page_title: War of the Pacific
section_title: Causes of war
hierarchical_section_title: War of the Pacific / Background / Causes of war
caption_attribution_description: English: South America in 1879, prior to the start of the War of the Pacific. Based on the following maps: File:Map of the War of the Pacific.en.svg: Atacama border dispute map. File:B-C-E-P claims and reivindications.jpg: Amazon border dispute map. File:Ecuador-peru-land-claims-01.png: Clearer description of Ecuador's claims on Peru. File:Republic of the New Granada 1852.jpg: Clearer description of Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian positions. File:PERU MAPA 1865.JPG: Description of Peruvian territorial posessions and claims in 1865. File:Territorios perdidos de Bolivia.png: Bolivian territorial claims.
context_page_description: The War of the Pacific, also known as the Saltpeter War and by multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought over Chilean claims on coastal Bolivian territory in the Atacama Desert, the war ended with a Chilean victory, which gained for the country a significant amount of resource-rich territory from Peru and Bolivia. The Chilean Army took Bolivia's nitrate-rich coastal region, and Peru was defeated by the Chilean Navy.
  Battles were fought in the Pacific Ocean, the Atacama Desert, the Peruvian deserts, and the mountainous regions in the Andes. For the first five months, the war played out in a naval campaign, as Chile struggled to establish a marine resupply corridor for its forces in the world's driest desert.
  In February 1878, Bolivia imposed a new tax on a Chilean mining company despite Bolivia's express guarantee in the 1874 Boundary Treaty not to increase taxes on Chilean persons or industries for 25 years. Chile protested and solicited to submit the issue to mediation, but Bolivia refused and considered it a subject of Bolivian courts.
context_section_description: The American historian William F. Sater gives several possible and compatible reasons for the war. He considers the causes to be domestic, economic, and geopolitical. Several authors agree with them, but others only partially support his arguments.
  Some historians argue that Chile was devastated by the economic crisis of the 1870s and was looking for a replacement for its silver, copper and wheat exports. It has been argued that the economic situation and the view of new wealth in nitrate were the true reasons for the Chilean elite to go to war against Peru and Bolivia. The holder of the Chilean nitrate companies, according to Sater, "bulldozed" Chilean President Aníbal Pinto into declaring war to protect the owner of the CSFA and then to seize Bolivia's and Peru's salitreras. Several members of the Chilean government were shareholders of CSFA, and they are believed to have hired the services of one of the country's newspapers to push their case.
  Another American historian, David Healy, rejects that thesis, and Fredrick B. Pike calls the allegation "absurd." The economic development that accompanied and followed the war was so remarkable that Marxist writers feel justified in alleging that Chile's great military adventure was instigated by self-seeking capitalists to bring their country out of the business stagnation that had begun in 1878 since the war provided Chile with the economic means to come of age. Sater states that that interpretation overlooks certain important facts. The Chilean investors in Bolivia correctly feared that Daza, the Bolivian dictator, would use the war as an excuse to expropriate their investments. Among them were Melchor de Concha y Toro, the politically powerful president of Chile's Camara de Diputados, Jerónimo Urmeneta, and Lorenzo Claro, a Chilean founder of the Banco de Bolivia and a prominent member of the National Party. A Santiago newspaper claimed that Melchor de Concha y Toro offered President Pinto 2,000,000 Chilean pesos to end the dispute and to return to the 1874 border. "In other words," writes W. Sater, "there were as many powerful interests opposed to helping the Compañía de Salitres as there were those seeking to aid the corporation." Also, B. Farcau objects to the argument: "On the other hand, the sorry state of the Chilean armed forces at the outbreak of the war, as will be discussed in the following chapter, hardly supports a theory of conscious, premeditated aggression."
  Sater cites other sources that state that the true causes of the conflict were not economic but geopolitical, a struggle for control of the southeastern portion of the Pacific Ocean. In 1836 the Peruvian government tried to monopolize commerce in the South Pacific by rewarding ships that sailed directly to Callao, to the detriment of Valparaíso. Peru tried to impede the agreement that had been reached between Spain and Chile to free its new warships built and embargoed in Britain during the Chincha Islands War. Sater cites Germany's minister in Chile, who argued that the war with Peru and Bolivia would "have erupted sooner or later, [and] on any pretext." He considered that Bolivia and Peru had developed a "bitter envy" against Chile and its material progress and good government. Frederik B. Pike states: "The fundamental cause for the eruption of hostilities was the mounting power and prestige and the economic and political stability of Chile, on one hand, and the weakness and the political and economic deterioration of Bolivia, on the other.... The war — and its outcome — was as inevitable as the 1846—1848 conflict between the United States and Mexico. In both instances, a relatively well-governed, energetic, and economically expanding nation had been irresistibly tempted by neighboring territories that were underdeveloped, malgoverned, and sparsely occupied."
  Another reason, according to Sater, was Peru's desire to monopolize and appropriate the nitrate works to strengthen its nitrate monopoly, which required the Bolivian and Chilean salitreras to be controlled by Peru. As unenviable as Chile’s situatio
caption: All territorial claims by Chile in 1879
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