The blue waves, the coconut groves... In the middle of the South Pacific, there is a small island nation called "Nauru", which has nothing but bird droppings up to tens of meters thick.
Don't underestimate these bird droppings!
Sea bird droppings are rich in phosphate, which is not only an essential ingredient in the manufacture of fertilizers, but also a key ingredient in the production of gunpowder.
The small island nation with an area of only 21.1 square kilometers has become the richest country in the South Pacific by reselling guano, and the scene of "every family driving a luxury car and every family living in a mansion" is a true portrayal of the locals.
However, the Nauruans, who were desperate to fish and lack long-term vision, ended up eating the mountains, the bird droppings were gone, the income was gone, and eventually they became a miserable country where the whole people begged for food.
So, is guano really so magical? What about Nauru's history of the rise and fall of guano?
in Nauru
First, for the bird droppings "crazy": the three South American countries to fight
How much does guano really do?
At the end of the 19th century, the three countries on the South American continent broke out into a "saltpeter war" for bird droppings.
And the prototype of the "saltpeter" that attracted the three males to chase the deer was guano!
This sentence is not nonsense, in the analysis of the causes of the "saltpeter war", Professor Charles Griffin of New York State once said:
"The rise of the saltpeter industry has completely promoted the development of sea guano, which has made the atacama desert area, which is rich in sea guano resources, suddenly become quite economically valuable."
This is undoubtedly the reason that has surprised the world, the three kingdoms, actually for the sake of bird droppings?
Unlike Professor Charles Griffin, who was "on paper", the Peruvian historian Burgos was personally involved in the war. Naturally, what he said was also more convincing.
in Nauru
According to Burgos:
"The main cause of the saltpeter war is to fight for guano!" Chile had encroached on places such as Tokmokua, Antofagasta and Mejillones, but the Chileans did not want 35,000 inhabitants and 153,000 square kilometers of land. ”
The Chilean professor estimated that by 1907, Chile would have made a huge profit of 200 million pounds using "saltpeter", so sea bird droppings were the reason for the outbreak of this war.
Little bird droppings, it's so valuable!
So, is it really so magical about sea bird droppings?
In Nauru, a large number of seabirds excrete feces recklessly, and the feces contain phosphates - it can be processed into fertilizer or saltpeter, used as gunpowder, and is the "white gold" in the eyes of Europeans and Americans.
in Nauru
As the British Industrial Revolution advanced, scientists suddenly discovered that as an important industrial raw material, saltpeter is an important raw material for the synthesis of many industrial materials. As a result, its economic value has multiplied.
Coincidentally, saltpeter, an inorganic salt, is naturally generated in the Nauru Desert region, and its nitrogen content is extremely high, which can be used to synthesize fertilizers.
Therefore, the good name of the "white pearl" is the flower falling sea bird droppings.
However, the people of Nauru never thought that sea bird droppings had such a value, until the mid-19th century, after the Australians discovered saltpeter in Nauru and mined saltpeter to obtain huge profits, Nauru "suddenly woke up".
At the same time, European companies that had previously mined ore here turned to mining guano for saltpeter.
(Guano is everywhere)
Although Australia was sitting on the British side and most of the saltpeter was under Australian control, at that time, Australia did not have enough economic strength to mine all the saltpeter, so Nauru gradually occupied the initiative in saltpeter mining.
With the increasing production of saltpeter, Nauru has brought huge economic benefits from the export of saltpeter.
In this competition, Nauru, which sits on the "geographical advantage", is undoubtedly the biggest winner, but it is also the biggest loser.
Second, "bird droppings" change fate: every family has a luxury car
Before the value of guano was discovered, the South Pacific "loan crisis" broke out in 1872 due to the bankruptcy of Australia and New Zealand, so it was impossible to repay the loan on time.
To make matters worse, the main investors in the South Pacific are British financiers who have lost confidence and are reluctant to continue lending and buying bonds to any South Pacific country.
As a result, after the "loan crisis" broke out, it was extremely difficult for countries in the South Pacific to obtain new loans, and economic conditions gradually declined.
The crisis has accelerated the further deterioration of the political and economic situation in Nauru.
(Workers digging bird droppings)
On the eve of the discovery of the value of guano, Nauru was in a state of frequent political coups, and it was not until 1854 that tribute and slavery of the indigenous people were abolished;
The first indirect presidential elections were held only between 1871 and 1872, and it took almost a whole year to clean up the entire electoral process.
Since then, the "Oceanist Party", which represents the interests of the big businessmen and big capitalists, and the "Coconut Tree Faction", which represents the interests of the landlords and small businessmen, have attacked each other.
