CHILE DURING THE EXPORT BOOM

In this seminar we should look briefly at the reasons for Chile’s political stability during the nineteenth century, and then at the causes of the Civil War of 1891? Did the war result from the machinations of foreign companies or from internal factors? We can then move on to the nitrate period after 1891, considering first the problems the government faced in managing the nitrate trade and then the political system that was established following the Civil War/ Why were Chilean politicians apparently unable to deal with labour mobilisation, the so-called ‘social question’, without bloodshed and why did Chile run into economic and political crisis in the 1920s, earlier than most other South American countries?

On Chilean political stability see

S. Collier, ‘Chile from Independence to the Pacific War’, in L. Bethell (ed.), Cambridge History of Latin America, III, chap. 14 [also in Bethell (ed.), Spanish America after Independence, pp. 283-313]

L. Ortega, ‘Nitrates, Chilean Entrepreneurs, and the Origins of the War of the Pacific’, JLAS 16 (1984), 337-380.

On the 1891 Civil War

H. Blakemore, British Nitrates and Chilean Politics, 1886-1896: Balmaceda and North

V. Kiernan, ‘Chile: from war to revolution, 1879-1891’, Hist. Workshop Jnl. 34 (1992), 72-91

T.F. O’Brien, The Nitrate Industry and Chile’s Crucial Transition, 1870-1891

M. Zeitlin, The Civil Wars in Chile : or the bourgeois revolutions that never were

On nitrate and other aspects of Chile’s economic development

A.J. Bauer, ‘Industry and the Missing Bourgeoisie: consumption and development in Chile, 1850-1950’, HAHR 70 (1990), 227-254

R.G. Greenhill, ‘The Nitrate and Iodine Trades’, in D.C.M. Platt (ed.), Business Imperialism, pp. 231-283

M. Mamalakis, The Growth and Structure of the Chilean Economy

M. Mamalakis, ‘The Role of Government in the Resource Transfer and Resource Allocation Process: the Chilean nitrate sector, 1880-1930’, in G. Ranis (ed.), Government and Economic Development, pp. 181-215

M. Monteon, Chile in the Nitrate Era: the evolution of economic dependence

On the political system, labour mobilisation and the consequences

A. Angell, Labour and Politics in Chile

C. Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, chapter on Chile

P. de Shazo, Urban Workers and Labor Unions in Chile, 1902-1927

F.M. Nunn, The Military in Chilean History, 1810-1973

T.F. O’Brien, The Revolutionary Mission: American enterprise in Latin America, 1900-1945, chapter 7

K.L. Remmer, ‘The Timing, Pace and Sequence of Political Change in Chile, 1891-1925’, HAHR 57 (1977), 205-250

J. Roddick, ‘The Failure of Populism in Chile: labour movement and politics before World War I’, Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos 31 (1981), 61-90

T.R. Scully, Rethinking the Center: party politics in nineteenth and twentieth century Chile

T.C. Wright, ‘Agriculture and Protectionism in Chile’, JLAS 7 91975), 45-59