title: Maajid Nawaz

text: In a 2015 CNN interview, he condemned Donald Trump's remarks about his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Nawaz said that when leaders pump up their followers by promising them utopian visions, and then fail to deliver on those promises, followers take matters into their own hands. He expressed his concern that disappointed followers of Trump will "end up joining fascist or far-right groups" and take matters into their own hands against the eight million Muslims in the United States".


title: Maajid Nawaz

text: In July 2020, Nawaz began a hunger strike to protest against China's imprisonment and alleged atrocities of its Uyghur population and to promote a parliamentary petition urging the government to impose sanctions on China over its treatment of Uyghur Muslims. Nawaz claimed the abuses amounted to genocide and that it "leaves no room for neutrality". Within a week, the petition passed the 100,000 signature threshold, thereby ensuring that a debate on the issue would take place in the UK Parliament.


title: Maajid Nawaz

text: In January 2021 Nawaz signed an open letter to the FBI and other Western intelligence agencies asking them to investigate the possibility that COVID-19 lockdowns were a "global fraud" promulgated by the Chinese Communist Party intended to "impoverish the nations" that implemented them. Nawaz has shared his mistrust of COVID-19 vaccines. He has said that he believed "natural immunity" was safer, and in a deleted tweet from January 2022 linking to a news story about mandatory vaccinations for COVID-19 in Italy, Nawaz captioned the story with "... a global palace coup that suspends our rights... by a network of fascists who seek a New World Order".


title: Maajid Nawaz

text: At the age of 21, he married a then fellow Hizb ut-Tahrir activist who was a biology student; they have a son. On Nawaz's decision to leave Hizb ut-Tahrir, they separated and later divorced.


title: Maajid Nawaz

text: In 2014, Nawaz married Rachel Maggart, an artist and writer from the United States who works for an art gallery in London. In February 2017, Nawaz and Maggart had their first child together, a son named Gibreal.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of the United States' most popular big bands in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Though he had numerous hit records, he was perhaps best known for his 1938 recording of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine." Before the release of "Beguine," Shaw and his fledgling band had languished in relative obscurity for over two years and, after its release, he became a major pop artist within short order. The record eventually became one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of what became known much later as Third Stream music, which blended elements of classical and jazz forms and traditions. His music influenced other musicians, such as Monty Norman in England, with the vamp of the James Bond Theme, possibly influenced by 1938's "Nightmare".


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw also recorded with small jazz groups drawn from within the ranks of the big bands he led. He served in the US Navy from 1942 to 1944, during which time he led a morale-building band that toured the South Pacific. Following his discharge in 1944, he returned to lead a band through 1945. Following the breakup of that band, he began to focus on other interests and gradually withdrew from the world of being a professional musician and major celebrity, although he remained a force in popular music and jazz before retiring from music completely in 1954.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Arthur Jacob Arshawsky was born on May 23, 1910, in New York City to Sarah (née Strauss) and Harold "Harry" Arshawsky, a dressmaker and photographer. The family was Jewish; his father was from Russia, his mother from Austria.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism. He bought a saxophone by working in a grocery store and began learning the saxophone at 13. At 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 to 1936, Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras; from 1926 to 1929, he worked in Cleveland and established a lasting reputation as music director and arranger for an orchestra led by the violinist Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930, he played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music, which he would later incorporate in his arrangements. In 1932, Shaw joined the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and made several recordings with the outfit including "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and "Fit as a Fiddle".


title: Artie Shaw

text: In 1935, he first gained attention with his "Interlude in B-flat" at a swing concert at the Imperial Theater in New York. During the swing era, his big bands were popular with hits like "Begin the Beguine" (1938), "Stardust" (with a trumpet solo by Billy Butterfield), "Back Bay Shuffle", "Moonglow", "Rosalie" and "Frenesi". The show was well received, but was forced to dissolve in 1937 because his band's sound was not commercial. Shaw valued experimental and innovative music over dancing and love songs.


title: Artie Shaw

text: He was an innovator in the big band idiom, using unusual instrumentation; "Interlude in B-flat", where he was backed with only a rhythm section and a string quartet, was one of the earliest examples of what would be later dubbed Third Stream. His incorporation of stringed instruments could be attributed to the influence of the classical composer Igor Stravinsky.


title: Artie Shaw

text: In addition to hiring Buddy Rich, he signed Billie Holiday as his band's vocalist in 1938, becoming the first white band leader to hire a full-time black female singer to tour the segregated Southern U.S. However, after recording "Any Old Time", Holiday left the band due to hostility from audiences in the South, as well as from music company executives who wanted a more "mainstream" singer.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Like his main rival, Benny Goodman, and other leaders of big bands, Shaw fashioned a smaller "band within the band" in 1940. He named it Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange. Band pianist Johnny Guarnieri played harpsichord on the quintet recordings, and Al Hendrickson played electric guitar. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge became part of the group, succeeding Billy Butterfield. In 1940, the original Gramercy Five cut eight sides, then Shaw dissolved the band in early 1941. The Gramercy Five's biggest hit was "Summit Ridge Drive", one of Shaw's million-selling records. His last prewar band, organized in September 1941, included Oran "Hot Lips" Page, Max Kaminsky, Georgie Auld, Dave Tough, Jack Jenney, Ray Conniff and Guarnieri.


title: Artie Shaw

text: The long series of musical groups Shaw subsequently formed included Lena Horne, Helen Forrest, Mel Tormé, Buddy Rich, Dave Tough, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Dodo Marmarosa, and Ray Conniff. He used the morose "Nightmare", with its Hasidic nuances, as his theme rather than choosing a more accessible song. In a televised interview in the 1970s, Shaw derided the "asinine" songs of Tin Pan Alley that were the lifeblood of popular music and which bands, especially the most popular (such as his own) were compelled to play night after night. In 1994, he told Frank Prial of "The New York Times": "I thought that because I was Artie Shaw I could do what I wanted, but all they wanted was 'Begin the Beguine'".


title: Artie Shaw

text: Throughout his career, Shaw had a habit of forming bands, developing them according to his immediate aspirations, making a quick series of records, and then disbanding. He generally did not stick around long enough to reap his bands' successes through live performances of their recorded hits. Following the breakup of what was already his second band in 1939, he rarely toured at all and, if he did, his personal appearances were usually limited to long-term engagements in a single venue or bookings that did not require much traveling, unlike many bands of the era that traveled great distances doing seemingly endless strings of one-night engagements.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw did many big band remote broadcasts. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1938, he was often heard from the Blue Room of the Hotel Lincoln in New York City. After touring in 1939, he led the house band at the Café Rouge of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. He was the headliner of a radio series with comedian Robert Benchley as emcee. Shaw broadcast on CBS from November 20, 1938, until November 14, 1939.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw became increasingly disillusioned with not having time to develop new arrangements, and having to play the same pop tunes over and over. In an interview, he explained, "'Begin the Beguine' is a pretty nice tune. But not when you have to play it 500 nights in a row." Finally, in frustration, he walked off the Café Rouge bandstand while on the air, and quit the band two days later. He departed for Mexico, and the band continued without him into January but eventually broke up.


title: Artie Shaw

text: After Shaw returned from Mexico in 1940, and still under contract to RCA Victor, he experimented with a group of session musicians in Hollywood, trying to combine strings and woodwinds with a jazz band. The result was the hit "Frenesi".


title: Artie Shaw

text: He was hired as bandleader for the "Burns and Allen Show" broadcast from Hollywood. He organized a band that was modeled after his swing band concept of the late-1930s with the addition of six violins, two violas, and one cello. The addition of a string section to a big band was not novel, as it had been done by Paul Whiteman and others since the 1920s. Shaw updated the idea with the music trends of the 1940s. Strings gave him a wider tonal palette and allowed him to concentrate on ballads rather than the fast dance songs of the swing era. Shaw was at or near the top of the list of virtuoso jazz bandleaders. The band was showcased on the Burns and Allen program every week.


title: Artie Shaw

text: In 1940, at the height of his popularity, the 30-year-old Shaw earned up to $60,000 per week. In contrast, George Burns and Gracie Allen were each making $5,000 per week during the year that Shaw and his orchestra provided the music for their radio show. He acted on the show as a love interest for Gracie Allen. Shaw's contract was renewed for another 13 weeks when the program was moved to New York.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw disliked having to be a part of the celebrity culture of the period, with its professional obligations. He told "Metronome" magazine: "I don't like the "business" of music. I'm unhappy in the music 'business.' Maybe I don't even belong in it. I like the music part, but for me the business part just plain stinks." Shaw also resented the constant pressure imposed on him by networks, agencies, publishers, and promoters. He summed up his feelings in a self-penned 1939 "Saturday Evening Post" article: "My job is to play music, not politics, and my only obligation is to the people who pay to listen to me. I don't attempt to ram hackneyed, insipid tunes down the public's throat just because they've been artificially hypoed to the so-called 'hit' class. This policy of trying to maintain some vestige of musical integrity has, naturally, earned me enemies, people who think I'm a longhair, impressed with my own ability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My faith in dance music — I refuse to call it swing — borders on the fanatic. I have the utmost respect for the many real musicians who are creating a new music as important as the classics, but I have no respect for musical clowns who lead an orchestra with a baton and a quip. However, more power to them if they can make it pay."


title: Artie Shaw

text: When Shaw told his agents that he was walking away from the big band, they warned him that he couldn't do that; he had a million dollars in contracts that had to be honored. Shaw didn't care, and responded, "Tell 'em I'm insane. A nice, young American boy walking away from a million dollars, wouldn't you call that insane?"


