history of Chile

history of Chile, a survey of important events and people in the history of Chile from the time of European settlement. Situated along the western seaboard of South America, Chile extends approximately 2,700 miles (4,300 km) from its boundary with Peru to the tip of South America at Cape Horn. A long, narrow country, it is bounded on the north by Peru and Bolivia, on the east by Argentina, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. Chile exhibits many of the traits that typically characterize Latin American countries. It was colonized by Spain, and the culture that evolved was largely Spanish. However, appreciation for the influence of Indigenous culture has been growing. Chile has a history of retaining representative democratic government. Except for a military junta that held power from September 1973 to March 1990, the country has been relatively free of the coups and constitutional suspensions common to many of its neighbors.

Precolonial period in Chile

At the time of the Spanish conquest of Chile in the mid-16th century, at least 500,000 Indigenous people inhabited the region. Nearly all of the scattered tribes were related in language, but they lacked any central governmental organization. The groups in northern Chile lived by fishing and by farming in the oases. In the 15th century they fell under the influence of expanding civilizations from Peru, first the Chincha and then the Quechua, who formed part of the extensive Inca empire. Those invaders also tried unsuccessfully to conquer central and southern Chile.

The Araucanian peoples were dispersed throughout southern Chile. These mobile peoples lived in family clusters and small villages. A few engaged in subsistence agriculture, but most thrived from hunting, gathering, fishing, trading, and warring. The Araucanians resisted the Spanish as they had the Incas, but fighting and disease reduced their numbers by two-thirds during the first century after the Europeans arrived.

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The Spanish conquest of Chile began in 1536–37, when forces under Diego de Almagro, associate and subsequent rival of Francisco Pizarro, invaded the region as far south as the Maule River in search of an “Otro Peru” (“Another Peru”). Finding neither a high civilization nor gold, the Spaniards decided to return immediately to Peru. The discouraging reports brought back by Almagro’s men forestalled further attempts at conquest until 1540–41, when Pizarro, after the death of Almagro, granted Pedro de Valdivia license to conquer and colonize the area. Valdivia, with about 150 companions, including his mistress, Inés Suárez, the only Spanish woman in the company, entered Chile in late 1540 and founded Santiago (February 12, 1541). For the next two decades the settlers lived a precarious existence and were constantly threatened by Indigenous people, who resisted enslavement. Before the safety of the colony was guaranteed, land was apportioned to the conquerors, and thus began the system of large estates. The estates were later institutionalized through the mayorazgo, a practice of transmitting estates by entail.

Valdivia did not undertake the conquest of the region south of the Biobío River until 1550. In that year Concepción was founded, and preparations were made to move southward. During the next two years settlements and forts were established in La Frontera, but in 1553 the Araucanians, under a skilled military chieftain named Lautaro, rose in a revolt that led to the capture and death of Valdivia and to the beginning of a costly struggle. The Araucanians, often referred to as the Apache of South America, kept the struggle alive until the 1880s by successfully adapting their way of life and military tactics to changing conditions.

Although Concepción was destroyed on several occasions, it remained as the Spanish outpost in the south as did La Serena, founded in 1544, in the north. The province of Cuyo held the same position east of the Andes until 1776, when it was made a part of the newly created Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. The conquest of Chile was finally consolidated during the late 1550s under Gov. Don García Hurtado de Mendoza. Before the end of the 16th century English pirates and freebooters, including Sir Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish, and later Dutch adventurers harassed the coast in search of sudden wealth and as part of a prolonged effort to force Spain to permit neutral countries to trade with its New World colonies.

