Identifier: decisivebattless00knox (find matches)
Title: Decisive battles since Waterloo : the most important military events from 1815 to 1887
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Knox, Thomas Wallace, 1835-1896
Subjects: Monitor (Ironclad) Battles Military history Military art and science Naval battles Naval history Naval art and science Hampton Roads, Battle of, Va., 1862
Publisher: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons New Rochelle, N.Y. : Knickerbocker Press
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: State of Indiana through the Indiana State Library

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ries. In 1873 a treaty of alliance between Peru and Boliviawas signed and approved by the National Assemblies ofthe two countries. It provided for a mutual guaranty ofthe independence of the two countries, and defence againstaggression from others. It was agreed in the treaty thatall conciliatory measures were to be tried to prevent war,and that arbitration through a third party was to be soughtwhenever possible. In 1878 the Bolivian governmentcalled upon the Antofagasta company to pay the dutieswhich had accumulated on its exports; the company re-fused payment, whereupon the government ordered theseizure and sale by auction of enough of the companysproperty to pay the claims. Immediately the Chiliangovernment proceeded to hostilities, but did not declarewar, by seizing the Bolivian ports of Antofagasta, Cobija,and Tocapilla. Peru offered her services as mediator, but,as too often happens to the arbiter in cases of mediation,it was speedily involved in trouble with Chili. This trouble
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434 DECISIVE BATTLES SINCE WATERLOO. was, in part, attributable to unwise legislation by Peru,relative to the nitrate deposits in her southern provinceof Tarapaca, which borders upon Atacama. In consequence of her financial difficulties, Peru in 1873made the nitrate deposits of Tarapaca a government mon-opoly, the state paying a fixed price to producers, andbeing herself the sole exporter. The nitrate deposits werebeing exploited by Chilian and English capital, and thelabor employed in the work was mostly Chilian. Underthese circumstances, Chili protested on behalf of her sub-jects, whose interests were seriously interfered with, andfinding the law a failure, Peru abandoned it, substitutinganother authorizing the government to buy up all thenitrate works. There was a great deal of diplomatic cor-respondence, and it is impossible to harmonize all thestatements contained in the voluminous papers. The endof the affair was that Chili declared war upon Peru on the5th April, 1879. Chili was

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