The Development of British Interests in Chile's Norte Chico in the Early Nineteenth Century

By 1820, much of Spanish South America had achieved independence, and Spain was on the defensive in those areas where her flag still flew. Amongst the countries that gained their independence in this period was Chile, which after the battle of Maipú in April 1818, faced no further threats to its existence from Spain. For many of the new nations, the period immediately after independence was one of political instability, shading into civil war, and Chile was no exception. However, in comparison with many of its neighbors, the period of instability was short, and the physical destruction not great.

Between 1818 and 1831, the Chileans hammered out a political settlement that guided their country for the rest of the century and beyond. The only two countries who might have intervened abstained from interfering at all. The first of these countries was Great Britain, mistress of the seas, and possessor of the most modern and dynamic economy in the world and historically an enemy of the Spanish empire. The emerging Latin American nations wanted only the best relations with Great Britain, so there was no obvious cause of friction. The second was the United States, whose natural sympathies for would-be sister republics were muted by the necessity of remaining on good terms with Spain, until certain pressing matters between the two had been settled. Once these were settled in the Adams-Onís treaty (1819), the successful course of the Independence wars, and Britain's neutralizing of France meant that the United States, too, was content to observe events, after issuing the Monroe Doctrine in 1823.

When Chile and the other republics decisively broke their political ties with Spain, they created--or had created for them--new relationships that replaced the colonial ties. Latin America was already as much, or more, a part of the global economy, and particularly of its thrusting North Atlantic part, which an expanding Europe had created, as were any of the formal colonies. Even before independence, Latin America was being brought into the world economy over the objections and policies of Spain. The end of Spanish rule saw the replacement of both the objections and the policies by the new republican governments. Instead, open trade became the desire, an aim that was happily embraced by foreign merchants, and the result was an influx of foreign goods and expertise that contributed to the rapid creation of new commercial ties, and in some cases to the political stability of the new republics.

Informal trade between Great Britain and Chile, 1780s-1811

Foreigners, and particularly the British, played a notable, if not very visible role in an expanding contraband trade over the last few decades of colonial rule. Britons had established useful connections with Chilean entrepreneurs, and gained some knowledge of conditions in the country. This facilitated their entry into the business arena of the new nation, and, once allowed to enter the country, they began to apply their skills and expertise, to the mutual benefit of themselves and their hosts. This happened well before formal recognition of Chilean independence by Britain. The flag followed trade.

Spain's Pacific monopoly was rather easier to enforce than that in the Caribbean, though Drake and his successors showed that it was not inviolate. ¹ However, direct contraband, on the Pacific littoral, as against the normal abuse of the annual flotas to Portobelo and Veracruz, was an occasional rather than a major threat for much of the life of the empire. ² But in the second half of the eighteenth century, and especially from the 1780s on, contraband began to flow directly into Chile and South America's west coast. The opening of the southern whale fishery and the settlement of Australia by the British meant that far more ships from England sailed the south seas in the normal course of...