Colonial period

Because only quite limited amounts of precious metal were found in Chile, the settlers early turned their attention to agriculture. They grew a wide variety of cereals, vegetables, and fruits; raised livestock; and consumed nearly all of their production locally. Largely because of the poverty of the colony, there were never more than a few thousand enslaved Black people; and, because the Indigenous people proved to be an unreliable source of labor, the settlers often had to work the fields themselves. The lack of mineral wealth also made the area unattractive to Spaniards, and at the end of the 16th century there were no more than 5,000 Spanish settlers in the entire colony. In this regard it should be pointed out that, beginning in 1600 and continuing until trade restrictions were relaxed in the late colonial period, Chile was a “deficit area” in the empire, and the Spanish crown had to provide an annual subsidy to meet the expense of maintaining officials in Santiago and an army on the Araucanian frontier.

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Chile lived under the same administrative and religious systems as its neighbors, but because the colony was poor, there was until the 18th century a tendency to send mediocre officials to preside over its destinies. The Spanish crown and the Roman Catholic Church combined to limit the colonists’ administrative experience and economic development. The power of the captain-general, the highest royal official in the colony, was absolute. Appeals to the viceroy in Peru or the king in Spain were always possible, at least in theory. Chilean trade was tightly controlled from Peru. The influence of the Catholic Church in secular affairs was always significant and frequently decisive.

The most apparent social development after 1600 was the rapid growth of a mestizo (mixed Indigenous and European) group, which gives present-day Chile its homogeneous ethnic character. By the end of the colonial period, when the population reached an estimated 500,000 (not including unsubjugated Indigenous persons), approximately 300,000 were mestizos and about 150,000 were Creoles (native-born persons of European descent). About 20,000 were peninsulares (recently arrived Spaniards), perhaps 15,000 were Black people, and a handful were recently emancipated Indigenous persons. Society was highly structured, with peninsulares at the top, followed by Creoles, mestizos, Indigenous persons, and enslaved Africans. At the end of the colonial period, the vast majority of the population was concentrated in the Aconcagua Valley and the Central Valley (extending from Santiago to Concepción), which together form “the cradle of Chilean nationality.”

Education in colonial Chile was almost a complete monopoly of the Roman Catholic clergy and reinforced the society’s strong class differences. In 1758, however, courses were opened in the Royal and Pontifical University of San Felipe at Santiago and attracted students from the Spanish colonies across the Andes. Nonetheless, intellectual life in Chile developed slowly. The colony did not have a printing press until shortly before it won independence from Spain in 1818, and the paucity of contacts with the outside world reinforced its insularity.

Struggle for Chilean independence

Despite the colony’s isolation, its inhabitants at the start of the 19th century were affected by developments elsewhere. The most significant of those developments were the winning of independence by the 13 Anglo-American colonies and by Haiti, the French Revolution, and the inability of Spain to defend its system in America, as indicated by the British invasion of the La Plata region and increased contraband trade on the part of British and U.S. citizens. Finally and decisively came the intervention of Napoleon in Spain, an act that in 1808 threw Chile and the other colonies on their own resources and led them to take the first steps toward greater autonomy and self-government. In Chile the initial move toward independence was made on September 18, 1810, when a cabildo abierto (open town meeting) in Santiago, attended by representatives of privileged groups whose vaguely defined objectives included a change in administration, accepted the resignation of the president-governor and in his place elected a junta composed of local leaders.

From 1810 to 1813 the course of the patriots was relatively peaceful because they were able to maintain themselves without formal ties to the Viceroyalty of Lima. Trade restrictions were relaxed, steps were taken toward the eventual abolition of slavery, a newspaper was established to publicize the beliefs of the patriots, and education was promoted, including the founding of the National Institute. However, the embers of civil strife were also fanned. The Creoles were divided over how far the colony should go toward self-government. José Miguel Carrera and his brothers, whose desire for complete independence was equaled if not surpassed by their personal ambition, inflamed the issues. Meanwhile, Spain had taken steps to reassert its control over the colony. At the Battle of Rancagua, on October 1 and 2, 1814, it reestablished its military supremacy and ended what has been called la patria vieja (“the old fatherland”).

