Abstract
When Chile found herself in command of the province of Tarapacá during the War of the Pacific, she had to decide what to do with the nitrate oficinas and salitreras, which, at least on paper, belonged to the Peruvian government following the expropriation of 1875. At the same time, there was the complicating issue of the compensatory certificates issued to the owners, which John Thomas North hurried to purchase at knock-down prices.
Let the gringos work the nitrate freely. I shall be waiting for them at the door.
—President Domingo Santa María1
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Notes
In Arturo Alessandri’s Revolución de 1891 (Santiago: 1950), quoted in Collier and Sater (2004, 144). Domingo Santa María was president of Chile, elected during the War of the Pacific, from September 1881 to September 1886. His successor was José Manuel Balmaceda.
See, for example, Michael Monteón (2003, 75): “He may have known the contents of the Chilean decree before it was announced, but this cannot be proved. [However] he certainly knew which factories were the most valuable.”
See David Joslin, A Century of Banking in Latin America, 1963, 180.
Oliver Wooller, The Consul and the Colonel (unpublished), citing census returns for 1891.
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© 2011 William Edmundson
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Edmundson, W. (2011). Don Juan Tomás North. In: The Nitrate King. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118799_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118799_4
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