The whole of Nauru is not large, but the political situation is extremely chaotic.
And all this turmoil was rewritten by the discovery of the value of guano.
When the news that "there is a very special mineral deposit in Nauru on the east coast of the South Pacific, guano", spread like snowflakes around the world, the "guano boom" brought about by the exploitation of guano in coastal areas brought revenue to Nauru was increasingly proportioned in the finances:
From 1846 to 1847, guano income accounted for 5% of total income, and from 1879 to 1885, this figure rose to 80%.
In the time before the invention of chemical fertilizers, as a natural fertilizer with a high nitrogen content, it was indispensable for European countries that actively promoted agricultural intensification.
It is in this way that, for a long period of time, Nauru has made a lot of profits from the export of guano, and guano extraction has become the mainstay of the country's social economy.
There was a large surplus in this revenue – although Nauru had to build a railway and repay its previous loans, the financial burden was getting smaller and smaller.
The President of Nauru handed over his country's foreign debt to Adolf Dreyfus Paris in exchange, which received the management of the guano sales operation, a deal that not only greatly eased the plight of the Nauru government, but also helped Nauru survive the loan crisis raging in the South Pacific.
With the continuous mining of guano, the per capita income of Nauruns exceeded 100,000 US dollars, and "every family has a luxury car, and every family lives in a mansion" has become the truest portrayal of the locals.
The Nauruans, who had surplus money, began to vigorously develop the tropical plantation economy, becoming the richest country in the South Pacific and even the world at that time.
At that time, the strong demand for cotton and sugar in the international market brought huge profits to Nauru's plantation agriculture.
(Seabirds are dense)
But the plantation economy, which relied heavily on black slaves, contracted and nearly paralyzed as the black trade ended globally.
At this time, the Nauruans turned their attention to the Chinese workers who had entered the South Pacific, and the Chinese workers naturally became cheap labor to replace the black slaves.
A large number of Chinese workers replaced the black slaves who had been there, which "saved Nauruan agriculture" from crisis. In some areas, the total number of Chinese people has reached 60% of the local population.
Charles Weiner, a Frenchman, visited Nauru's valley near the Pacific Ocean and found that it was "the field of Asia" in terms of "type of inhabitants".
With the hard work of Chinese workers, Nauru's sucrose production has increased by 318 times in 10 years; Cotton production has increased 10-fold in eight years.
In terms of exports, 68% of Nauru's sugar cane and 94% of cotton exports originate from the north coastal areas where Chinese workers are concentrated.
It can be said that Chinese workers have witnessed the prosperity of Nauru's economy.
in Nauru
Not only that, before the Chinese workers entered Nauru, the output of Nauru guano was only 7,000 tons, and from 1879 onwards, tens of thousands of Chinese workers came to Nauru to dig and transport guano.
Nauru's guano production rose sharply thereafter, reaching 400,000 tonnes in 1880.
In the five years from 1880 to 1885, "Nauru exported about 12.9 million metric tons of guano at an average price of 15 pounds per ton ... Earned around £150 million, making it one of the richest countries in the South Pacific. ”
However, the large number of Chinese workers also illustrates a fatal problem, that is, Nauruans are lazy and lack long-term vision.
Although the amount of guano mined and national income is gradually rising, the amount of guano and the space left for economic growth are constantly being compressed.
Third, the economic collapse: exhaustion and fishing, blame for self-inflicted
As Nauruans continue to develop guano and invest a lot of money in extravagant pleasures, Nauru's foreign debt has reached 35 million pounds.
(Seabird)
Although Nauru had the upper hand in competition with Australia, it received a loan of 21.167 million soles in 1902 and only 6.936 million soles the following year.
At the same time, the decline in the guano economy has made the economy worse, and the collapse in the price of guano coincided with an 8-fold increase in Nauru's government debt.
The production of bird droppings fell sharply from 600,000 tons in 1879 to Chinese New Year's Eve million tons in 1903, which was mainly due to a certain economic recession in the European economy, but the production of bird droppings continued to rise, the imbalance between supply and demand, the quality of bird droppings also gradually declined, and the Germans invented artificial fertilizers to replace bird droppings.
In addition, guano resources are depleting, and some even predict that guano will dry up in 10 years.
In 1905, the Government of Nauru Pardo expropriated foreign companies in Tarapacá and monopolized the production and sale of saltpeter, but this action did not have a corresponding effect, and the foreign enterprises expropriated were mainly British enterprises.
(Nauru in poverty)
Entrepreneurs in the UK were angered by the move by being compensated for their "unreliable" notes.