Following the defeat at Rancagua, patriot leaders, among them the Carrera brothers and Bernardo O’Higgins, future director-dictator of Chile, migrated to Argentina. There O’Higgins won the support of José de San Martín, who, with the support of the revolutionary government in Buenos Aires, was raising an army to free the southern portion of the continent by first liberating Chile and then attacking Peru from the sea. The Carreras continued their spirited agitation for independence in Buenos Aires and the United States.

Meanwhile, many of those who remained in Chile suffered from the harsh rule of Spain’s inept representatives and became convinced that absolute independence was necessary. In January 1817 San Martín’s well-drilled army, with O’Higgins as one of its commanders, began its march across the Andes, and on February 12, 1817, the patriot forces defeated the royalists on the hill of Chacabuco, which opened the way to Santiago. O’Higgins was proclaimed supreme director of Chile, although the act of declaring Chile’s independence was not taken until a year later (February 12, 1818), on the first anniversary of Chacabuco, and the decisive defeat of Spain on the Chilean mainland (Spain held the island of Chiloé until 1826) did not come until the Battle of Maipú, on April 5, 1818. Before emancipation was assured, O’Higgins began the creation of the Chilean navy, which by late 1818 was in the process of clearing the Chilean coast of Spanish vessels.

Chile was free, but its inherent weaknesses were everywhere manifest. The Creoles remained bitterly divided between O’Higgins and the Carreras. Two of the Carrera brothers had been executed in Mendoza, Argentina, in 1818, and José Miguel Carrera suffered the same fate in the same city in 1821. The elite groups were dedicated to the retention of those institutions on which such things as law, property, family, and religion were founded. The masses, who had been little more than spectators in the conflicts between 1810 and 1818, were excluded from government.

Chile from 1818 to 1920

The Chilean oligarchy had little sympathy with O’Higgins, who favored reducing their privileges. They accepted him, however, because he was supported by the army and because of dangers posed by Spaniards still in Peru and in parts of Chile (Valdivia and the island of Chiloé) and by internal guerrillas loyal to the Spanish monarchy. Opposition to O’Higgins began to make itself heard once the Chilean-Argentine army expelled the Spaniards from Peru; it increased after 1822, when the Chileans succeeded in driving the remaining Spaniards from Chile. O’Higgins’s attempt, by means of a new constitution, to concede a larger political role to the oligarchy did not increase his support, and general unrest and poor harvests forced him to abdicate in 1823.

The years 1823–30 were troubled by an internal political split between the oligarchy and the army; 30 successive governments held office, and a variety of political experiments were tried. Rivalries developed between federalists and centralizers and between authoritarians and liberals. To the political chaos were added financial and economic disorder and an increase in lawlessness that tended to strengthen the authoritarian members of the oligarchy. Rival political factions were eliminated in 1829 when authoritarians, with the help of a part of the army, were able to install a junta (collegial government) that nominated José Tomás de Ovalle as provisory president. Actual power, however, was held by Diego Portales, who, as either a cabinet member or a private citizen, in fact ruled as a virtual dictator.

The conservative hegemony, 1830–61

During the next 30 years, Chile established its own definitive organization, made possible by a compromise among the members of the oligarchy. Portales played an important role in the compromise, and a new constitution achieved as a result (1833) remained the basis of Chilean political life until 1925. It created a strong central government, responsive to the influence of the landowning class, which controlled the parliament.

The establishment of this new political structure united the different factions that brought Ovalle and later Joaquín Prieto to power. The new government was strengthened by a successful war against the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation (1836–39), during which it broadened its support by reinstating army officers ousted when the conservatives had seized power in 1829–30.

Economic prosperity

The government of Prieto and the succeeding governments of Manuel Bulnes and of Manuel Montt dedicated themselves to developing the economy. Their first and most pressing need was to reestablish the state finances, exhausted by the war. To this end, measures were taken to expand the principal source of state income—foreign trade. A free port was created at Valparaíso to encourage trade by foreign, especially British, merchants. These measures, however, would not have worked if Chilean products had not found new markets abroad. The discovery of gold in California (1848) and in Australia (1853) assured Chilean grain a vast market as the populations of those two areas expanded. The production of silver and copper increased in response to European demand, thereby increasing the wealth of the state and the dominant class. The economic development helped overcome political disagreements and aided the consolidation of internal peace.

