English investments in the saltpeter business
What were the benefits or disadvantages that England faced by investing in the saltpeter business?
Two Chilean businessmen, José Santos Ossa and Francisco Puelma, founded a Salitre extractor company and allied with the English financial houses "Melbourne Clark and Company" and "William Gibbs.”English banks were the largest creditors of all saltpeter companies, financing most of the capital increases and sales operations of Salitre. The most important banks were: Anglo-South American Bank, the Bank of London and South America and the London and River Plate Bank. The most important role of English banks was to grant short -term loans to these companies.
Most of the inputs and spare parts for machinery were imported by English commercial houses, were positioned as importers of manufactured goods and administrators of the saltpeter railways that built or leased the state and invested in the construction of teacher for the maintenance of the railroads and linesFIERRALS. In addition, marketing agencies and sailboats and vapors that exported the saltpeter were English property. In this way the English were generating an industrial monopoly and by 1895, English firms reached 59% of the saltpeter property.
How did English investments in the Salitre business within the Peruvian economy affected? How was England benefited from making this decision?
At first, in 1842, the English house Gibbs obtained the monopoly of sales in the English market and meant great fiscal profits for the Peruvian Republic. For twenty years the Gibbs house dominated the Guano trade. The English firm Gibbs that benefited from the guano monopoly, also did so with the saltpeter monopoly. The relationship between the Government of Peru with English companies, such as the Gibbs house, made these notoriously favored. England was the most important country in Peruvian foreign trade in the first half of the nineteenth century.
In 1875, when President Manuel Pardo Peru nationalized the saltpeter industry in the territory of Tarapacá, the Salitre facilities owned by the Gibbs house were delivered without any problem. The justification that occurred to carry out this policy of expropriation of the saltpeter industry was an important presence of English and Chilean capitals that, being foreigners, would hinder the development of the modernization project that President Manuel Pardo.
Something similar happened in the treaty signed by Chile and Bolivia in 1874, in which Bolivia promised notEnglish.
It is said that England intervened indirectly with help towards Chile in the Pacific War, can its position have been influenced by factors of convenience regarding the resources with which these countries counted?
England’s position could not have been influenced by convenience factors regarding the appeal that the countries had. Bolivia and Peru had better saltpeter reserves, as the saltpeter located in the Bolivian part of the Atacama desert was of higher quality to the existing one in the Chilean part. In addition, Chile was inferior militarily until 1874 and 1875 that bought the Cochrane and Blanco Encalada armored frigates. England and Chile always had a solid alliance that began during the Chilean independence movement of 1812. They financed independence wars to influence the countries that was the case of Chile.
In the saltpeter industry, English capitals were the main investors. The English did not like the Peruvian policy that wanted to benefit nationals. English and Chilean capitalists reacted creating an alliance. England had capitalist interests, so he allied with Chile, for pure commercial interest. England’s position was taken by the economic interests of English capitalists, the same interests as the Chilean capitalists. The interests of Bolivia and Peru were different, so England positioned itself with Chile.
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