The War of the Pacific , also known as the Saltpeter War and by multiple other names was a war between Chile and a Bolivian-Peruvian alliance. It lasted from 1879 to 1884, and was fought over Chilean claims on coastal Bolivian territory in the Atacama Desert. The war ended with a Chilean victory, who gained a significant resource-rich territory from Peru and Bolivia. Chile’s army took Bolivia’s nitrate rich coastal region and Peru was defeated by Chile’s navy.Battles were fought in the Pacific Ocean, the Atacama Desert, Peru’s deserts, and mountainous regions in the Andes. For the first five months the war played out in a naval campaign, as Chile struggled to establish a sea-based resupply corridor for its forces in the world’s driest desert. In February 1878, Bolivia imposed a new tax on a Chilean mining company despite Bolivian express warranty in the 1874 Boundary Treaty that it would not increase taxes on Chilean persons or industries for twenty-five years. Chile protested and solicited to submit it to mediation, but Bolivia refused and considered it a subject of Bolivia’s courts. Chile insisted and informed the Bolivian government that Chile would no longer consider itself bound by the 1874 Boundary Treaty if Bolivia did not suspend enforcing the law. On February 14, 1879 when Bolivian authorities attempted to auction the confiscated property of CSFA, Chilean armed forces occupied the port city of Antofagasta. Peru, bound to Bolivia by their secret treaty of alliance from 1873, tried to mediate, but on 1 March 1879 Bolivia declared war on Chile and called on Peru to activate their alliance, while Chile demanded that Peru declare its neutrality. On April 5, after Peru refused this, Chile declared war on both nations. The following day, Peru responded by acknowledging the casus foederis. Ronald Bruce St. John in The Bolivia–Chile–Peru Dispute in the Atacama Desert states: Even though the 1873 treaty and the imposition of the 10 centavos tax proved to be the casus belli, there were deeper, more fundamental reasons for the outbreak of hostilities in 1879. On the one hand, there was the power, prestige, and relative stability of Chile compared to the economic deterioration and political discontinuity which characterised both Peru and Bolivia after independence. On the other, there was the ongoing competition for economic and political hegemony in the region, complicated by a deep antipathy between Peru and Chile. In this milieu, the vagueness of the boundaries between the three states, coupled with the discovery of valuable guano and nitrate deposits in the disputed territories, combined to produce a diplomatic conundrum of insurmountable proportions.Afterwards, Chile’s land campaign bested the Bolivian and Peruvian armies. Bolivia withdrew after the Battle of Tacna on May 26, 1880. Chilean forces occupied Lima in January 1881. Peruvian army remnants and irregulars waged a guerrilla war that did not change the war's outcome. Chile and Peru signed the Treaty of Ancón on October 20, 1883. Bolivia signed a truce with Chile in 1884. Chile acquired the Peruvian territory of Tarapacá, the disputed Bolivian department of Litoral , as well as temporary control over the Peruvian provinces of Tacna and Arica. In 1904, Chile and Bolivia signed the “Treaty of Peace and Friendship” establishing definite boundaries. The 1929 Tacna–Arica compromise gave Arica to Chile and Tacna to Peru.
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