanded sovereign access to the sea ever since, taking the case to the International Court in 2013 and losing in 2018. It still maintains a navy on Lake Titicaca and marks a Day of the Sea every March. The nitrate wealth then reshaped Chile itself, funding the state for four decades and creating a mining proletariat in the north whose politics produced the country's labour movement. Synthetic ammonia after 1913 made the whole thing largely worthless.
- Year: 1879 CE
- Category: Military