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw broke up the Hollywood band, keeping a nucleus of seven musicians in addition to himself, and filled out the ensemble with New York musicians until March 1941. While taking a few months' vacation in the spring of 1941 to reassess what to do next, Shaw recorded in another small-group format with three horns and a four-man rhythm section with the addition of a dozen strings. By September, he formed a big band with seven brass, five saxes, four rhythm, and fifteen strings. On December 7, three months into the tour, the 31-piece band was in the midst of a matinee performance in Providence, Rhode Island, when he was given a note about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The note instructed him to tell military personnel to return to their bases. Shaw was shaken by the news, as he told interviewer Freddie Johnson in 1994: "Everything seemed to pale into insignificance, and I had to go back out on stage and announce "Star Dust" or something, and it sounded so fatuous. Here we were in the middle of a conflagration. On impulse, I went to the front row of the band where Les Robinson, first alto man, was sitting, and I said, 'Pass the word. This is two weeks' notice.' It went through the band and we played the rest of that show with a pall over it. Anyway, I joined the Navy."


title: Artie Shaw

text: During World War II, Shaw enlisted in the United States Navy and shortly after formed a band, which served in the Pacific theater. After 18 months playing for Navy personnel, (sometimes as many as four concerts a day in battle zones, including Guadalcanal), Shaw returned to the U.S. in a state of physical exhaustion and received a medical discharge. After the war, the popularity of big bands declined, as Crooners and Bebop began to dominate the charts.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw credited his time in the Navy from 1942 to 1944 as a period of renewed introspection. After his discharge, he entered psychoanalysis and began to withdraw from music in favor of a writing career. His autobiography, "The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity", was published in 1952 (with later reprint editions in 1992 and 2001). Revealing downbeat elements of the music business, Shaw explained that "the trouble with Cinderella" is "nobody ever lives happily ever after." He turned to semi-autobiographical fiction with the three short novels in "I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead!" (1965, reprinted in 1997), which prompted Terry Southern's comment: "Here is a deeply probing examination of the American marital scene. I flipped over it!" Shaw's short stories, including "Snow White in Harlem", were collected in "The Best of Intentions and Other Stories" (1989). He worked for years on his 1,000-page autobiographical novel, "The Education of Albie Snow", but the three-volume work remained unpublished.


title: Artie Shaw

text: After his discharge in 1944, he formed another band, this time what could be considered a modern big band in that it contained what is now considered the standard eight brass and five saxes. It did not include any strings and was based in Hollywood, California, where Shaw was living. He continued to record for RCA Victor, as he had before the war, and limited the band's personal appearances to military bases in California. In August 1945, his contract with RCA ended and he signed with an independent label, Musicraft. He made a few records for Musicraft before the band broke up, and all of the recordings for Musicraft from 1946 were staffed by top-notch session musicians. The big band was back in the studio, this time including strings. On these Musicraft recordings in 1946 Shaw featured the young singer Mel Tormé. On some of the sides, Tormé was also featured with his vocal group the Meltones.


title: Artie Shaw

text: In July 1954, Shaw undertook a brief Australian tour for promoter Lee Gordon on which he shared the bill with drummer Buddy Rich and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald. After completing that tour Shaw stopped playing the clarinet, citing his own perfectionism, which, he later said, would have killed him. He explained to a reporter: "In the world we live in, compulsive perfectionists finish last. You have to be Lawrence Welk or, on another level, Irving Berlin, and write the same kind of music over and over again. I'm not able to do that, and I have taken the clarinet as far as anyone can possibly go. To continue playing would be a disservice." He spent the rest of the 1950s living in Europe.


title: Artie Shaw

text: In 1983, after years of prodding by Williard Alexander, the 73-year-old Shaw organized a band and selected clarinetist Dick Johnson as bandleader and soloist. The 58-year-old Johnson, an accomplished woodwind and saxophonist and native of Brockton, Massachusetts, was no stranger to jazz having recorded numerous albums of his own and had idolized Shaw's playing throughout his life. Shaw's music library, which was the product of his almost 20 years of activity in the music business, contained numerous arrangements of monumental status of popular music in addition to many original big band jazz compositions of the era. It was a collection of music arranged by some of the foremost composer/arrangers of the period, much of which was sketched out by Shaw himself and filled in and completed by his orchestrator/arranger collaborators, among them Jerry Gray, William Grant Still, Lennie Hayton, Ray Conniff, Eddie Sauter, and Jimmy Mundy, among others. Shaw rehearsed his new band, (based out of Boston, Massachusetts), and the band made its official debut on New Year's Eve 1984 at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York, the same launching pad for many bands of the swing era decades earlier, when Shaw and his bands were in their prime. Shaw appeared with the band throughout its first few years, limiting his role to being its conductor and front man, while leaving the clarinet playing duties to Johnson. In 1985, another week-long series of strenuous rehearsals followed during which Shaw added more repertoire, including many arrangements and compositions that were from the later years of his career Shaw had never recorded. By 1987 though, Shaw was no longer touring with the band, quietly content that Johnson and the band kept true to Shaw's band spirit and vision. He would, however, show up on occasion "just to hear how things sounded".


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw made several musical shorts in 1939 for Vitaphone and Paramount Pictures. He portrayed himself in the Fred Astaire film, "Second Chorus" (1940), which featured Shaw and his orchestra playing "Concerto for Clarinet", and his 1940–41 Hollywood period "Star Dust" band can be heard throughout the soundtrack. The film garnered him two Oscar nominations for Best Score and Best Song ("Love of My Life"). He collaborated on the love song "If It's You", sung by Tony Martin in the Marx Brothers' film "The Big Store" (1941). On March 2, 1950, he was the mystery guest on the fifth episode of "What's My Line?" and on August 31, 1952, was part of the panel. During the 1970s he made appearances on "The Mike Douglas Show" and "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Many of his recordings have been used in motion pictures. His 1940 recording of "Stardust" was used in its entirety in the closing credits of the film "The Man Who Fell to Earth". Martin Scorsese also used the Shaw theme song, "Nightmare", in his Academy Award-winning Howard Hughes biopic, "The Aviator."


title: Artie Shaw

text: Canadian filmmaker Brigitte Berman interviewed Hoagy Carmichael, Doc Cheatham, and others including Shaw for her documentary film, "Bix: Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet" (1981) about Bix Beiderbecke, and afterward she went on to create an Academy Award-winning documentary, "Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got" (1985), featuring extensive interviews with Shaw, Buddy Rich, Mel Tormé, Helen Forrest, and other musicians, in addition to Shaw's eighth wife, actress Evelyn Keyes. The documentary ends with Shaw rehearsing his new band with co-leader Johnson present and rolls to credits perhaps quite fittingly with the band taking a final segue to Shaw's theme song "Nightmare." In 2000, filmmaker Ken Burns interviewed Shaw at his home for his PBS documentary/miniseries "Jazz" where Shaw appears in multiple segments. His last major interview was in 2003, when he was interviewed by Russell Davies for the BBC Television documentary, "Artie Shaw – Quest for Perfection". The documentary includes interviews with surviving members of his original bands, Johnson, and other music industry professionals.


title: Artie Shaw

text: A self-proclaimed "very difficult man", Shaw was married eight times. Two marriages were annulled; the others ended in divorce: Jane Cairns (1932–33; annulled); Margaret Allen (1934–37); actress Lana Turner (1940); Betty Kern, the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern (1942–43); actress Ava Gardner (1945–46); "Forever Amber" author Kathleen Winsor (1946–48; annulled); actress Doris Dowling (1952–56), and actress Evelyn Keyes (1957–85). He had two sons, Steven Kern (with Betty Kern) and Jonathan Shaw (with Doris Dowling). Both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner later described Shaw as being extremely emotionally abusive. His controlling nature and incessant verbal abuse drove Turner to have a nervous breakdown, soon after which she divorced him. In 1940, before eloping with Lana Turner, Shaw briefly dated actresses Betty Grable and Judy Garland and, according to Tom Nolan's biography, had an affair with Lena Horne.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Apart from his interest in music, Shaw had a tremendous intellect and almost insatiable thirst for intellectual knowledge and literature. During his self-imposed "sabbaticals" from the music business, his interests included studying advanced mathematics, as cited in Karl Sabbagh's "The Riemann Hypothesis".


title: Artie Shaw

text: In 1946, Shaw was present at a meeting of the Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. Olivia de Havilland and Ronald Reagan, part of a core group of actors and artists who were trying to sway the organization away from Communism, presented an anti-Communist declaration which, if signed, was set to run in newspapers. There was bedlam as many rose to champion the communist cause, and Shaw began praising the democratic standards of the Soviet constitution. In 1953, Shaw was forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee for his leftist activities. The committee was investigating a peace activist organization, the World Peace Council.


title: Artie Shaw

text: Shaw was also a precision marksman, ranking fourth in the United States in 1962, and an expert fly fisherman. In his later years, Shaw lived and wrote in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks, California. He died on December 30, 2004, aged 94. According to his publicist, he had been "in ill health for some time, but I don't know the specific cause of death." Shaw had been diabetic since the 1980s.


title: Artie Shaw

text: In 2005, Shaw's eighth wife, actress Evelyn Keyes, filed suit, seeking one-half of Shaw's estate, pursuant to a contract to make a will between them. In July 2006, a Ventura, California jury unanimously held that Keyes was entitled to almost one-half of Shaw's estate or $1,420,000.


title: Artie Shaw

text: In 1980, Shaw donated his papers, most of which amounted to his music library of over 700 scores and parts and approximately 1,000 pieces of sheet music, to Boston University. In 1991, the collection was transferred to the School of Music of the University of Arizona in Tucson. In 2004, he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.


