The Growing Power of the Republic of Chile

THE American Geographical Society has just printed in a neat pamphlet¹ of eighty-eight pages an address delivered before the society in New York, on the eighteenth day of February last, by Mr. Albert G. Browne, Jr., formerly a distinguished member of the Suffolk bar. The title of the address is that which heads this article. A few months ago Mr. Browne visited the republics of South America, and made a special and careful study of Chile under circumstances exceptionally favorable for observation and judgment. Some of the ripest fruit of this study is garnered in this brief brochure. Mr. Browne’s style is admirable in its vividness, succinctness, and lucidity,and his treatise,though packed as full of learning and information as an egg is full of meat, is highly entertaining. Tlie keen interest which its perusal will command in all intelligent readers cannot fail to be mixed in Americans with a lively sense of shame and irritation. Altogether the publication is noteworthy, and the reading thereof will make an era in the experience of a great many cultivated persons.

Chile is a wonderful country, and its brief life lias abounded in extraordinary and romantic incidents. Leaving out of account the nitrate-hearing districts of Peru and Bolivia, which were the cause of the recent live years’ war and which have become the spoil of the victor, Chile is substantially a long, narrow strip of land, lying wholly within the temperate zone, between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. Its most southern point is in latitude corresponding to that of New York ; and “then the coast breaks up into a labyrinth of islands which reach as far as the Straits of Magellan.” All of these islands, Cape Horn being a part of one of them, belong to Chile. In territory Chile is the smallest but two, and in population probably the smallest but three, of the South American states. It covers upon the map about the same space as Dakota, and its population, by the census of 1875, was very nearly that of Missouri, being but a little in excess of two millions. This is the state which has recently defeated, in a long and almost uninterruptedly successful war, the allied powers of two South American nations, either of which was its apparent equal in resource’s; which has torn away from the conquered states the richest part of their possessions, without compensation or the promise of compensation, and has thus made itself the wealthiest government of its size in the world ; which has now become “ the first American power in the Pacific,” and in its progress to this position has administered to the United States a snub as complete and successful as was ever given by one nation to another.

Mr. Browne’s essay deals rapidly, but clearly and convincingly, with the causes, both near and remote, of this remarkable growth. During all the period of the Spanish supremacy in America, Chile was regarded as a barren and unrewarding region, and was “ a poor and humble, almost a despised, dependency to the vice-royalty of Peru.” Mexico and Peru, with their comparatively advanced civilization and developed mineral wealth, drew to themselves most of those European noblemen and adventurers who sought the Spanish possessions in the New World, while Chile was colonized by hardy immigrants, mostly from the northern provinces of Spain. Court favorites sought appointments where the spoils were richest. Upon the west coast “ Lima was the point where greed and ambition centred,” while Santiago di Chile “ was esteemed as undesirable a post as a British governor might deem St. John’s in Newfoundland in compari-

son with Ottawa.” Chile, “ thus escaping foreign rapacity, was abandoned more to self-government than were the other Spanish dependencies.” It also suffered peculiar hardships ; its chief coast town, Valparaiso, being sacked by buccaneers in the seventeenth century, and thrice in the two succeeding centuries nearly destroyed by earthquake. The consequence of these disasters was that “ the colonists smelted with the vigorous Indians, and a new race was developed.” The Araucanian Indians, who were indigenous to the Chilean soil, were an exceedingly powerful people, and had been the last of the native South American tribes to yield to the prowess of Spanish arms. An almost perfect union of these two absolutely unrelated races took place. The population of Chile, quite unlike that of Peru, which includes thirteen half-castes, is now made up simply of the pure-blooded descendants of the Spanish, who number one fifth of the whole, and a single half-caste of Spanish and Indians, who are the remaining four fifths. “Indian blood pervades not only the middle and lower classes of the people, but many of the most powerful and wealthy families also, and no such contempt attaches to the mixture as does in most other Spanishspeaking countries.” Nothing like this, or of ethnological significance comparable with this, has happened anywhere else in modern times. The general result of the operation of these and other causes is succinctly indicated in one of Mr. Browne’s neatest sentences : “ Lima was the Athens of Spanish America ; Santiago became its Sparta.” In the wars for independence which were waged with Spain at the beginning of this century the fighting capacity of the Chilean race was displayed ; and after Chile, with the help of its Argentine allies, had achieved its liberty, it at onca joined its forces with those of Bolivar and Sucre for the liberation of Peru, which was proclaimed at Lima in 1821,

