Yet it may be generally said that the decade following 1870 was the beginning of a new era for the Latin-American republics. The extension of steam navigation, the building of railways, machinery applied to agriculture, the influx of immigrants from Southern Europe and of capital from Northern Europe, the growing demand in Europe for foodstuffs and raw materials—all these things favoured, particularly in the south temperate zone, a rapid and very remarkable economic development which accompanied and aided a consolidation and closer cohesion of the social and political fabric.
The outstanding fact in the recent history of Latin America and in her present relations to the war is this economic development, this great creation of new wealth during the past generation. It has been described in many modern books upon the various republics, and can be studied in Consular Reports, which read like romances. The Pampa has become one of the chief granaries of the world; and Buenos Aires, the greatest city of the southern hemisphere, is the centre of a railway system almost equal in extent to that of the United Kingdom. Chile has been enriched by nitrate and copper, Brazil by coffee and rubber. The High Andes have become once more a treasure-house of mineral wealth: tropical hills, valleys and coastal plains yield the riches of their vegetable products.
The date assigned above as the beginning of this great economic increase is the date when the modern German Empire came into complete being. The recent growth of Latin America coincides with the birth and growth of the German industrial system. The organised energy, the patient assiduity, the expanding productiveness of Germany found a great opportunity in meeting the new needs of these rapidly growing countries. Germans won a remarkable position in those lands and had marked out for themselves a yet more ambitious future.
During the same period the United States, having decisively consolidated the Union, has taken its place among the great Powers of the world. That republic has also altered its economic character: for whereas previously the inhabitants had been principally engaged in the internal development of a vast territory and had been exporters mainly of foodstuffs and raw materials, the growth of population has turned them into a commercial people exporting manufactured goods. This dual development, political and economic, has profoundly affected the relations of the United States with Latin America.
Meantime the long-standing and intimate connexion between these lands and the maritime countries of Western Europe has followed a natural and uninterrupted course suffering no signal change except that, quickened by a newly-awakened and more active interest on the part of Europe, it has become closer, more sympathetic and more firmly based upon mutual respect and understanding.
It is the object of the following pages to examine these matters with reference to the Great War, and also to consider generally the bearings of the war upon the development of the Latin-American countries.
CHAPTER I
POLITICAL CURRENTS AND FORCES
In estimating the bearings of the great war upon these countries, it is necessary to review certain political forces and currents of public thought, which the Germans have attempted to divert to diplomatic or bellicose ends. Since these influences date in part from the era of independence or even from an earlier date, clearness of vision demands some historical retrospect. When, upon the achievement of independence, schemes of Latin-American or of South American union were found impracticable, it was inevitable that frontier disputes and national rivalries should lead to tension and sometimes to wars between states. When it is remembered that every one of the ten South American republics was divided from several neighbours by frontiers partly traversing half-explored and imperfectly mapped regions, it is perhaps surprising that such questions have been on the whole so amicably settled, and that those which are still pending do not appear to be menacing or dangerous. Owing to the paucity of population on the ill-defined and remote interior frontiers, many of these questions did not become urgent until the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the increasing seriousness of political interests, the steadying influences of material growth, and the pressure of outside opinion favoured peaceful settlement, usually by means of arbitration. It would be possible to compile a formidable list of such disputes. Most of them are questions concerning historical and geographical delimitation, of great local interest, but hardly of world-wide significance, although for a time the world was alarmed lest the frontier dispute of Argentina and Chile should excite a conflict between the two peoples engaged in the development of the south temperate zone, the natural seat of an important trans-Atlantic European civilisation.