title: Artie Shaw

text: In response to Benny Goodman's nickname, the "King of Swing", Shaw's fans dubbed him the "King of the Clarinet". He felt the titles should be reversed. "Benny Goodman played clarinet. I played music," he said.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The War of the Pacific (), also known as the Saltpeter War () and by multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought over Chilean claims on coastal Bolivian territory in the Atacama Desert, the war ended with a Chilean victory, which gained for the country a significant amount of resource-rich territory from Peru and Bolivia.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The war began over a nitrate taxation dispute between Bolivia and Chile, with Peru being drawn in due to its secret alliance with Bolivia. But historians have pointed to deeper origins of the war, such as the interest of Chile and Peru in the nitrate business, the long-standing rivalry between Chile and Peru, as well as political and economical disparities between Chile, Peru and Bolivia. On February 14, 1879, Chile's armed forces occupied the Bolivian port city of Antofagasta, subsequently war between Bolivia and Chile was declared on March 1, 1879, and between Chile and Peru on April 5, 1879.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Battles were fought in the Pacific Ocean, the Atacama Desert, the Peruvian deserts, and the mountainous interior of Peru. For the first five months, the war played out in a naval campaign, as Chile struggled to establish a marine resupply corridor for its forces in the world's driest desert. Afterwards, Chile's land campaign overcame the Bolivian and Peruvian armies. Bolivia withdrew after the Battle of Tacna, on May 26, 1880. Chilean forces occupied Peru's capital Lima in January 1881. Remnants and irregulars of the Peruvian army waged a guerrilla war but could not prevent war-weary Peruvian factions from reaching a peace deal with Chile involving territorial cessions.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Chile and Peru signed the Treaty of Ancón on October 20, 1883. Bolivia signed a truce with Chile in 1884. Chile acquired the Peruvian territory of Tarapacá, the disputed Bolivian department of Litoral (turning Bolivia into a landlocked country), and temporary control over the Peruvian provinces of Tacna and Arica. In 1904, Chile and Bolivia signed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which established definite boundaries. The 1929 Tacna–Arica compromise gave Arica to Chile and Tacna to Peru.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The conflict is also known as the "Saltpeter War", the "Ten Cents War" (in reference to the controversial ten-centavo tax imposed by the Bolivian government), and the "Second Pacific War". It should not to be confused with the pre-Columbian Saltpeter War, in what is now Mexico, nor the "Guano War" as the Chincha Islands War is sometimes named. The war largely settled (or set up, depending on one's point of view) the "Tacna-Arica dispute", and is sometimes known by that name as well, although the details took decades to resolve.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Atacama is a Chilean region south of the Atacama Desert, which mostly coincides with the disputed Antofagasta province, known in Bolivia as Litoral.


title: War of the Pacific

text: When most of South America gained independence from Spain and Portugal in the 19th century the demarcation of frontiers was uncertain, particularly in remote, thinly populated portions of the newly independent nations. Bolivia and Chile's Atacama border dispute, in the coastal territories between approximately the 23° and 24° South parallels, was just one of several longstanding border conflicts that arose in South America.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Cobija, Paposo, Mejillones and the territory of Antofagasta appears on a 1793 map of Andrés Baleato and the 1799 map of the Spanish Navy as inside the jurisdiction of Chile, pointing out the Loa River as an internal limit of the Spanish Empire between Chile and Peru, leaving Charcas without sea access.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The dry climate of the Peruvian and Bolivian coasts had permitted the accumulation and preservation of vast amounts of high-quality guano deposits and sodium nitrate. In the 1840s, Europeans knew the value of guano and nitrate as fertilizer and the role of saltpeter in explosives. The Atacama Desert became economically important. Bolivia, Chile, and Peru were in the area of the largest reserves of a resource demanded by the world. During the Chincha Islands War (1864–1866), Spain, under Queen Isabella II, attempted to exploit an incident involving Spanish citizens in Peru to re-establish its influence over the guano-rich Chincha Islands.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Starting from the Chilean silver rush in the 1830s, the Atacama was prospected and populated by Chileans. Chilean and foreign enterprises in the region eventually extended their control to the Peruvian saltpeter works. In the Peruvian region of Tarapacá, Peruvians were a minority, behind both Chileans and Bolivians.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Bolivia and Chile negotiated the Boundary Treaty of 1866," or the "Treaty of Mutual Benefits," which established 24° S "from the littoral of the Pacific to the eastern limits of Chile" as the mutual boundary. Both countries also agreed to share the tax revenue from mineral exports from the territory between 23° and 25° S. The bipartite tax collecting caused discontent, and the treaty lasted for only eight years.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In February 1873, Peru and Bolivia signed a secret treaty of alliance against Chile. The last clause kept it secret as long as both parties considered its publication unnecessary, until it was revealed in 1879. Argentina, long involved in a dispute with Chile over the Strait of Magellan and Patagonia, was secretly invited to join the pact, and in September 1873, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies approved the treaty and 6,000,000 Argentine peso for war preparations. Eventually, Argentina and Bolivia did not agree on the territories of Tarija and Chaco, and Argentina also feared an alliance of Chile with Brazil. The Argentine Senate postponed and then rejected the approval, but in 1875 and 1877, after border disputes with Chile flared up anew, Argentina sought to join the treaty. At the onset of the war, in a renewed attempt, Peru offered Argentina the Chilean territories from 24° to 27° S if Argentina adhered to the pact and fought in the war.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Historians including G. Bulnes, Basadre, and Yrigoyen agree that the real intention of the treaty was to compel Chile to modify its borders according to the geopolitical interests of Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia, as Chile was militarily weak before the arrival of the Chilean ironclads Almirante Cochrane and Blanco Encalada.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Chile was not informed about the pact until it learned of it, at first cursorily by a leak in the Argentine Congress in September 1873, when the Argentine Senate discussed the invitation to join the Peru-Bolivia alliance. The Peruvian mediator Antonio de Lavalle stated in his memoirs that he did not learn of it until March 1879, and Hilarion Daza was not informed of the pact until December 1878.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Peruvian historian Basadre states that one of Peru's reasons for signing the treaty was to impede a Chilean-Bolivian alliance against Peru that would have given to Bolivia the region of Arica (almost all Bolivian commerce went through Peruvian ports of Arica before the war) and transferred Antofagasta to Chile. The Chilean offers to Bolivia to change allegiance were made several times even during the war and also from the Bolivian side at least six times.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On December 26, 1874, the recently built ironclad Cochrane arrived in Valparaíso and remained in Chile until the completion of the Blanco Encalada. That threw the balance of power in the South Pacific toward Chile.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Historians disagree on how to interpret the treaty. Some Peruvian and Bolivian historians assess it as rightful, defensive, circumstantial, and known by Chile from the very onset. Conversely, some Chilean historians assess the treaty as aggressive against Chile, causing the war, designed to take control by Peru of the Bolivian nitrate and hidden from Chile. The reasons for its secrecy, its invitation to Argentina to join the pact, and Peru's refusal to remain neutral are still discussed.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In 1874, Chile and Bolivia replaced the 1866 boundary treaty by keeping the boundary at 24° S but granting Bolivia the authority to collect all tax revenue between 23° and 24° S. To compensate for the relinquishment of its rights, Chile received a 25-year guarantee against tax increases on Chilean commercial interests and their exports.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The American historian William F. Sater gives several possible and compatible reasons for the war. He considers the causes to be domestic, economic, and geopolitical. Several authors agree with them, but others only partially support his arguments.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Some historians argue that Chile was devastated by the economic crisis of the 1870s and was looking for a replacement for its silver, copper and wheat exports. It has been argued that the economic situation and the view of new wealth in nitrate were the true reasons for the Chilean elite to go to war against Peru and Bolivia. The holder of the Chilean nitrate companies, according to Sater, "bulldozed" Chilean President Aníbal Pinto into declaring war to protect the owner of the "Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta" (CSFA) and then to seize Bolivia's and Peru's salitreras (saltpeter works). Several members of the Chilean government were shareholders of CSFA, and they are believed to have hired the services of one of the country's newspapers to push their case.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Another American historian, David Healy, rejects that thesis, and Fredrick B. Pike calls the allegation "absurd." The economic development that accompanied and followed the war was so remarkable that Marxist writers feel justified in alleging that Chile's great military adventure was instigated by self-seeking capitalists to bring their country out of the business stagnation that had begun in 1878 since the war provided Chile with the economic means to come of age. Sater states that that interpretation overlooks certain important facts. The Chilean investors in Bolivia correctly feared that Daza, the Bolivian dictator, would use the war as an excuse to expropriate their investments. Among them were Melchor de Concha y Toro, the politically powerful president of Chile's Camara de Diputados, , and Lorenzo Claro, a Chilean founder of the Banco de Bolivia and a prominent member of the National Party. A Santiago newspaper claimed that Melchor de Concha y Toro offered President Pinto 2,000,000 Chilean pesos to end the dispute and to return to the 1874 border. "In other words," writes W. Sater, "there were as many powerful interests opposed to helping the Compañía de Salitres as there were those seeking to aid the corporation." Also, B. Farcau objects to the argument: "On the other hand, the sorry state of the Chilean armed forces at the outbreak of the war, as will be discussed in the following chapter, hardly supports a theory of conscious, premeditated aggression."


title: War of the Pacific

text: Sater cites other sources that state that the true causes of the conflict were not economic but geopolitical, a struggle for control of the southeastern portion of the Pacific Ocean. In 1836 the Peruvian government tried to monopolize commerce in the South Pacific by rewarding ships that sailed directly to Callao, to the detriment of Valparaíso. Peru tried to impede the agreement that had been reached between Spain and Chile to free its new warships built and embargoed in Britain during the Chincha Islands War. Sater cites Germany's minister in Chile, who argued that the war with Peru and Bolivia would "have erupted sooner or later, [and] on any pretext." He considered that Bolivia and Peru had developed a "bitter envy" against Chile and its material progress and good government. Frederik B. Pike states: "The fundamental cause for the eruption of hostilities was the mounting power and prestige and the economic and political stability of Chile, on one hand, and the weakness and the political and economic deterioration of Bolivia, on the other... The war—and its outcome—was as inevitable as the 1846—1848 conflict between the United States and Mexico. In both instances, a relatively well-governed, energetic, and economically expanding nation had been irresistibly tempted by neighboring territories that were underdeveloped, malgoverned, and sparsely occupied."


title: War of the Pacific

text: Another reason, according to Sater, was Peru's desire to monopolize and appropriate the nitrate works to strengthen its nitrate monopoly, which required the Bolivian and Chilean salitreras to be controlled by Peru. As unenviable as Chile’s situation was in the 1870s, that of Peru was much worse. The 1870s was for Peru's economy "a decade of crisis and change". Nitrate extraction rose while guano exports, the source of substantial revenue for Peru, declined from 575,000 tons in 1869 to less than 350,000 tons in 1873, and the Chincha Islands and other guano islands were depleted or nearly so.


