page_title: Chilean expansionism
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Chilean expansionism / Origins
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Diego Portales Palazuelos (1793-1837)English: Portrait of Diego Portales Palazuelos (1793-1837)Español: Retrato de Diego Portales Palazuelos (1793-1837)
context_page_description: Chilean expansionism refers to the foreign policy of Chile to expand its territorial control over key strategic locations and economic resources as a means to ensure its national security and assert its power in South America. Chile's significant territorial acquisitions, which occurred mostly throughout the 19th century, paved the way for its emergence as one of the three most powerful and wealthiest states in South America during the 20th century. It also formed Chile's geopolitical and national identity as a tricontinental state and one of the countries with the longest coastlines in the world.
  After achieving its independence from Spain in 1818, Chile held control of territory spanning roughly the same boundaries of the colonial general captaincy that was under the control of the Spanish Empire's Viceroyalty of Peru. Under the uti possidetis iuris principle that delimited the international boundaries of the newly independent South American states, Chile bordered at its north with Bolivia in the Atacama Desert and at its east with Argentina.
context_section_description: The newly independent Republic of Chile's territorial possessions, inherited from the colonial general captaincy (capitanía general) that was under the control of the Spanish Empire's Viceroyalty of Peru, had left the state surrounded by undefined boundaries. Its northernmost settlement was Copiapó in the southern Atacama Desert, bordering Bolivia; however, its exact boundary was disputed until 1866, when both countries delimited their boundaries at the 24° South parallel from the Pacific Ocean. Its southernmost settlement was Concepción, a few kilometers north of the frontier fortifications between Chile and the Araucanía, the territory that the Mapuche indigenous peoples had successfully retained after defeating Spain in the Arauco War.
  English: "We must always dominate in the Pacific: This must be its [Chile's] maxim now, and hopefully will be Chile's forever"
  Spanish: "Debemos dominar para siempre en el Pacífico: ésta debe ser su máxima ahora, y ojalá fuera la de Chile para siempre"
  — Diego Portales, Letter to Vice Admiral Manuel Blanco Encalada (10 September 1836).
caption: Chilean statesman Diego Portales was the lead proponent of his country's aggressive foreign policy
exif: {}