Fighting breaks out when Chilean entrepreneurs and…

Fighting breaks out when Chilean entrepreneurs and mine-owners in present-day Tarapaca Region and Antofagasta Region, at this time belonging to Peru and Bolivia, respectively, resist new taxes, the formation of monopoly companies, and other impositions.

In these provinces, most of the deposits of nitrate—a valuable ingredient in fertilizers and explosives—are owned and mined by Chileans and Europeans, in particular the British.

Chile wants not only to acquire the nitrate fields but also to weaken Peru and Bolivia in order to strengthen its own strategic preeminence on the Pacific Coast.

Hostilities are exacerbated because of disagreements over boundary lines, which in the desert have always been vague.

Chile and Bolivia accuse each other of violating the 1866 treaty.

Although Chile will expand northward as a result of the War of the Pacific, its rights to the conquered territory will continue to be questioned by Peru, and especially by Bolivia, throughout the twentieth century.