title: War of the Pacific

text: William Edmundson writes in "A History of the British Presence in Chile", "Peru has its own reasons to enter the dispute. Rory Miller (1993) argues that the depletion of guano resources and poor management of the economy in Peru had provoked a crisis. This has caused Peru to default on its external debt in 1876... In that year [1875] the Peruvian government decided to procure a loan of seven millions pounds of which four millions pounds were earmarked to purchase privately owned oficinas [salitreras]... and Peru defaulted again in 1877."


title: War of the Pacific

text: To increase guano revenue, Peru created a monopoly on nitrate commerce in 1875. Its aims were to increase prices, curb exports and to impede competition, but most larger nitrate firms opposed the monopoly on sales of nitrate. When they were unsuccessful, Peru in 1876 began to expropriate nitrate producers and to buy nitrate concessions such as that of Henry Meiggs in Bolivia ("Toco", south of the Loa River). However, the CSFA was too expensive to be purchased. As Peruvian historian Alejandro Reyes states, the Bolivian salitreras needed to be controlled, which resulted in the internationalization of the conflict since they were owned by Chilean and European merchants. As the Chilean company was to be auctioned on February 14, 1879, in Antofagasta, it was considered that the Peruvian consul would be the highest bidder.


title: War of the Pacific

text: However, some sources, according to Sater, see the declarations of war between Chile and Peru as a product of popular domestic forces. The Peruvian President had to declare war to keep his position. Sater cites the British minister in Lima, Spencer St. John: "the rival parties may try to make political capital out of jealousy for the national honor, and His Excellency [Peruvian President Prado] may be forced to give way to the popular sentiment." Chilean President Pinto was under similar pressures. Bruce Farcau considers that to be the main cause for the war outbreak: "The argument that the attitude of the peoples of the region was just ripe for war seems best to fit the bill."


title: War of the Pacific

text: Beginning in 1866, the Chilean entrepreneurs José Santos Ossa and Francisco Puelma had exploited deposits of sodium nitrate in Bolivian territory (the salitreras "Las Salinas" and "Carmen Alto", and from Antofagasta, respectively) and secured concessions from Bolivian President Mariano Melgarejo.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In 1868, a company named "Compañía Melbourne Clark" was established in Valparaíso, Chile, with 34% British capital provided by Antony Gibbs & Sons of London, which also held shares of salitreras in Peru. Its shareholders included a number of leading Chilean politicians. The company obtained a license from the Melgarejo administration to construct a railroad from Antofagasta to Salinas, and was renamed "Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta" (CSFA).


title: War of the Pacific

text: In 1871, a new Bolivian government canceled all contracts signed by Melgarejo, but on November 22, 1872, a Bolivian decree allowed the government to renegotiate the contracts.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On November 27, 1873, CSFA obtained a license from the new administration in Bolivia to exploit saltpeter without duty for 15 years, but a dispute arose regarding whether the original 1872 decree, under which the 1873 license was issued, required the authorization of the Bolivian Congress. Some lawyers placed emphasis on "con cargo a dar cuenta a la próxima legislatura" (Spanish for: "to be considered during the next legislative session [of the parliament]"), but others on "sólo en los casos de no avenimiento" (Spanish for "only in cases that no settlement [is reached]").


title: War of the Pacific

text: In 1873, the Peruvian government dictated the "Ley del estanco del salitre", which limited the saltpeter production and authorized the government to purchase the whole production to a fixed price. However, the plan failed, and the law was repealed. In 1875, the Peruvian government expropriated the salitreras of Tarapacá to create a monopoly in guano and nitrate, and in 1876, Antony Gibbs & Sons became the consignee of the nitrate trade for the Peruvian government. President Mariano Ignacio Prado was "determined to complete the monopoly," and in 1876, Peru bought the nitrate licenses for "El Toco" auctioned by a Bolivian decree of January 13, 1876. However, the Chilean company remained the most serious competitor and clearly weakened Peru's monopoly. President Pardo, Prado's predecessor, had urged Gibbs to secure the monopoly by limiting the CSFA's output, and Henry Gibbs had warned the CSFA's board of directors in a letter on April 16, 1878, that its refusal to limit its output would bring administrative trouble with Peru and Bolivia "as it is made more and more to the interest of a neighboring Government that they should be so."


title: War of the Pacific

text: Gibbs made repeated unsuccessful efforts in 1876 and 1877 to persuade Edwards, the Chilean majority shareholder, to accept a limit to its production.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The historian Ronald Bruce St. John in "Foreign Policy of Peru" states, "Although persuasive evidence linking Peru to either the ten-centavo tax or Bolivia's decision to confiscate Chilean holdings in Antofagasta never surfaced, it must be recognized that Peruvian interests had deep-seated economical and political reasons for going to war."


title: War of the Pacific

text: In 1875, the city of Antofagasta had attempted to impose a 3 cents tax on the CSFA, but the Bolivian State Council (Consejo de Estado), headed by Serapio Reyes Ortiz, who would be Minister of Foreign Affairs during the crisis, rejected the tax because it violated the license of 1873 and the Boundary Treaty of 1874.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On February 14, 1878, the National Congress of Bolivia and the National Constituent Assembly approved the 1873 license if the company paid a 10 cents per quintal tax, but the company objected by citing the 1874 treaty that the increased payments were illegal and demanded an intervention from the Chilean government.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The CSFA's directory board perceived the tax as a Peruvian move to displace Chileans from the nitrate production, as had occurred in Tarapacá in 1875 when the Peruvian government expropriated the salitreras.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Having surrendered its claim to the disputed territories in return for a Bolivian promise to avoid increasing the tax, Chile claimed that the treaty did not allow for such a tax hike. Bolivia suspended the tax in April 1878. In November, Chile proposed mediation and cautioned that Daza's refusal to cancel the tax would force Chile to declare null the 1874 treaty. In December 1878, Bolivia, counting on its military alliance with Peru, challenged Chile, stated the tax was unrelated to the treaty and that the claim of the CSFA should be addressed in Bolivian courts, and revived the tax. When the company refused to pay the tax, Bolivia confiscated its property on February 11 and threatened to sell it on February 14 to liquidate the company's debt.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In December 1878, Chile had dispatched a warship to the area. On February 6, the Bolivian government nullified the CSFA's exploitation license and confiscated the property. The news reached Valparaíso on February 11 and so the Chilean government decided on the occupation of the region of Antofagasta south of 23° South. On the day of the planned auction, 200 Chilean soldiers arrived by ship at the port city of Antofagasta and seized it without resistance. The occupying forces received widespread support from the local population, 93–95% of which was Chilean.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Bolivian territory between 23° South and the Loa River, the border with Peru, remained unoccupied by Chilean forces almost one month after the Bolivian declaration of war. On March 21, Cobija and then Calama, Tocopilla, and other hamlets were occupied. The Chilean government asked the Bolivian office-holders to remain in office, but they refused.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On February 22, Peru sent a diplomatic team headed by José Antonio de Lavalle to Santiago to act as a mediator between the Chilean and the Bolivian governments. Peru meanwhile ordered its fleet and army to prepare for war. De Lavalle arrived in Valparaíso on March 4. On February 27, Daza had made a public manifesto to inform the Bolivians on the occupation of Antofagasta and to call for patriotic support. The same day, the Bolivian legislature authorized a formal declaration of war upon Chile although it was not immediately announced. On March 1, Daza issued instead a decree to prohibit all commerce and communications with Chile "while the state-of-war provoked upon Bolivia lasts." It provided Chileans ten days to leave Bolivian territory unless they were gravely ill or handicapped and embargoed Chilean furniture, property, and mining produce; allowed Chilean mining companies to continue operating under a government-appointed administrator; and provided all embargoes as temporary "unless the hostilities exercised by Chilean forces requires an energetic retaliation from Bolivia."


title: War of the Pacific

text: In Santiago, Lavalle asked for Chile's withdrawal from Antofagasta to transfer the province to a tripartite administration of Bolivia, Chile, and Peru without Bolivia guaranteeing to end the embargo or to cancel the new tax.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On March 14, in a meeting with foreign powers in Lima, Bolivia announced that a state of war existed with Chile. The declaration was aimed to impede further Chilean arms purchases in Europe and to scuttle the Peruvian mediation in Chile. Bolivia called on Peru to activate the treaty of alliance arguing that Chile's invasion was a "casus foederis".


title: War of the Pacific

text: Also on March 14, Alejandro Fierro, Chile's minister of foreign affairs, sent a telegram to Chile's representative in Lima, Joaquin Godoy, to request the immediate neutrality of the Peruvian government. On March 17, Godoy formally presented the Chilean proposal in a meeting with Peruvian President Prado.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On March 21, Godoy telegraphed the Chilean government on the secret treaty between Peru and Bolivia, which had been revealed to him by Peruvian President Prado.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On March 23, on their way to occupy Calama, 554 Chilean troops and cavalry defeated 135 Bolivian soldiers and civilians, who were dug in at two destroyed bridges next to the Topáter ford. The Battle of Topáter was the first battle of the war.


title: War of the Pacific

text: When the Chilean government asked Lavalle directly and officially whether a defensive alliance existed that committed Peru to assist Bolivia in a war with Chile and whether Lima planned to honor the agreement, Lavalle could prevaricate no longer and answered yes to both. Chilean President Pinto sought and received legislative approval to declare war, which he did on 5. April 1879. Peru responded on April 6, when Prado declared the "casus foederis".


title: War of the Pacific

text: Historians agree that the belligerents were not prepared for the war financially or militarily. None of the three nations had a General Staff, medical corps, or military logistics and their warships were in a deplorable state. In Chile, for example, the military contingent had been reduced continuously from 3,776 (by 1867) to 2,400 (by 1879) men, and no military unit was deployed north of Valparaíso, 1700 km south of Iquique. By the end of the war, 53% of chief engineers serving in Chilean warships were foreigners. The government of Peru was again in default of payment, and in Bolivia, famine spread over the country.