After the final expulsion of Spain from the continent in 1824, the republic of Bolivia was organized, and the creation of this state, Mr. Browne says, “ was an event which lies at the foundation of almost all the modern political and military history of the west coast of South America. From that time Chile has steadily aimed to restrain Bolivia and Peru from a union, and twice has gone successfully to war to prevent it.”

After the perfection of its national independence, the Chilean government soon passed into the permanent control of civilians, “ while the other governments of the west coast remained prizes for military chieftains.” Its present constitution was framed in 1833, and though it is only half a century old “ it is the oldest written national constitution in force in all the world except our own, unless the Magna Charta of England be included in the category.” The political history of Chile during the fifty years of its life has been that of a wellordered commonwealth, but one of a most unusual and interesting sort. Its government has never been forcibly overthrown, and only one serious attempt at revolution has been made. Chile is in name and in an important sense a republic, and yet its government is an oligarchy. Suffrage is restricted to those male citizens who are registered, who are twenty-five years old if unmarried and twenty-one if married, and who can read and write; and there is also a stringent property qualification. The consequence is that the privilege of voting is confined to an aristocracy : in 1876, the total number of ballots thrown for president was only 46,114 in a population of about two and a quarter millions. The president of Chile has immense powers of nomination and appointment, and when he is a man of vigorous will he tyrannically sways public policy, and can almost always dictate the name of his successor. The government has thus become practically

vested in a comparatively small number of leading Chilean families. There is no such thing as “ public opinion ” in the sense in which we use the phrase, aud the newspapers, though ably conducted, do not attempt, as they do not desire, to change the existing order of things. “ History,” says Mr. Browne, “does not furnish an example of a more powerful political ‘machine’ under the title of republic ; nor, I am bound to say, one which has been more ably directed so far as concerns the aggrandizement of the country, or more honestly administered so far as concerns pecuniary corruption.” The population of Chile doubled between 1843 and 1873; the quantity of land brought under tillage was quadrupled ; copper mines were discovered, and so worked that Chile became the chief copper-producing country in the world ; some of the silver mines rivaled the Comstock lode ; more than one thousand miles of railroad were built; a foreign export trade of $31,695,039 was reported in 1878; and two powerful iron-clads, which were destined to play a most Important part in Chilean affairs, were built in England. Meanwhile, the constitution was officially interpreted so as to guarantee religions toleration, and the political power of the Roman Catholic priesthood diminished. Almost everything good, except home manufactures and popular education, flourished. The development of the nation in these years was on a wonderful scale for a South American state, and the contrast between Chile and Peru was peculiarly striking. Comparative purity and strength of race, born out of hardship and producing political stability and honesty and personal courage, seemed to be the prime factors in the Chilean distinction. And yet the two peoples were the descendants of the same European race and of kindred Indian races. Doubtless the difference in climate was entirely favorable to Chile. Apropos, one recalls Mr. Edward Everett Hale’s rule for determining in advance the length of a South American outbreak : “ Multiply the age of the president by the number of statute miles from the equator; divide by the number of pages in the given constitution : the result will be the length of the Outbreak in days. This formula includes an allowance for the heat of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of the theorists.”