Political stability and economic prosperity opened the way to modernization: the construction of the first railroads began, new roads were opened, and the harbors were improved. The government tried also to develop education, though largely for upper-class children. The University of Chile was founded, and foreign scholars were recruited to foster geologic, botanical, and economic studies. The development of commerce attracted numerous foreign entrepreneurs (British, French, and North American), who came to dominate the import-export trade.

Political diversification

The increase of wealth that especially favored the oligarchy and foreign merchants also contributed to a diversification of the ruling class; the development of mining production in the north and of agriculture in the south created new fortunes, whose owners soon made their entry into the political world. An attempted coup d’état, the “revolution of 1851,” failed but was an indication of the political awakening of these new elements. A new development among younger members of the traditional oligarchy was the growth of liberalism and the appearance of political clubs about the middle of the century.

The impact of these forces was felt inside the political establishment, so much so that a minor conflict between the state and the church over the right to make ecclesiastical appointments was sufficient to break the unity of the dominant political class. The oligarchy was divided into two groups: conservatives, who defended the traditional privileges of the church; and nationalists, who maintained the supremacy of the state. A part of each group, dissatisfied by the authoritarian government of President Montt, united and created a separate faction, the liberals.

The widening of liberal influence, 1861–91

The period after 1860, known as the “Liberal Republic,” saw the emergence of many rival political groups whose common characteristic—following an unsuccessful armed insurrection by radicals in 1859—was an attempt to gain power by peaceful means.

Political factions

After 1855 the conservative element, supporting the hegemony of the church, had allied with the liberals in opposing President Montt. The radicals joined the alliance against Montt. José Joaquín Pérez (1861–71), though elected with the support of the “nationalists,” governed with the help of the liberal-conservative alliance. A division in the dominating political classes occurred about 1872, when the liberals started to draw away from the conservatives; the liberals succeeded in ending the Roman Catholic Church’s monopoly in religious matters.

European influences

The fight to secularize the state opened the country to European influences in cultural activities and civil reforms. Young members of the economic and political oligarchy began to travel and study in Europe. They brought back many political, literary, and scientific ideas.

This new political and cultural opening toward Europe was linked to closer economic relations, especially with Great Britain, Chile’s main trading partner. The British began to invest directly in Chile, supplying the capital needed to bring about the construction of railroads and the modernization of ports and public services. The increase of imports and the payment of interest from loans aggravated an already weak balance of payments and resulted in a continuing devaluation of the Chilean peso in relation to the British pound sterling.

The War of the Pacific (1879–83)

The need to improve its balance of payments attracted Chile to saltpeter mines situated along the Chilean border in the Bolivian province of Antofagasta and in the Peruvian provinces of Tarapacá and Arica. Ill-defined borders and oppressive measures allegedly taken against the Chilean migrant population in these territories furnished Chile with a pretext for invasion. Chile defeated the Peruvian-Bolivian army and annexed these provinces.

The War of the Pacific had broad repercussions. France, Germany, and especially Britain had strong interests in the saltpeter mines, and they threatened to intervene. The United States, hoping to restrict European influence, offered to resolve the conflict by mediation; Chile refused the U.S. offer, fearing that it would have to give up its territorial gains. German support of the Chilean position further impeded European intervention.

The war weakened Chilean finances, and the economic situation continued to worsen. During the presidency of José Manuel Balmaceda (1886–91) the government tried to claim the revenues from the saltpeter mines and thus to assert major responsibility in economic matters. Nearly all of the oligarchy, however, was looking for a weaker, rather than a stronger, central power and objected to this attempt to strengthen the executive. The clash was resolved in a brief civil war, which ended with Balmaceda’s abdication of the presidency.