title: War of the Pacific

text: According to William Sater, Chile and Peru enlisted temporarily 2% of the male population but Bolivia only 1%. After the Battle of Tacna, both of the Allied armies were disbanded and had to be formed again.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Allied forces, at first glance, had some advantages over the Chilean forces. Their population and armies doubled the Chileans in numbers, and the Peruvian port of Callao's powerful artillery was impregnable for the Chilean navy and a secure haven for the Peruvian navy. In Callao, an English company offered the service of a floating dock for ships up to 3000 tonnes, and the Peruvian government used it to repair their ships at the outset of the war. Those are some reasons that led the international press to expect a Chilean defeat as the war started. Moreover, the ambivalent Argentine position and the ongoing Mapuche conflict overshadowed the Chilean perspective. Jorge Basadre commented on the public opinion in Peru and Bolivia: "They ignored the real power of Chile and the horrors of war, and simple minded people believed that the Allied would win the war because they together were bigger than Chile."


title: War of the Pacific

text: However, other observers made a more in-depth analysis, which showed Chilean political and military advantages. Chile had a stable political system since 1833 that had developed and strengthened its institutions. The Chilean army and the navy had educated officers, soldiers with professional experience in the Mapuche conflict, and uniformly modern arms. Almost all Chilean soldiers were armed with Comblain or Gras rifles. The Chilean navy also possessed two new ironclads, which were invincible against the older Peruvian warships. Although there was interference between military and government over policy during the war, the primacy of the government was never questioned. The Chilean supply line from Europe through the Magellan Strait was only once threatened unsuccessfully by the Peruvian navy.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Allied armies were heavily involved in domestic politics and neglected their military duties, and poor planning and administration caused them to buy different rifles with different calibers. That hampered the instruction of conscripts, the maintenance of arms, and the supply of ammunition. The Peruvian navy warships manned before the war by Chilean sailors had to be replaced by foreign crews when the war began. Bolivia had no navy. The Allied armies had nothing comparable to the Chilean cavalry and artillery.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Its few roads and railroad lines made the nearly waterless and largely unpopulated Atacama Desert difficult to occupy. From the beginning, naval superiority was critical. Bolivia had no navy and so on March 26, 1879, Hilarión Daza formally offered letters of marque to any ships willing to fight for Bolivia. The "Armada de Chile" and the "Marina de Guerra del Perú" fought the naval battles.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In the Battle of Iquique, on May 21, 1879, the Peruvian ironclad "Huáscar" engaged and sank the wooden "Esmeralda". Meanwhile, during the Battle of Punta Gruesa, the Peruvian ironclad "Independencia" struck a submerged rock and sank in the shallow waters near Punta Gruesa while chasing the schooner "Covadonga". Peru broke the blockade of Iquique, and Chile lost the old "Esmeralda", but the loss of the "Independencia" cost Peru 40% of its naval offensive power. It also made a strong impression upon military leaders in Argentina, and the possibility of Argentina's intervention in the war became far more remote.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Despite being outnumbered, the Peruvian monitor "Huáscar" held off the Chilean Navy for six months and upheld Peru's morale during the early stages of the conflict.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The capture of the steamship "Rímac" on July 23, 1879, carrying a cavalry regiment (the "Carabineros de Yungay") was the Chilean Army's largest loss until then. That led to the resignation of Contraalmirante (Rear Admiral) Juan Williams Rebolledo, the chief of the Chilean Navy, on August 17. Commodore Galvarino Riveros Cárdenas replaced him and devised a plan to catch the "Huáscar".


title: War of the Pacific

text: Meanwhile, the Peruvian navy pursued other actions, particularly in August 1879 when the "Unión" unsuccessfully raided Punta Arenas, near the Strait of Magellan, in an attempt to capture the British merchant ship "Gleneg", which was transporting weapons and supplies to Chile.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Battle of Angamos proved decisive on October 8, 1879, and Peru was reduced almost exclusively to land forces. In the battle, the Chilean Navy captured the "Huáscar" after several hours of fierce fighting, even though her surviving crewmen sought to scuttle her. The Chilean Navy was thereafter free to carry troops for the invasion of Peru and to provide fire support for amphibious assault and other troops operating in the conflict areas. Chilean warships also had to impose a naval blockade of Peruvian ports and end the smuggling of arms from Panama into Peru via the Pacific.


title: War of the Pacific

text: After the battle, despite the loss of both of Peru's main ships, the Peruvians used simple and ingenious ruses to sink two important Chilean ships, the "Loa" (July 1880) and the "Covadonga" (August 1880), but its remaining vessels were locked in Callao during its long blockade by the Chileans.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On the other hand, the Chilean Navy captured the ship "Pilcomayo" in November 1879 and the torpedo boat "Alay" in December 1880.


title: War of the Pacific

text: When Lima fell after the Battles of Chorrillos and Miraflores, the Peruvian naval officers scuttled their remaining fleet to prevent its capture by the Chilean forces.


title: War of the Pacific

text: During the Sierra campaign, Chilean ships were dedicated to guarding the Peruvian coast and transporting military detachments and war material for land operations.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In November 1883, during the final phase of the war, the Chilean military command sent the to Lake Titicaca, via railroad, from Mollendo to Puno to control that lake. The presence of the torpedo boat prevented communications through this route and its use for military purposes, and the Peruvian vessels that had taken refuge in the vicinity surrendered to the Chileans. The deployment of the torpedo boat also induced the Bolivian government to agree to a peace treaty with Chile in 1884.


title: War of the Pacific

text: After the Battle of Angamos, once Chile achieved naval supremacy, the government had to decide where to strike. The options were Tarapacá, Moquegua or directly Lima. Because of its proximity to Chile and the capture of the Peruvian "Salitreras", Chile decided to occupy the Peruvian province of Tarapacá first.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Arica and Iquique were isolated and separated by the Atacama Desert; since the capture of the Huáscar in October 1879, neither port had naval protection needed to be adequately supplied by sea. Without any communication or withdrawal lines, the area was essentially cut off from the rest of Peru. After the loss of its naval capabilities, Peru had the option to withdraw to central Peru to strengthen its army around Lima until the re-establishment of a naval balance or to build up new alliances, as hinted by the Chilean historian Wilhelm Ekdahl. However, Jorge Basadre assumes that it would have been "striking and humiliating" to abandon Tarapacá, the source of Peru's wealth.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On April 30, 1879, after 13 days of marching, 4,500 Bolivian soldiers, commanded by Daza, arrived in Tacna, a town 100 km (60 mi) north of Arica. The Bolivians had come to join the Peruvian forces, commanded by Juan Buendia. The Allied forces were deployed to the places that a Chilean landing could be expected; the Iquique-Pisagua or Arica-Tacna regions. There were reserves stationed at Arequipa, farther north in Peru, under Lizardo Montero, as well as in southern Bolivia, under Narciso Campero The reserves were to be deployed to the coast after a landing but failed to arrive.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The land war can be seen as four Chilean military campaigns that successively occupied Tarapacá, Arica-Tacna, and Lima and a final campaign that ended the Peruvian resistance in the sierra. The occupation of Arequipa and Puno at the end of the war saw little military action.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Campaign of Tarapacá began on November 2, 1879, when nine steam transporters escorted by half of the Chilean Navy transported 9,500 men and more than 850 animals to Pisagua, some north of Antofagasta. After neutralizing the coastal batteries, the Chileans landed and attacked beach defenses in Pisagua.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In the event of a Chilean landing, the Allied forces planned to counterattack the Chilean forces in a pincer movement involving advances from the north (Daza's forces coming from Arica) and from the south (Buendia's forces coming from Iquique). Although Peruvian forces marched northwards as planned after the fall of Pisagua, Daza, coming from Arica, decided in Camarones (44 km from Pisagua) to give up his part of the counterattack and return to Arica.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Chileans meanwhile marched towards Iquique and, on November 19, 1879, defeated the Allied troops without Daza's men gathered in Agua Santa in the Battle of San Francisco and Dolores. Disbanded Bolivian forces there and the southern force retreated to Oruro, and the Peruvians fell back to Tiliviche. The Chilean army captured Iquique (80 km/50 mi south of Pisagua) without resistance. Some of the Peruvian forces that had been defeated at San Francisco retreated on Tarapacá, a little town with same name as the province, where they combined with Peruvian troops who withdrew to Tarapacá directly from Iquique.


title: War of the Pacific

text: A detachment of Chilean soldiers, with cavalry and artillery, was sent to face the Peruvian forces in Tarapacá. Both sides clashed on November 27 in the Battle of Tarapacá, and the Chilean forces were defeated, but the Peruvian forces, without lines of communication with their supply bases in Peru or Bolivia, could not maintain their occupation of the territory. Consequently, the Peruvians retreated north through harsh desert terrain to Arica and lost many troops during their withdrawal. Bruce W. Farcau comments that, "The province of Tarapacá was lost along with a population of 200,000, nearly one tenth of the Peruvian total, and an annual gross income of £28 million in nitrate production, virtually all of the country's export earnings." The victory afforded Santiago an economic boon and a potential diplomatic asset.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The "Rimac"’s capture, the sinking of the "Esmeralda", and the passiveness of the Chilean fleet showed that the command of the navy was unprepared for the war, and the army also had trouble with the logistics, medical service, and command. Public discontent with poor decisions led to riots, and the government had to replace the "sclerotics" chief of the navy Juan Williams Rebolledo (by Galvarino Riveros), and the Chief of the army Justo Arteaga (by Erasmo Escala). After Tarapacá, the army was reorganized into divisions.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Chile's foreign policy tried to separate Bolivia from Peru. Gonzalo Bulnes writes: "The target of the "política boliviana" was the same as before, to seize Tacna and Arica for Bolivia and put Bolivia as a buffer state between Peru and Chile, on the assumption that Peru would accept the Chilean peace conditions. The initiated called such policy 'to clear up Bolivia.'" Moreover, the Chilean government had to find a border agreement with Argentina to avoid war.