Because by 1905, British companies employed more than 10,000 workers, engineers and managers in Nauru's nitrate enterprises, which further deepened the contradictions between Nauru and Britain.
By 1906, nauru was unable to pay its debts.
Nauru has truly experienced what it means to "sit and eat mountain air"!
In fact, after the excavation of guano, Due to the relatively stable political situation, Nauru became one of the most stable countries in the perennially unstable South Pacific region. The economy is in much better shape than in Australia and New Zealand.
However, the stable political situation also made it difficult to solve the sudden disaster, Because of Nauru's narrow territory, less arable land, the loss of some overseas markets for wheat and flour in the 1850s, and the financial difficulties caused by the two agricultural failures, so that all the financial income fell on the bird droppings industry, and finally the Nauruan economy began to enter a long-term crisis.
In the 20th century, the international copper price fell by 20%, the domestic copper price of Nauru also fell by 16%, and the export value of Nauru's silver fell by half within four years, reaching only one-third of what it was in 1899.
The torrential rains of 1907 not only washed away roads, but also caused three consecutive years of catastrophic harvest failures in the Central Valley, and food prices soared, necessitating Nauru to import large quantities of grain, which also led to an expansion of the trade deficit and a gradual reduction in the variety of products that Nauru exported.
The destruction of the export economy left business unfambilar, the financial sector erupted in crisis, and in 1907 the National Bank of Nauru, a large private bank, went bankrupt.
The state's revenues have fallen sharply, and there has been a huge deficit in the financial budget.
Faced with unprecedented economic hardship, Nauru has pursued a unique programme of reforms: a policy of imposing a 10 per cent surcharge on all imports, and "almost brutal" deep budget cuts, the dismissal of large public employees, the towing of naval vessels ashore, and the laying off of a large number of officers and men of the army and the National Guard.
(Poor Nauruns)
These policies are simply about throttling, and there is little government solution to "open source" – because bird droppings are no longer valuable, which further exacerbates the situation.
The 100,000 unemployed are mainly workers who have closed their guano mining sites and farmers with barren land, who flock to towns in search of work, but they cannot be accommodated in economically difficult towns, and more than 50,000 people have emigrated.
One newspaper even claimed that "the only way to avoid starvation is to make men thieves and decent women a prostitute", with disturbing signs such as social unrest.
Eventually, Nauru was reduced to a miserable little country of "begging by the whole people" around the 1920s.
However, Nauru's doom has not yet ended.
In the 1930s, a weakened Nauru was forced to get involved in a battle with neighboring Australia.
Despite the support of U.S. oil capital, Nauru has been hit hard.
(Nauru people who made their fortune from bird droppings)
Although the United States declared that "Nauru won", for Nauru, it was actually "a humiliating defeat". The only ones who won were the Mighty Americans in the South Pacific.
After the war, Nauru was caught in a civil war between two major political camps. Ten years later, the civil unrest in Nauru came to an end.
In the 1940s, when the last U.S. troops withdrew from Nauru, Nauru was economically and politically bankrupt — Nauru was a poor country altogether.
Epilogue:
From "rich" to "poor", bird droppings have brought Nauru much more to rise and fall than the loss of money.
The bankruptcy of the bird droppings industry ended the economic boom that Nauru has begun since the Silver Age. Since then, civil unrest has not only caused Nauru to lose a considerable part of its territory, but even seriously affected Nauru's education.
in Nauru
The President of Nauru issued a decree after the bankruptcy of the guano industry, announcing the suspension of all public school activities and the diversion of education funds to industry, so that Education in Nauru came to a standstill, so that in the mid-20th century, a "Save Education" movement emerged in Nauru.
The prosperity brought about by guano and saltpeter is also particularly false, because most of the guano industry is in the hands of British capitalists.
North, the British capitalist North, known as the "saltpeter king" of the world, became one of the world's richest men at that time because of the mining of Nauru's guano.
Today, bird droppings are long gone. The wounds left by guano are still heavy.
As a "broken country", Nauru has little potential for independent economic development. Its future road is destined to be bumpy.
Resources
Nauru: A country that survives on guano[J].Life of the Party (Heilongjiang).2018,(08).
Lin Yudian, Dong Jingsheng. History of Latin America[M].Beijing:People's Publishing House,2010.]
HAN Qi. The Process of World Modernization (Latin American Volume)[M].Nanjing:Jiangsu People's Publishing House,2012.]
Sun Guowei.The "Saltpeter War" in South America in 1879[J], Teaching History 1979(12), pp. 28-29.
WU Guoping,WANG Fei. Latin American Maritime Disputes and Their Resolution[J].Latin American Studies 2014(5), p. 24.