Cannabis Chronicles

In today’s age of readily available and inexpensive chemical fertilizers, it might be hard to imagine a major war being fought over mineral fertilizer deposits. But, believe it or not, back in the day before fertilizers (and explosives) became manufactured goods, it was quite natural (and seemingly almost inevitable) that a war would break out over the world’s biggest deposits of nitrates and phosphates.

I’m not quite sure why it was never mentioned in my childhood history books, but I’m about to recount for our readers here at the Cannabis Chronicles the strange (but true) story of a conflict known to most historians as the “War of the Pacific”, but for our purposes perhaps better called the “Fertilizer War.” Here’s some of the details behind this conflict, compliments of the ever ubiquitous Wikipedia . . .

Guerra del Pacifico

The War of the Pacific, sometimes called the Saltpeter War in reference to its original cause, was fought between Chile and the joint forces of Bolivia and Peru, from 1879 to 1883. Chile gained substantial mineral-rich territory in the conflict, annexing both the Peruvian provinces of Tarapacá and Arica and the Bolivian province of Litoral, leaving Bolivia as a landlocked country.

Origins of the War of the Pacific

The War of the Pacific grew out of a dispute between Chile and Bolivia over control of a part of the Atacama desert that lies between the 23rd and 26th parallels on the Pacific coast. The territory contained valuable mineral resources which were exploited by Chilean companies and British interests. The Bolivian government decided to increase taxes to take advantage of the increasing income of the region, which led to a commercial dispute.

Since the border treaty of 1874 did not allow such increase, the companies felt the tax was unfair and demanded the Chilean government to intervene. This eventually led to diplomatic crisis and war which revealed Peru’s secret alliance with Bolivia.

Control of natural resources

The dry climate of the area had permitted the accumulation and preservation of huge quantities of high-quality nitrate deposits — guano and saltpeter — over thousands of years. The discovery during the 1840s of the use of guano as fertilizer and saltpeter as a key ingredient in explosives made the area strategically valuable; Bolivia, Chile and Peru had suddenly found themselves sitting on the largest reserves of a resource that the world needed for economic and military expansion.

Not long after this discovery, world powers were directly or indirectly vying for control of the area’s resources. The U.S. had passed legislation in 1856 enabling its citizens to take possession of unoccupied islands containing guano. Spain had seized Peruvian territory, but was repulsed by Peru and Chile fighting as allies during the Chincha Islands War. Heavy British capital investment drove development through the area, although Peru later nationalized guano exploitation during the 1870s.

As you can see for yourself, Bolivia wasn’t always landlocked like it is today (compare the 1879 map above with the current map to the immediate right.) It would appear that country was the biggest loser of the Saltpeter War, or at least so it seems from this bird’s eye view.

And while Chile seemed to be the big winner, having defeated it’s foes and taken possession of this rich resource, it’s nitrate deposits proved to be much less valuable soon after the turn of the 20th Century. Sometime around 1910, a pair of industrious Germans invented a chemical process to create nitrates from atmospheric nitrogen (called the Haber–Bosch process), thus ushering in the modern era of chemical fertilizers (and munitions).

It’s all another strange (but true) story we’ve discovered while doing a bit of research here at the bird’s nest, the short version of a war fought over fertilizer. Looking back into the history of fertilizers, like Nitrate of Soda, has turned out to be far more eventful in the retelling than we ever imagined.