title: War of the Pacific

text: After the occupation of the salpeter and guano deposits, the Chilean government restituted the "oficinas salitreras", which had been nationalized by Peru, to the owner of the certificate of debt. The alternative of a Chilean State Company of Salpeter was discarded as too onerous for a government waging war and lacking experienced personnel, and the creditors pressed the issue. In 1879, Chile began to exact a tax of 40 cents per "quintal métrico" (100 kg), increasing to $1.60 in 1880.


title: War of the Pacific

text: As provided by the secret treaty, the allies agreed in the Protocol of Subsidies for Bolivia to bear the costs of the war. The agreement, which regulated the tax income for many years, caused resentments and fears in Bolivia, whose deployment of forces to Tacna was seen as helping Peru. Also, Bolivia knew that its army would be sent not to free the occupied region of Bolivia but to protect Peru. As Daza and his officers came to Tacna and Arica, they failed to see the expected Peruvian military strength and understood that their position of power in Bolivia was threatened by a defeat of the Allies. The Bolivian historian Querejazu suggests that Daza successfully used the Chilean offer of Tacna and Arica for Bolivia to exert pressure on Peru to get a more favorable Protocol of Subsidies.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The reason that Daza abandoned the Peruvian forces in Iquique and turned back to Arica just before the Battle of San Francisco is uncertain. Some historians say that he wanted to keep the "Regimiento Colorados" untouched since the force secured his political power in Bolivia. Daza later stated that his officers refused to continue the march through the desert, but his shameful withdrawal accelerated his downfall, and he was succeeded by Narciso Campero. In the new government, there was a strong tendency to accept the Chilean offer of Tacna and Arica, but it was eventually refused. Bolivia signed the creation of the United States of Peru and Bolivia, a political fantasy without any practical consequences. Bolivia helped Peru with money and weapons, but the Bolivian army never again intervened in the war.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In Peru, the political situation was complicated. President Prado had declared war on Chile for longstanding economical and political reasons but without the funds or international credit to finance the war. He turned over the administration of the state to Vice President Luis La Puerta de Mendoza to assume for himself the command of the army. Because of the Chilean blockade, Peru could not export revenuemaking goods via its ports. As a consequence, public revenue was half of what had been expected, and spending tripled. The Peruvian government in 1879 experienced several political crises and seven ministers of finance. General Buendía, who led the defeated allied troops in Iquique, and More, chief of the sunken warship "Independence", were both put on trial but were eventually acquitted.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Peruvian government was confronted with widespread rioting in Lima because of its failures. On December 18, 1879, as the fall of Iquique became known in Peru, Prado went from Callao to Panama, allegedly with the duty to oversee the purchase of new arms and warships for the nation. In a statement for the Peruvian newspaper "El Comercio", he turned over the command of the country to Vice President Luis La Puerta de Mendoza. History has condemned his departure as a desertion. Nicolás de Piérola overthrew Puerta's government and took power on December 23, 1879.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Piérola has been criticised because of his sectarianism, frivolous investment, bombastic decrees, and lack of control in the budget, but it must be said that he put forth an enormous effort to obtain new funds and to mobilize the country for the war. Basadre considered his work an act of heroism, abnegation in a country invaded, politically divided, militarily battered, and economically bloodless.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Meanwhile, Chile continued its advances in the Tacna and Arica Campaign. On November 28, ten days after the Battle of San Francisco, Chile declared the formal blockade of Arica. On December 31, a Chilean force of 600 men carried out an amphibious raid at Ilo as a reconnaissance in force, to the north of Tacna and withdrew the same day.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On February 24, 1880, approximately 11,000 men in 19 ships, protected by "Blanco Encalada", "Toro", and "Magallanes" and two torpedo boats, sailed from Pisagua. Two days later, on February 26, the Chileans arrived off Punta Coles, near Pacocha, Ilo. The landing took several days to conclude but faced no resistance. The Peruvian commander, Lizardo Montero, refused to try to drive the Chileans from the beachhead, as the Chileans had expected. On March 22, 3,642 Chilean troops defeated 1,300 Peruvian troops in the Battle of Los Ángeles, cutting any direct Peruvian supply from Lima to Arica or Tacna (supply was possible only through the long way, via Bolivia). After the Battle of Los Ángeles, only three allied positions remained in southern Peru: General Leyva's 2nd Army at Arequipa (including some survivors from Los Ángeles), Bolognesi's 7th and 8th Divisions at Arica, and at Tacna the 1st Army. These forces were under Campero's direct command. However, the numbers proved meaningless, as the Peruvians were unable to concentrate troops or even to move from their garrisons. After crossing of desert, on May 26 the Chilean army (14,147 men) destroyed the allied army of 5,150 Bolivians and 8,500 Peruvians in the Battle of Tacna. The need for a port near the army to supply and reinforce the troops and to evacuate the wounded compelled the Chilean command to concentrate on the remaining Peruvian stronghold of Arica. On June 7, after the Battle of Arica, the last Peruvian bastion in the Tacna Department fell. After the campaign of Tacna and Arica, the Peruvian and Bolivian regular armies largely ceased to exist, and Bolivia effectively left the war.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On October 22, 1880, delegates of Peru, Chile, and Bolivia held a 5-day conference aboard the in Arica. The meeting had been arranged by the United States Ministers Plenipotentiary in the belligerent countries. The Lackawanna Conference, also called the Arica Conference, attempted to develop a peace settlement.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Chile demanded Peruvian Tarapacá Province and the Bolivian Atacama, an indemnity of 20,000,000 gold pesos, the restoration of property taken from Chilean citizens, the return of the "Rimac", the abrogation of the treaty between Peru and Bolivia, and a formal commitment by not to mount artillery batteries in Arica's harbor. Arica, as a settlement, was to be limited to commercial use. Chile planned to retain the territories of Moquegua, Tacna, and Arica until all peace treaty conditions were satisfied. Although willing to accept the negotiated settlement, Peru and Bolivia insisted for Chile to withdraw its forces from all occupied lands as a precondition for discussing peace. Having captured the territory at great expense, Chile declined, and the negotiations failed. Bruce St. John states in "Foreign Policy of Peru" (page 116), "Peru attended only out of deference to the [US government] latter, hoping a failure of the talks might lead to more aggressive US involvement."


title: War of the Pacific

text: The occupation of the southern departments of Peru (Tacna, Arica, and Tarapacá) and the Lynch expedition showed that the army of Peru no longer possessed the skilled military manpower to defend the country. However, nothing could convince the Peruvian government to sue for peace. The defeated allies failed to realize their situation and, despite the empty Bolivian treasury, on June 16, 1880, the Bolivian National Assembly voted to continue the war. On June 11, 1880, a document was signed in Peru declaring the creation of the United States of Peru-Bolivia, but Piérola continued the struggle. W. Sater states, "Had Piérola sued for peace in June 1880, he would have saved countless Peruvian lives and the nation's treasure."


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Chilean government struggled to satisfy the public demands to end the war and to secure the peace. The situation forced the Chilean government to plan the occupation of Lima.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Once the size of the Chilean army had been increased by 20,000 men to reach a strength of 41,000 soldiers, deployed from the forts of the Chile–Mapuche frontier to the outskirts of Lima, the Chilean army began the campaign of Lima. Lacking the ships to transport all the troops at once from Arica, the Chileans decided to land a division and then the rest of the army in stages. Their shortage of shipping also precluded an immediate landing at Lima. Instead, Pisco, approximately south of Lima, was the first landing point.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On November 19, 8,800 men, twenty cannons and their supplies reached Pisco. A party of 400 men was landed near the port and they learned that a garrison of 3,000 men defended Pisco. Bypassing it required a landing to be made directly into the port and so a Chilean vanguard was landed in Paracas, ten miles to the south. The force managed to capture Pisco and on November 20 the rest of the Chilean troops landed, later occupying various other nearby coastal cities, securing for the Chileans de facto control of the Peruvian province of Ica.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On December 2, 3,500 additional men and 416 horses disembarked in Pisco. Some two weeks later, on December 15, 14,000 Chilean men, 2,400 horses and mules, and supplies left Arica for the north. Baquedano, the Chilean commander, decided that only one brigade in the Pisco region, Lynch's brigade, would march the north to the coastal town of Chilca, a town only from Lima. All other Chilean forces would be re-embarked in Pisco for naval transport to Chilca. The Chilean troops disembarked in Curayaco, slightly north of Chilca, on December 22, 1880. The artillery was later disembarked at Lurín, on the southern outskirts of Lima, as the Chilean army was able to advance quickly after landing.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Piérola, who had expected a landing north of Lima, ordered the construction of two parallel lines of Peruvian defences, one at Chorrillos and one at Miraflores. It was hoped that the Peruvian professional Army would defeat the Chileans in Chorrillos. If that measure failed, a reserve army, increased with remnants of Chorrillos and the Callao troops, were expected to hold the Chilean advance at Miraflores. The Peruvian forces numbered approximately 25,000 to 32,000 men and were titled the Army of Lima.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The main Peruvian defense line ran from the seaside resort of Chorrillos through Morro Solar, Santa Teresa, San Juan, the Pamplona (hills) until Monterrico Chico, a line of defence approximately 15 km long. Gatling guns, artillery, covering forts and trenches located along the top of the steeply natural hills (280 m in Morro Solar, 170 m in Sta. Teresa and San Juan) and minefields around the roads to Lima crossing the hamlets of San Juan and Santa Teresa, settlements that the Peruvians anticipated would be important targets of the Chilean attack, all of which were used by the Peruvian military.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The second line of defense was less strong, consisting of 7 redoubts (one every 800 meters) for infantry and artillery, which the Peruvians hoped would stop any Chilean offensive.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Chilean General Staff had two plans for the attack. Baquedano, the army chief, advocated a direct and frontal advance through the Tablada de Lurín. The area was known, with large areas of relatively flat terrain against the line of Chorrillos. The advantages of that path of advance were the shorter distances to be covered, a withdrawal line, the possibility of support from the Chilean navy, water supply from Lurín, and less need to train troops and the complex Chilean discipline to control any advance and subsequent attack. The alternative plan of War Minister José Francisco Vergara laid down a turning movement that would bypass the Peruvian line by attacking from further to the east: through the Lurín valley, moving via Chantay and reaching Lima at Ate. Using that approach meant that Lima could be seized without resistance or both defense lines could be attacked from the rear.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Vergara's plan avoided the bloody frontal attack, circumvented all defense works, cut any Peruvian withdrawal line to the east into the formidable Andes, and demoralized the Peruvians. However, there were no steady roads for movement of Chilean artillery and baggage, no water to allow navy support, and many bottlenecks in which a small force might stop the whole Chilean army on the way to Lima or if it had to withdraw. In addition, Vergara's plan required a well-trained and disciplined army. Baquedano pushed and eventually succeeded in having his plan adopted.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In the afternoon of January 12, 1881, three Chilean formations (referred to as divisions) stepped off from Lurín toward Chorrillos at about 4:00, reaching their attack positions at around 3:00 the next morning. At 5:00 a.m. an assault was begun on the Peruvian forts. Lynch's division charged Iglesias's positions (Morro Solar to Santa Teresa), Sotomayor's men against Caceres's sector (Santa Teresa to San Juan) and Lagos's division charged Davila's sector (San Juan to Monterrico Chico). Chilean and Peruvian soldiers locked in hand-to-hand combat and attacked one another with rifles, bayonets, rocks and even their bare hands. At the beginning, Sotomayor was unable to deploy in time, and Lynch's advance was repulsed. Baquedano was forced to throw in reserve brigades to salvage Lynch's flank. At 8:00 a.m., the Peruvian defenders were forced to withdraw from San Juan and Santa Teresa to Morro Solar and Chorrillos (town). At noon, Morro Solar was captured and the battle continued into Chorrillos, which fell at 14:00 (2 p.m.). During the Battle of Chorrillos, the Chileans inflicted a harsh defeat on the regular Peruvian forces, eliminating Lima's first defensive line. Two days later, the second line of defense was also penetrated in the Battle of Miraflores.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Piérola's division of forces in two lines has been criticised by Chilean analyst Francisco Machuca. Whether such criticism is justified is debatable. According to Gonzalo Bulnes the battles of Chorrillos and Miraflores have been some of the largest in South America regarding the number of combatants, 45,000 in Chorrillos and 25,000 in Miraflores. The estimated death toll was 11,000 to 14,000 personnel, with a further 10,144 injured.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On June 15, 1881 Domingo Santa María was elected president of Chile and assumed office on September 18, 1881. A new Congress was elected on schedule in 1882.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Argentina had declared itself neutral at the onset of the war but allowed the transport of weapons to the Allies over Argentine territories, exerted influence on the US and European powers to stop the Chilean advance in the war, and pleaded for monetary indemnification instead of cession of territories to Chile. There was a strong drift in its public opinion in favor of Peru and Bolivia. Moreover, there were Peruvian and Bolivian hopes that Argentina could change its stance and enter a war against Chile.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On July 23, 1881, a few months after the fall of Lima, Chile and Argentina signed the Boundary Treaty, which ceded eastern Patagonia to Argentina and control over the Strait of Magellan to Chile.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Carlos Escudé and Andrés Cisneros state that the treaty was a true victory for Argentina, but Michael Morris believes, "Rearguard Argentine efforts had been made to gain recognition for some kind of shared management regime for the Strait [of Magellan], in order to mitigate what was perceived as the striking diplomatic defeat for Argentina in the 1881 treaty granting Chile control over the strait."