Early in 1879 began the great series of events which were to make the fortune of Chile. We use the word “ great” in its low, superficial sense, and without the attribution of any moral significance to the adjective. The aggressor in the war between Chile and Peru was inspired by the most purely selfish motives, and it remains to be seen whether the just gods will not win in the long run, even though the game of their antagonists be played with heavily plated iron-clads. There is, however, something quite refreshing in the frankness of Chilean belligerency as compared with the reserve and duplicity of modern European war-making. South American character is by no means distinguished by candor, it is true, but the conditions and needs of the southern portions of the New World are incomparably simpler than those of the Old ; and the European diplomatist may here behold with an admiring shudder a contest unbluslungly prosecuted in that spirit of greed and hatred which he has long and well known at home, but always under some disguise of face or name. At the date last mentioned Chile was suffering, like many other nations, from a general depression in business pursuits. Its people were in no serious trouble, but as a government it was in a bad way. Its treasury accounts had for several years shown a deficit, which was increasing. The public income in 1878 was about $14,000,000; the outgo $21,000,000. There was a domestic debt of $16,916,022, and a for-

eign debt of $46,481,000. The means to keep up a sinking fund for the foreign debt had failed, and the Chilean five per cents were quoted in London at sixty-four. “A political cloud also was darkening again in the north in the renewal of something like a confederation between Peru and Bolivia.” In this state of things the governing oligarchy of Chile decided, rather suddenly Mr. Browne thinks, upon a scheme which was sure to result either in splendid prosperity or absolute ruin, and which contemplated nothing less than a war of conquest against Peru and Bolivia, with a view to seizing the most valuable territory of the former country. There is a certain strip of land bordering upon the Pacific and about four hundred miles long, of which the northern three quarters belonged to Peru and Bolivia, the remaining one quarter to Chile. Upon this land a heavy rain never falls, and often years pass in which the soil does not feel a shower. It is of course void of vegetation, and the fresh water used by its people is either distilled from the sea, or brought up or down the coast on shipboard. Yet this hideous region blooms and blossoms like a rose in the eye of the capitalist and economist. Its money value is immense. “ From this region the world derives almost its whole supply of nitrates — chiefly saltpetre — and of iodine;” its mountains, also, are rich in metals, and great deposits of guano are found in the highlands bordering the sea. The nitrate-bearing country is a plain, from fifty to eighty miles wide, the nitrate lying in layers just below a thin sheet of impacted stones, graved, and sand. The export of saltpetre from this region was valued in 1882 at nearly $30,000,000, and the worth of the Peruvian section, which is much the largest and most productive, is estimated, for government purposes, at a capital of $600,000,000. Chile was, naturally, well aware of the wealth which lay so close to her own doors, and to possess herself thereof, and thus to rehabilitate her national fortunes, she addressed herself to war. The occasion for war was easily found. Bolivia was first attacked, a difficulty which arose at her port of Antofagasta, with respect to her enforcement of a tax upon some nitrate works carried on by a Chilean company, affording a good pretext; and when Peru attempted intervention her envoy was confronted with Chile ’s knowledge of a secret treaty between Peru and Bolivia, and war was formally declared by Chile upon Peru, April 5, 1879.

This war lasted, with some breathing spaces, for almost exactly five years. At the outset the two belligerent powers — Bolivia being soon practically out of the contest—seemed to be about equal in ships, soldiers, and resources ; but the supremacy which Chile soon gained upon the seas substantially determined the war in her favor. Each nation owned two powerful iron-clads, and six months were employed in settling the question of naval superiority. “This process,” to quote Mr. Browne’s graphic paragraph verbatim, “ was like a game of chess when the board has been cleared of all the pieces except two bishops and a few pawns on one side, and two knights and a few pawns on the other. The wooden ships of Peru and Chile corresponded with the pawns, and the two iron-clads on each side with the knights and bishops.” On the 21st of May, 1879, the Peruvian fleet attacked and almost destroyed the Chilean wooden frigates which were blockading Iquique ; but in chasing a Chilean corvette the larger Peruvian iron-clad — the Independencia — ran too near the shore, and was fatally wrecked. “So Peru lost one of her knights. The game she played with the other — the Huascar — was admirable, but a losing one ; ” and on the 8th of October of the same year the Huascar was attacked by the Chilean fleet, which included two iron-clads, and was finally captured “after a desperate resistance, in which the one martial hero of Peru, Admiral Don Miguel Grau, was blown to pieces by a shell ; and of the four officers next in rank two were killed and two wounded.” From this moment the Peruvian coast was at Chile’s mercy : the Chilean arms prevailed in every pitched battle, at San Francisco, at Tacna, at Arica ; and finally, on the 17th of January, 1881, after a series of actions which resembled in some of their details the engagements that preceded our capture of the City of Mexico, the victorious army of Chile took possession of Lima, the capital of Peru.²

