"Don't grab it, the guano here is ours!"
"You said yes? Speak with strength! ”
In the late 19th century, in the South American continent, because of a seemingly inconspicuous guano, three countries and an old empire broke out a "guano war".
People collecting guano
Bird droppings, which no one cared about, suddenly became fragrant food
Located on the border of Chile, Peru and Bolivia, the Atacama Desert is very barren, uninhabitable and uninhabited. Before the nineteenth century, people did not have such a strong concept of sovereignty, so the land has never been divided into which country.
But in the mid-19th century, this grassless desert became a sweet potato, because a large amount of guano was found here - a phosphate mine formed by guano to be exact!
It turned out that although it was not suitable for human habitation, it became a paradise for birds and other small animals, and birds lived here carefree. Their accumulated guano does not decompose easily, forming large areas of struvite stones.
This was an extremely high-quality fertilizer raw material at the time, and saltpeter deposits were found in the area, which was an important raw material for the manufacture of gunpowder.
At the beginning of the 19th century, there was no chemical fertilizer in the world, and in order to solve the problem of declining land fertility, Europe used to import livestock bones as fertilizer from large livestock countries such as Argentina and Australia. Some European farmers even hired people to look for human bones to use as fertilizer in the ancient battlefields of the Napoleonic period, which shows the shortage of fertilizer at that time.
For example, in 1843, Europeans discovered that there was a layer of guano up to ten meters thick on the island of Ikabo on the west coast of Africa, which immediately attracted a large number of European and American ships to loot here. According to records, in December 1844 alone, more than 400 ships were parked on the shore, resembling a bustling port.
A few years later, the island's guano was quickly looted.
Under this circumstance, a large amount of guano was found in the originally ownerless Atacama Desert, which naturally became fragrant food!
2. Nonsensical guano controversy
Initially, it was not the people of these three countries who discovered the minerals, but the Spaniards. Chile, Peru and Bolivia were all former Spanish colonies.
Spain, as the former suzerainty of the land, was overjoyed to find that there were bird resources that Europeans desperately needed. Although its position in South America is much weaker and all three countries are independent, Spain still calls the shots as Big Brother.
It stands to reason that guano was found in his yard, what happened to Spain a thousand miles away? However, the Spaniards, still using their strong guns, drove their warships to the eastern coast of the South Pacific and threatened them with force.
It seems that the Spaniards also spelled it out in order to rob!
Bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west, Peru has a unique advantage, and abundant guano resources have brought opportunities for Peru's development. At that time, guano was called "white gold" in Peru, and the Peruvian government began to develop guano resources on a large scale, selling them to developed countries such as Europe and the United States, bringing considerable income and quickly getting rid of poverty.
The Spaniards approached the Peruvian government and demanded a piece of the pie. The reason they gave was that guano had been there during their reign, but it was not mined. Now that it is not busy, such a fortune cannot be missed, and the Peruvian government must compensate Spain for the previous losses.
This kind of shameless robbery was naturally strictly rejected by Peru.
Playing rogues did not work, and Spain decided to carry out the faceless to the end - clear robbery. In 1864, the Spanish Expeditionary Fleet attacked Peru, seized the Chincha Islands, which were full of guano, and blockaded Peruvian ports.
And Peru has long made a fortune by mining guano, and it is no longer the era of big knives and spears under Spanish rule, and has bought a lot of warships and weapons. Besides, after all, it is a war at its own doorstep, and its military strength is not much worse than that of Spain, so it is not afraid of the threat of the Spaniards. At the same time, Peru also formed a South American alliance with Bolivia and Chile, and Spain could not take advantage at all.
After some arguments, in 1866, the Spaniards, seeing that the situation was not good, quickly found an excuse and slipped away. This war, also known as the "First Guano War", was smaller in scale.
3. Infighting in South American countries, the British profited
After the Spaniards left, the three countries began to sit together and divide their resources. The islands off the coast of Chile are well demarcated and of course belong to Chile. However, the desert mentioned at the beginning of the article is located at the junction of the three countries, and there is a dispute over ownership.
After consultation, guano resources in the Atacama Desert were divided equally among the three countries. But a few years later, Chile found that their plot did not have much guano at all, while Peru and Bolivia got deserts with abundant guano resources.
So the Chileans had a twisted mind, and together with the British, they set up a mining company in Peru and Bolivia to exploit guano resources in both countries as private companies.
In this way, the Chileans and the British achieved a win-win situation, and both sides made a lot of money.
A few years later, Bolivia suffered a flood, and the government increased taxes on Chilean mining companies in response. Chileans and the British were unwilling to pay exorbitant taxes, and the two sides quarreled. In a fit of rage, the Bolivian government directly confiscated the mining company jointly founded by Chile and the United Kingdom.
The British were accustomed to dominating the earth, and how could they stand this anger, and immediately provided Chile with troops and weapons, so that Chile could teach the daring Bolivia a hard lesson.
At that time, the British Empire was in its prime, and Bolivia was definitely no match for Britain, and was defeated and fled. Seeing that things were not good, the Bolivians quickly found their ally Peru and told the Peruvians a cold truth:
If Bolivia is defeated by Chile and Britain, the next target will definitely be Peru, and this rich guano resource will be all British and Chilean, buddy, can't get on?
Peruvians listened: yes, that's it!
As a result, Peru also confiscated the mining companies there and hugged the Bolivians.
As everyone knows, this time you can be fooled!
In February 1879, Britain saw that the mining companies of both countries had lost their waters, and also followed the example of the Spaniards, and drove their warships to the east coast of the Pacific Ocean, and the second battle for guano began!
With the support of the British, the Chilean army, armed to the teeth, with British equipment, defeated the Secret Glass coalition army without much effort. In 1880, Bolivia could not hold out and had to surrender. Since then, the large area of guano and saltpeter resources to which he belonged belonged to the Chileans and the British.
A few years later, Bolivia signed an unequal treaty with Chile, this time losing all access to the sea and becoming a landlocked country that does not depend on the sea until today.
As shown in the picture
Unlike the Bolivians, the Peruvians seemed to have a bit of a backbone, and they preferred to die rather than surrender, and were beaten by the Chilean army to the capital, Lima. Then, the city of Lima was sacked by the Chilean army, and the once bustling city was full of ruins.
Two years later, Peru also signed the treaty. They were worse off than Brivia, ceding a coastal province to Chile, in addition to handing over most of the guano resource area.
At this point, this years-long "guano war" ended with Chile's victory. The British not only made war fortunes in this war, but also regained the right to operate guano after the war.
postscript
This war over guano profoundly affected the historical pattern of South America, through which Chile's territory extended northward and accelerated the pace of its modernization, becoming one of the future South American powers.
Peru and Bolivia were battered by the war and did not turn over for many years. At the same time, the contradictions between the three countries have not been eliminated, and this historical legacy has profoundly affected the integration process of South America.
Decades after the end of the war, the world had fertilizer and guano was less delicious, much to the regret of Peruvians and Bolivians.
Some guano involved, involving many countries from South America, North America to Europe, is a microcosm of the development of human history. For many years, Europeans explored the globe in search of resources, which was one of the original driving forces of the expansion of early capitalism.
In the end, it is the powerful old empires that make their fortunes, and it is still their original colonial countries that suffer.
Status of the Atacama Desert
Thank you for reading, please correct any inaccuracies in the text.
Image from the web