title: War of the Pacific

text: The situation in Bolivia stayed the same after the fall of Lima. The Bolivian government lacked the money, men, weapons, and means to transport an army to Peru.


title: War of the Pacific

text: After the confrontations in Chorrillos and Miraflores, the Peruvian dictator Piérola refused to negotiate with the Chileans and escaped to the central Andes to try governing from the rear but soon lost the representation of the Peruvian state.(He left Peru in December 1881).


title: War of the Pacific

text: The occupation commanders, Manuel Baquedano, Pedro Lagos, and then Patricio Lynch, had their respective military headquarters in the Government Palace, Lima. The new Chilean administration continued to push for an end to the costly war, but contrary to expectations, neither Lima's capture nor the imposition of heavy taxes led Peru to sue for peace. Conversely, Peruvian caudillos advocated to wage a defensive war of attrition that consumed Chile's power so much that it renounced their demand for the territory.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On February 22, 1881, the Piérola Congress, allowed by Chile, reinstated the 1860 constitution and chose Francisco García Calderón as the provisional president but he was assisted by the US minister in Lima in refusing the cession of territories to Chile. He was overthrown by the Chileans in September 1881, but before his relegation to Chile, he had appointed Lizardo Montero Flores as successor.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Peruvian caudillos organized a resistance, which would be known as the Campaign of the Breña or Sierra, a widespread, prolonged, brutal, and eventually futile guerrilla campaign. They harassed the Chilean troops and their logistics to such a point that Lynch had to send expeditions to the valleys in the Andes.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The resistance was organised by Andrés Avelino Cáceres in the regions Cajamarca (north), Arequipa (south) and the Sierra Central (Cerro Pasco to Ayacucho) However, the collapse of national order in Peru brought on also domestic chaos and violence, most of which was motivated by class or racial divisions. Chinese and black laborers took the opportunity to assault haciendas and the property of the rich to protest their mistreatment suffered in previous years. Lima's masses attacked Chinese grocery stores, and Indian peasants took over highland haciendas. For the occupation forces, the region was an unknown, difficult terrain, force inhibitor, insalubrious (tunga penetrans, dysentery), inaccessible, and Chilean military supplies had to be transported from Lima or other points on the coast, purchased from locals, or confiscated, each option being either very expensive or politically hazardous.


title: War of the Pacific

text: An additional problem for the Chileans was collecting information in support of their expeditionary force. While Cáceres was informed about the dispositions and moves of his foes, Chileans often did not know the whereabouts of the guerrillas.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In February 1881, Chilean forces, under Lieutenant Colonel Ambrosio Letelier started the first expedition into the Sierra, with 700 men, to defeat the last guerrilla bands from Huánuco (April 30) to Junín. After many losses, the expedition achieved very little and returned to Lima in early July, where Letelier and his officers were courts-martialed for diverting money into their own pockets.


title: War of the Pacific

text: To annihilate the guerrillas in the Mantaro Valley, in January 1882, Lynch ordered an offensive with 5,000 men under the command of Gana and Del Canto, first towards Tarma and then southeast towards Huancayo, reaching Izcuchaca. Lynch's army suffered enormous hardships including cold temperatures, snow and mountain sickness. On July 9, 1882, they fought the emblematic Battle of La Concepción. The Chileans had to pull back with a loss of 534 soldiers: 154 in combat, 277 of disease and 103 deserters.


title: War of the Pacific

text: García Calderón refused to relinquish Peruvian control over the Tarapacá Region and so was arrested. Before García Calderón left Peru for Chile, he named Admiral Lizardo Montero as his successor. At the same time, Piérola stepped back and supported Cáceres for the presidency. Cáceres refused to serve but supported Lizardo Montero. Montero moved to Arequipa and so García Calderón's arrest unified the forces of Piérola and Cáceres.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On April 1, 1882 Miguel Iglesias, Defence Minister under Piérola, became convinced that the war had to be brought to an end or Peru would be completely devastated. He issued a manifesto, "", calling for peace and in December 1882 convened a convention of representatives of the seven northern departments, where he was elected "Regenerating President" To support Iglesias against Montero, on April 6, 1883, Patricio Lynch started a new offensive to drive the guerrillas from central Peru and to destroy Caceres's army. The Chilean troops pursued Caceres northwest through narrow mountain passes until July 10, 1883, winning the definitive Battle of Huamachuco, the final Peruvian defeat.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Chile and Iglesias's government signed the Peace Treaty of Ancón on October 20, 1883, which ended the war and ceded Tarapacá to Chile.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Lizardo Montero tried to resist in Arequipa with a force of 4,000 men, but when Chile's 3,000 fighters arrived from Mollendo, Moquegua, and Ayacucho and began the assault to Arequipa, the Peruvian troops mutinied against Montero and allowed the Chileans to occupy the city on October 29, 1883. Montero opted for a Bolivian asylum. The occupation of Ayacucho by Chilean Colonel Urriola on October 1 lasted only 40 days, as Urriola withdrew to Lima. Ayacucho was occupied by Cáceres's new army of 500 men. Caceres continued to refuse the cession of territories to Chile.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The basis of Cáceres's war the increasingly powerful Indian insurrection against the Chileans, which had changed the nature of the war. Indian guerrillas fought "white men from all parties," looted towns, and seized land of the white owners. In June 1884, Cáceres accepted Treaty of Ancón "as an accomplished fact" but continued to fight Iglesias.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On October 29, 1883, the Chilean occupation of Lima ended, and on August 4, 1884, Lynch and the rest of the Chilean Expeditionary Forces embarked in Callao for Chile.


title: War of the Pacific

text: On October 20, 1883, hostilities between Chile and Peru formally came to an end under the Treaty of Ancón, whose terms had Peru formally cede Tarapacá Province to Chile, and the use of the guano and nitrate resources to repay Peru's debts were regulated. Chile was also to occupy the provinces of Tacna and Arica for 10 years, when a plebiscite was to be held to determine nationality. For decades thereafter, the two countries failed to agree on the terms of the plebiscite. Finally, in 1929, mediation under US President Herbert Hoover caused the Treaty of Lima to be signed by which Chile kept Arica, and Peru reacquired Tacna.


title: War of the Pacific

text: In 1884, Bolivia signed a truce, the Treaty of Valparaiso and accepted the military occupation of the entire Bolivian coast. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship (1904) ceded the complete region of Antofagasta to Chile. In return, Chile agreed to build the Arica–La Paz railway to connect the capital city of La Paz, Bolivia, with the port of Arica, and Chile guaranteed freedom of transit for Bolivian commerce through Chilean ports and territory.