A few months before the Chilean occupation of Lima, the government of the United States of America entered upon the abortive series of attempts at mediation or intervention which constitute as a whole one of the most ludicrous — or melancholy — failures in diplomacy that have been seen in modern times. To appreciate the fullness of the Chilean triumph in these transactions, it is necessary to know something of the financial situation of Peru. This was very bad indeed. Peru had long suffered from intestinal feuds and factions, and had scarcely known the meaning of the word “ stability” since the inauguration of its first president. The rapacity and corruption of its officials had been intensified by their sense of insecurity. But the pecuniary resources of the country were seen to be so vast after the discovery of the guano and nitrate districts that the state had been able to be a large borrower in Europe. In 1872 Peru had a foreign debt of about two hundred million dollars, the greater part of which was due to citizens of England and France; and one hundred and eighty million dollars of this amount had been raised upon bonds which expressly hypothecated to the holders all its guano and nitrate fields discovered and to be discovered, and the income derived therefrom. And so badly were the Peruvian finances managed that, in spite of the enormous wealth of the country, interest upon its public debt ceased to be paid in 1876, and has never been resumed. This was the condition of things when, by the fall of Arica, the complete military success of Chile seemed practically assured. And it was at this point of time, in October, 1880, that there occurred the fruitless conference between envoys of the belligerents on board a United States corvette in the harbor of Arica, under the mediation of Messrs. Christiancy, Adams, and Osborn, President Hayes’s ministers to Chile, Peru, and Bolivia respectively. At this conference Chile’s prime demands as conditions of peace were a money indemnity of twenty million dollars and the absolute cession to itself of the entire Bolivian littoral and the great Peruvian nitrate-producing province of Tarapacá. Peru and Bolivia rejected the demand for territorial cession, and offered instead a money indemnity. They also offered to submit the question of terms of peace to the arbitration of the United States, — a proposal which was promptly and peremptorily declined by Chile. It will be seen at a glance that the parties deeply interested in the settlement were not only the three belligerent powers, but also the unsatisfied European holders of Peruvian bonds. And it was the hope of Peru, as well as the apprehension of Chile, that “Great Britain or France, one or both, might intervene for the assertion of the financial rights of their subjects,” especially as Chile had now seized and proposed to hold the nitrate region which had been mortgaged to the European holders of Peruvian securities.

The government at Lima was in a desperate state, but after some vacillation fixed its hopes upon the projects of the Crédit Industrial, a French corporation representing nearly all the foreign debt not raised in England, which proposed to help Peru to a treaty of peace without a cession of its territory, by persuading Chile to accept a large money indemnity simply. The sum needed for this purpose was to be advanced by the Credit Industriel, which in turn was to receive, as trustee first for itself and its own great advantage, and then for Peru, an assignment of the entire guano and nitrate district. And to this project, or something like it, with a contemplated “guaranty or protectorate by the United States of the Crédit Industriel’s possession of the guano and nitrates, to insure the stability of the project,” Mr. Hayes’s administration through Mr. Evarts substantially committed itself.

