Chile

**Chile is a work in progress. This information is no longer accurate.**

Chile is a South American nation, bordering Bolivia, Peru and Argentina (which calls themselves the Free Territory of South America).

# **History**

## **Before the Caribbean War**

Chile was often forgotten about in world history up till present day. Chile wasn’t the worst nation but it was the most prosperous either. Chile was nearly involved in a war with Argentina after a naval race between both countries began, but thankfully war was avoided. Chile like basically all of America sat through the 1910s pretty tranquil, as Chile didn’t have any interest in Germany nor Britain, and it wasn’t like Britain or Germany could do anything about it. For the most part, Chile sat on the sidelines supplying both countries but not giving them everything they wanted, to ensure their trade relations wouldn’t get too attached to one side if that side collapsed.

But as time went on, Chile got more involved with British loans, companies and investment as it became clear Germany was not going to win the Great War. But soon, the collapse of the British empire began with 1919. Britain quickly needed all the trade and investments they could get, as a result this put more strain on Chile to meet Britain’s demands. The reason that Chile didn’t get involved with British investments and trade in the first place was to make sure they wouldn’t go down with Britain if they went down, but that’s exactly what happened. Eventually, workers of Chile revolted in Chile. Despite this, the Chilean navy took up the opportunity of the weakness of the British and acted. Pitcairn Island was a small British colony far away from Chile, but it was basically unprotected and had almost no population.

The Chilean navy, despite not matching the Royal Navy in any way, managed to land in Pitcairn with almost no resistance and quickly declared it a part of Chile. It was hard getting to and from the island, but nevertheless it became a formal part of Chile. Chile would then fund people to go and settle in the islands similar to Argentina and the Falklands. But, the revolt was still ongoing. In order to not cause a socialist revolution, Chile would implement new reforms and after the Cairo war would drift away from Britain and British trade as a whole. Chile would remain stable as time would go on, there were even a few coups throughout the decades.

When the Great Crash occurred, it spearheaded support for the already growing leftist Chilean movements. Although Marxism originally was the largest of any Chilean left group, syndicalism and anarchism outcompeted communism, and trade unions and unionism began to grow. Thousands were laid off as the Chilean economy came to a screeching halt and faced a crash in Santiago that rippled throughout the country after 3 weeks of the Great Crash occurring. International demand and the prices for saltpetre and copper plummeted. Chile was forced to reduce imports, which in turn reduced national production. Incomes diminished, while public expenditures grew.

Things only grew worse with Chile unable to recover its economy to pre-1927 levels. Although the public had been growing more fondly with leftism, especially syndicalism, the government began to panic. Many began to fear of an incoming revolution, but in reality it would never come. Despite the public turning to the left, the military grew farther and farther to the right, mostly because of far-right officers such as Bartolomé Guillermo Blanche Espejo. This division between the military and the public grew until it reached a boiling point in 1932.

In September of 1932, orchestrated by Espejo thousands of men in the military mutinied, calling for "restored order and a restored Chilean legacy". In just a few weeks their callings inspired most of the rest of the army, then the navy to rebel. On September 22nd, thousands of men from the army began to fight for the capture of Santiago. The government with its falling influence had little help to fight against Espejo's men, and just 2 days later the city was captured and the government collapsed. In its collapse, a new far-right militarist regime emerged in the country, much to the dismay of most of the people.