title: War of the Pacific

text: As the war began, the Peruvian Army numbered 5,241 men of all ranks, organized in seven infantry battalions, three squadrons of cavalry and two regiments of artillery. The most common rifles in the army were the French Chassepot and the Minié rifles. The artillery, with a total of 28 pieces, was composed mostly of British-made Blakely cannons and counted four machine guns. Much of the artillery dated from 1866 and had been bought for the Chincha Islands War against Spain. The mounts used by the cavalry were small and inferior to those used by the Chileans.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Bolivian Army numbered no more than 2,175 soldiers and was divided into three infantry regiments, two cavalry squadrons, and two sections of artillery. The Colorados Battalion, President Daza's personal guard, was armed with Remington Rolling Block rifles, but the remainder carried odds and ends including flintlock muskets. The artillery had rifled three pounders and four machine guns, and the cavalry rode mules given a shortage of good horses.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The regular Chilean Army was well equipped, with 2,694 soldiers. The regular infantry was armed with the modern Belgian Comblain rifle, of which Chile had a stock of some 13,000. Chile also had Gras, Minie, Remington and Beaumont rifles, most of which fired the same caliber cartridge (11 mm). The artillery had 75 artillery pieces, most of which were of Krupp and Limache manufacture, and six machine guns. The cavalry used French sabers and Spencer and Winchester carbines.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Control of the sea was Chile's key to an inevitably difficult desert war: supply by sea, including water, food, ammunition, horses, fodder, and reinforcements, was quicker and easier than marching supplies through the desert or across the Bolivian high plateau. While the Chilean Navy started an economic and military blockade of the Allies' ports, Peru took the initiative and used its smaller navy as a raiding force. The raids delayed the ground invasion for six months and forced Chile to shift its fleet from blockading to hunting and capturing the "Huáscar". After achieving naval supremacy, sea-mobile forces proved to be an advantage for desert warfare on the long coastline. Peruvian and Bolivian defenders found themselves hundreds of kilometers from home, but the Chilean forces were usually just a few kilometers from the sea.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The Chileans employed an early form of amphibious warfare, which saw the co-ordination of army, navy, and specialized units. The first amphibious assault of the war took place when 2,100 Chilean troops took Pisagua on November 2, 1879. Chilean Navy ships bombarded beach defenses for several hours at dawn, followed by open, oared boats landing army infantry and sapper units into waist-deep water under enemy fire. An outnumbered first landing wave fought at the beach; the second and third waves in the following hours were able to overcome resistance and move inland. By the end of the day, an expeditionary army of 10,000 had disembarked at the captured port. In 1881 Chilean ships transported approximately 30,000 men, along with their mounts and equipment, in order to attack Lima. Chilean commanders were using purpose-built, flat-bottomed landing craft that would deliver troops in shallow water closer to the beach, possibly the first purpose-built amphibious landing craft in history: "These 36 shallow draft, flat-bottomed boats would be able to land three thousand men and twelve guns in a single wave."


title: War of the Pacific

text: Chile's military strategy emphasized preemption, offensive action, and combined arms. It was the first to mobilize and deploy its forces and took the war immediately to Bolivian and Peruvian territories. It adopted combined arms strategy that used naval and ground forces to rout its allied foes and capture enemy territory. It landed ground forces in enemy territory to raid in strength to split and to drive out defenders, and it then garrisoned the territory as the fighting moved north. Chileans received the support of the Chinese coolies immigrants, who had been enslaved by Peruvians and joined the Chilean Army during the campaign of Lima and in the raids to the north Peruvian cities.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Peru and Bolivia fought a defensive war, maneuvering through long overland distances and relied when possible on land or coastal fortifications with gun batteries and minefields. Coastal railways reached to central Peru, and telegraph lines provided a direct line to the government in Lima.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The occupation of Peru from 1881 and 1884 took a different form. The theater was the Peruvian Sierra, where the remains of the Peruvian Army had easy access to the population, resource, and supply centers far from the sea, which supported indefinite attrition warfare. The occupying Chilean force was split into small garrisons across the theater and could devote only part of its strength to hunting down dispersed pockets of resistance and the last Peruvian forces in the "Sierra". After a costly occupation and prolonged counterinsurgency campaign, Chile sought a diplomatic exit. Rifts within Peruvian society and Peruvian defeat in the Battle of Huamachuco resulted in the peace treaty that ended the occupation.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Both sides used late 19th-century military technology, such as breech-loading rifles and cannons, remote-controlled land mines, armor-piercing shells, naval torpedoes, torpedo boats, and purpose-built landing craft. The second generation of ironclads, designed after the Battle of Hampton Roads, were used in battle for the first time. That was significant for a conflict in which no major power was involved and attracted British, French, and US observers. During the war, Peru developed the "Toro Submarino" ("Submarine Bull"), which never saw action and was scuttled at the end to prevent capture.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The USS "Wachusett" (1861) commanded by Alfred Thayer Mahan, was stationed at Callao, Peru, to protect American interests during the war's final stages. Mahan formulated his concept of sea power while he was reading history in a British gentlemen's club in Lima, Peru. The concept became the foundation for his celebrated "The Influence of Sea Power upon History".


title: War of the Pacific

text: Since 1876, a submarine cable connected Valparaíso and Lima. At the beginning of the war, Antofagasta and Iquique were connected to the cable. Both navies tried to take control of the cable or severed it according to its military and naval interests.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Lima was not connected by cable to Panama, the southernmost post of the North American cable network. Valparaíso had been connected to Buenos Aires by a cable over the Andes since July 26, 1872. Buenos Aires was connected via Uruguay and Brazil, to Portugal and Britain and, from there, to the US over a submarine cable. It must be emphasized that La Paz, Bolivia's capital, was not connected by telegraph to the rest of the world. News coming from Tacna, Arica, and Antofagasta to La Paz had to be brought by foot or horse. The alternative way was from Peruvian port Mollendo (Querejazu: Moliendo) by railroad to Puno and then by boat service to Chichilaya, at the Bolivian shore of Lake Titicaca. The last route to La Paz was by horse or foot. The only telegraph in Bolivia was in Tupiza, south from La Paz, as the crow flies. Tupiza is at the border to Argentina and was connected to Buenos Aires via telegraph.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The traditional transport for long distances were the steamships that connected Valparaíso, Caldera, Antofagasta, Iquique, Arica, and Lima to the rest of the world.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The disruption of maritime trade routes and the unavailability of submarine telegraph cables from and in the war zone presented special problems for the press coverage of the war. On the other hand, the west coast was important for investors, farmers, manufacturers, and government officials because of their financial commitments. Hence, "The Times" of London and "The New York Times" covered the events of the war as much as possible, in spite of the absence of their own correspondents. Information was culled from government representatives in Europe and the US, merchant houses and Lloyd's of London, articles printed in the "Panama Star and Herald", and Reuters.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The result was a mix of brief telegraphic dispatches a few days' old from cities with cable stations, along with lengthier but older reports carried by steamships to London or New York. For example, the Battle of Iquique occurred on May 21, but its first mention appeared in the May 30 edition of both "The Times" and "The New York Times" with an incorrect message. It was only on June 17 that "The Times" could provide a reasonably accurate version of the battle.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The three nations claimed to adhere to the Geneva Red Cross Convention to protect the war wounded, prisoners, refugees, civilians, and other noncombatants.


title: War of the Pacific

text: At the onset of the war, 30,000 Chileans were expelled from Peru (within 8 days) and Bolivia (within 10 days) and their property confiscated, most of them having to shelter in the camps, boats, and pontoons of the Peruvian ports until they were transported by ship to Antofagasta. It is calculated that 7,000 of the refugees from Peru enlisted in the Chilean battalions, and their resentfulness would later influence the war. Peruvian and Bolivian residents in Chile were not expelled.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Both sides complained that the other side had killed wounded soldiers after the battle and cited eyewitness accounts.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Besides the Peruvian-Chilean slaughter in the irregular war after the occupation of Lima, an ethnic and social conflict was simmering in Peru between the indigenous peoples and (Chinese) coolies who had been enslaved by Peru's white criollo and mestizo upper class. On July 2, 1884, the "guerrillero" Tomás Laymes and three of his men were executed in Huancayo by Caceres's forces because of the atrocities and crimes committed by the guerrillas against the Peruvian inhabitants of the cities and hamlets. In Ayacucho, indigenous peoples stood up against "the whites," and in Chincha, the Afro-Peruvians banded together against their owners in the Haciendas of "Larán," "San José," and "Hoja Redonda". Only the Peruvian army could forcibly suppress the revolt.


title: War of the Pacific

text: Chinese coolies formed the battalion "Vulcano" within the Chilean Army. There were also interethnic tensions under blacks and coolies. For example, in Cañete, 2000 coolies from the Haciendas "Montalbán" and "Juan de Arona" were massacred by blacks.


title: War of the Pacific

text: The British historian B. Farcau stated: "Contrary to the concept of the 'merchants of death,' the arms manufacturers of Europe and the United States conniving to keep alive the conflict, from which they had earned some welcome sales of their merchandise, the most influential foreign businessmen and their respective consuls and ambassadors were the traders in nitrate and the holders of the growing stacks of debts of all the belligerents. They were all aware that the only way they could hope to receive payment on their loans and earn the profits from the nitrate business was to see the war ended and trade resumed on a normal footing without legal disputes over ownership of the resources of the region hanging over their heads."


title: War of the Pacific

text: Nonethelesses, belligerents were able to purchase torpedo boats, arms, and munitions abroad and to circumvent ambiguous neutrality laws, and firms like Baring Brothers in London were not averse to dealing with both Chile and Peru. Arms were sold freely to any side that could pay for them but the British abstained from selling warships. For example, in 1879 to 1880, Peru acquired weapons from the United States, Europe, Costa Rica, and Panama. Weapons offloaded on the Caribbean coast of Panama were sent overland to the Pacific coast by the isthmus railway. In the Pacific, a number of ships, including the "Talismán", "Chalaco", "Limeña", "Estrella", "Enriqueta" and "Guadiana", transported the cargo to Peru. The trade was done with the consent of the president of the Sovereign State of Panamá, then part of Colombia. The Chilean consul in Panama persistently protested the trade by citing a Chile–Colombia agreement of 1844 that prohibited Colombia from providing war supplies to Chile's enemies.