But Chile, as capable in diplomacy as in war, was more than equal to the situation. and managed matters with an admirable combination of cunning and audacity. In the first place, she played on the disgust of the outraged creditors of Peru in Europe, and made a largo number of the English and other bondholders believe that they would fare better at the hands of Chile than of Peru, even if the latter nation were stripped of all its wealth by the former. But Chile’s master stroke was made in her use of the United States. There was nothing she so much dreaded as active European intervention, and this she defeated by encouraging our government to mediate, and stimulating us to such a vigorous assertion of the Monroe doctrine that neither England nor France thought it best to interfere ; and having accomplished this she turned upon our government, snapped her fingers in our face, and went forward to the complete despoiling of Peru according to the plan she had originally proposed to herself. The issue with us was not sharply made until after the close of the Hayes administration. Mr. Garfield had then become President, and Mr. Blaine had succeeded Mr. Evarts. Mr. Christiancy was promptly superseded in our mission to Peru by General Hurlbut, an intimate friend of Mr. Blaine; and our Secretary of State — acting from motives which we, following Mr. Browne, ‘will not debate” — entered upon a highly vigorous and aggressive policy, the apparent aim of which was to carry through, in favor of Peru, the Crédit Industriel scheme already described. General Hurlbut, on his arrival in Lima, had found the Peruvians almost ready to purchase peace by any sacrifice ; but recognizing as the government the faction which was least disposed to make territorial cession, he succeeded in filling its leaders with confidence, and publicly proclaimed to Admiral Lynch, the Chilean commander then in possession of Lima, that “ the United States would support Peru in refusing to cede a foot of her territory to Chile until proof should be afforded of the inability of Peru to furnish a war indemnity in some other form.” Admiral Lynch’s response to this proclamation was soon made in the suspension of the Peruvian government which Mr. Hurlbut had inspired, and by the transportation of Señor Calderon, its soi-disaut president, to Chile, where, until a few weeks ago, he was closely imprisoned. At this juncture of affairs President Garfield died. Mr. Blaine began to “ wind up” the business of his office ; telegraphed to General Hurlbut, “ The influence of your position must not be used in aid of the Crédit Industriel, or any other financial or speculative association,” but sent Mr. Trescot, one of our most experienced diplomatists, as a special envoy to the three belligerents, with instructions which might have resulted in yet deeper entanglements. At Santiago Mr. Trescot met the president of Chile, and was informed that his country would accept war with the United States rather than submit to our dictation of the terms of peace. Whether Chile was sincere, and whether she would have been firm in this position, no one knows or will ever know. Mr. Frelinghuysen came into office under President Arthur, and at once revoked “ any and all discretion given to Mr. Trescot to press Chile to a peace without territorial cession of Peruvian territory.” And this revocation was first communicated to Mr. Trescot by the Chilean minister of foreign relations at Viña del Mar, — “a persopal humiliation as great,” in Mr. Browne’s opinion, “as any to which one of our envoys ever was subjected.”

The results of the war have thus far exceeded the wildest hopes of Chile. She has taken absolute possession of the whole nitrate region, has cut Bolivia off from the sea, and achieved the permanent dissolution of the Peru-Bolivian confederation. As a consequence, her foreign trade has doubled, the revenue of her government has been trebled, and the public debt greatly reduced. The Chilean bonds, which were sold at sixty-four in London in January, 1879, and fell to sixty in March of that year, at the announcement of the war, were quoted at ninety-five in January, 1884. She now owns three iron-clads of the first force, any one of which would sink every wooden vessel in our navy, and she is preparing to buy others. The behavior of our government towards the late belligerents has entirely ruined our prestige in South America-, and if we were to go to war with Chile to-morrow our Pacific coast would be entirely at her mercy. A single but important point connected with the territorial cessions of Peru is not finally settled. It is probable that at the outset Chile did not dream of appropriating the nitrate fields without a recognition of the foreign debt for which they had been mortgaged by Peru, the equity of redemption being ample to satisfy her early greed. But now for a long time Chile has refused to admit any claim on the part of the European mortgagees, holders of Peruvian securities, citing as a precedent for her course the behavior of Germany in annexing Alsace and Lorraine without assuming any part of the French national debt. But since the delivery of Mr. Browne’s address, the English and French governments have entered a formal remonstrance and protest against the course of Chile in this regard ; and perhaps Chile may yet be obliged to recede from her extremely selfish construction of her rights and duties.

It hardly need be said that such a brief summary as that which has been presented of Mr, Browne’s essay does the author and his treatise great injustice. Our attempt and hope have been simply to inspire the readers of The Atlantic with an interest in the subject, and to convince them of the brilliant and masterly character of Mr. Browne’s presentation of the same.