The most cruel thing in human history is war, and there is no one who has experienced war who does not yearn for peace, and the greatest ideal of modern people is world peace, but so far, to achieve world peace is still the goal of joint efforts between countries.
Throughout history, there has been a war that can be called the most "nonsensical", and the reason for the war that we can't think of is to fight for the guano on an island... And because of this war, more than 14,000 people were killed, what is going on?
There is a vast desert on the earth, called the Takama Desert, with a total area of about 181,300 square kilometers, located in South America, the Atacama Desert is surrounded by Chile, Bolivia, Peru three countries, before the nineteenth century, the Takama Desert did not belong to the territory of any country, because this desert has almost nothing except sand, and the three surrounding countries have no territorial claims for this desert, even if this desert is included in the territorial scope, it is only a little more sand.
Under the combined influence of subtropical high pressure zone sinking currents, offshore winds and Peruvian cold currents, the Takama Desert is one of the driest regions in the world, so it is also called the world's "dry pole", the Takama Desert has not rained for 91 consecutive years, and in the last 100 years, the average annual rainfall is less than 0.1 mm.
Although the Takama Desert seems useless to people, in the nineteenth century, due to the progress of society, people's cognition has also changed, and they accidentally found bird droppings and saltpeter in addition to sand here, which made the Atacama Desert instantly important.
In the nineteenth century, due to the limited science and technology, the crop irrigation technology used by people still stayed on the basis of manure, so the guano in the Takama Desert became a very sought-after resource, and the guano was very rich in phosphoric acid, which could be used as fertilizer to irrigate crops and greatly improve crop yields. As a result, the Takama Desert suddenly became a hot and fragrant feast, and Peru, Bolivia and Chile set their sights on the desert, wanting to redraw the territory here.
In the process of dividing, Chile found that its territory was very poor, and the production of bird droppings was far less than that of Bolivia and Peru, so Chile hoped that the other two countries would redivide the territory, but the other two countries simply ignored Chile's demands.
In desperation, Chile came up with a way to draw a salary from the bottom of the barrel, and he joined forces with Britain to set up a mining company in Bolivia and Peru, collecting guano in their territory in a reasonable capacity, and then transporting it to the guano market to sell. This is a very clever approach, because although Bolivia and Peru occupy a large amount of land, but because of the limited labor force, they can not mine it all, then the Mining Company established by Chile can appear as a private person to mine, so that only bolivia and Peru need to pay taxes, and the money earned is still Chile's own.
There were no impermeable walls, and it wasn't long before the Bolivian government discovered the Chilean conspiracy, so it joined forces with Peru to confiscate the mining company and caught Chile by surprise. But the mining company is not just behind Chile, the United Kingdom is involved. Seeing that a large amount of money was lost, Britain could not sit still, so Britain provided Chile with a large amount of funds and weapons and equipment to support Chile to send troops to regain its own interests (in fact, it was also for Britain itself to regain its interests).
In February 1879, the "Guano War" officially began, the three countries participating in the war were Chile, Peru and Bolivia, Chile had the support of Britain, its military strength was greatly improved, in only four years, Chile completed the goal, recaptured a large area of guano production area, Peru lost a province because of this war, Bolivia lost all coastal areas, making Bolivia a landlocked country.
According to post-war statistics, the three participating countries lost more than 14,000 people in these four years.
More than 20 years after the battle, German chemists mass-produced nitrogen fertilizers in 1909, and the bird droppings were worthless overnight. I don't know how the three countries that fought and died for these bird droppings in the "Guano War" felt, but the resources that were once hot became garbage in the blink of an eye, which also made people feel that things were uncertain.