Chile, free and young, faced many problems, but was able to look upon the future with confidence, secure at least in the active sympathy of the greater part of the world. Spain, her power broken and her armies destroyed, stood alone. Her wounds were long in healing.
Republican Chile
Accounts of the naval or military affairs of one particular nation often read as if those events had occurred in a heavily screened vacuum. But the march of affairs in the Pacific during the struggle for independence were not only watched breathlessly by other American nations—particularly Mexico, Central America, Colombia and the United States—but also by Europe, immensely affected by the success or failure of Spain to reassert her possession of the colonies. Vessels of war of the United States and Britain ranged up and down the coast, their position as neutrals complicated by the fact that many of their own nationals were interested, either openly and quite un-neutrally, in promoting the success of the revolting South Americans, or in commercial transactions which were frequently perfectly legitimate and straightforward, but which were sometimes kaleidoscopic. Fluid and irregular trade conditions had prevailed upon the coast for a century: Spain had been forced during her long wars to give an increased number of trading licences, and much commerce was performed under cover of Spanish names by foreign merchants. During Cochrane’s efforts to stop the smuggling and underhand traffic that went on, particularly in the series of small ports (headed by Pisco and Arica) in South Peru, he found himself more than once at loggerheads with the merchants, and with the British and other foreign squadrons watching affairs. Duties ran high, sometimes up to 60 per cent ad valorem, and in consequence along this “Entremedios” region a tremendous amount of smuggling flourished; many of these little villages formed on occasion markets for the interior of such size that the coast was glutted with European goods and merchandise among the sand-hills was as cheap as at a bargain sale.
Banks did not exist, and there was no adequate exchange of South American products; cash was paid and had to be shipped overseas. A custom grew up among the British traders of sending such payments home by naval vessels, and as a percentage was paid upon these sums for safe-carriage to the captains of men-of-war, a direct interest was created in commercial prosperity. When Cochrane, on behalf of the Chilean government, suggested a new customs rate of 18 per cent, taking on board and guarding a quantity of disputed goods, there were international and loud objections to his “floating customhouse.” With the establishment of the young countries was closely entangled a number of commercial interests with wide ramifications.
While the movement of affairs in Lower and Upper Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, filled public attention, the new Chile struggled to secure stability as a self-governed country. The steps towards this end were not all easy. The country had never been wealthy—in fact, scarcely self-supporting, for the shipments of agricultural and mineral products to Peru and Spain did not pay the costs of government and defence against the Indians—and she was now nearly bankrupt. A terrible burden of expense had been incurred for the military and naval campaigns in her own south and in Peru, and the confiscated property of “old Spaniards” and the religious orders was not an inexhaustible treasure. A loan raised in London in 1822 gave no more than temporary relief, and heavier taxes were imposed than in the days of Spanish control. The exhilaration of new hopes, the realization of the inner strength of the Chilean nation, did not suffice to save the country from a period of dissatisfaction and unrest.
Bernardo O’Higgins never lost his personal popularity, but murmurs against his minister of finance, Rodriguez, imperilled his position. The national congress called in July, 1822, sat until October to frame a new tariff (commercial regulations) and a new constitution to supersede the tentative proclamation of 1818. But illiberal restrictions created by the new decrees closed all the minor ports to foreign vessels, and every Andean pass but one; prohibitory duties were placed on many articles of foreign manufacture.
San Juan Bautista, Village of Cumberland Bay, Más a Tierra Island (Juan Fernández Group), 400 Miles West of Valparaiso.
The Plain of Calavera, Chilean Andes.