19TH CENTURY IN CHILE: POPULATION, SOCIETY, ECONOMY AND POLITICS - HISTORY - 2025

The nineteenth century in Chile was a predominantly rural territory, with little social and economic development, far from being the cradle of a contemporary city such as Santiago and was far from going through the voracious passage of a military dictatorship.

In the midst of an indigenous extermination made up with modernizing speeches, Chile lived in the nineteenth century a settlement of electoral politics, the formation of the teaching State and a path of economic development of exports that was finally not consolidated.

The Calicanto Bridge over the Mapocho River was the main symbol of the city of Santiago after its inauguration in 1779.

The history of the 19th century shows that Chile learned to refine its electoral practices and cultivated a political system of parties whose main referents were the Conservative, Radical and Liberal parties.

Together with the inclusion of labor movements at the end of the century, these parties generated political loyalties in the population, with palpable effects in the 20th century. Furthermore, during this century the University of Chile and an educational system were founded within the framework of the premise of the teaching state.

The Chilean population in the 19th century

85% of the Chilean population was still rural at the end of the 19th century despite having experienced a growth of more than 150% in the course of the century.

It is estimated that at the end of independence there were one million people in the country, whose growth reached 2.7 million by 1985. Only 25% of the inhabitants of Chile lived in the only two centers that could be considered cities: Santiago and Valparaíso.

The rest of the towns, distributed throughout the territory, were towns that did not exceed 4,000 inhabitants, while Santiago had 250,000 inhabitants by 1985 and Valparaíso had 122,000.

Likewise, a rigid social structure maintained a separation of classes and made the economy a hard system to penetrate for national producers.

This wealthy minority predominantly consumed products imported into Europe, rather than those produced domestically.

The class system and trade centers

In contrast, the inhabitants of a rural Chile grew their own food for subsistence, maintaining a diet based on legumes and grains.

For its part, meat was a rarely consumed product and the country's inhabitants managed to incorporate it more broadly into their diet during the 20th century.

Few national products broke the barrier of the class system and entered a market where imports were the real competition.

However, the capital of foreign merchants contributed to the development of agriculture due to the credits granted to millers and landowners.

Santiago and Valparaíso were characterized by their trade carried out by English and North Americans. In fact, by 1850, 74% of business establishments were owned by foreigners.

These merchants were properly the bankers of the Chilean economy and a key part of its impulse through capital granted in credit.

What was the economic dynamics like in Chile in the 19th century?

Understanding the Chilean economy during the 19th century implies looking at the export of products such as grains and cereals (wheat and barley).

Some importing countries of Chilean products at the time were Great Britain, Australia and Peru. The export brought benefits especially in the period between 1865 and 1880, when it exceeded the income generated by mining.

In the context of exports, Chilean cattle could not compete with grains and cereals, so they did not experience an imposition on the international market.

It should be noted that Chile never developed an economy based on carnivorous products and less with the competition of Argentina and Uruguay in the international market.

However, by the end of the 19th century, Chile made a withdrawal from the international agricultural market, for the main reason of being outmatched by competition. Consequently, agriculture did not advance technically and is not considered to have taken a leap beyond what it had at the beginning of the century.

On the other hand, the system of appropriation and concentration of land spread throughout the country made the nineteenth century a century whose key is the latifundio.

Politics and ethnic groups in the 19th century

During the first half of the 19th century, equality had already been declared for indigenous people before the law; However, the practices of the conquest that sought to transculturalize the natives, such as the dissemination of the Catholic religion, had not been eradicated.

Supported by state weapons, the conquest reached new territories that became the property of the national treasury. In the middle of the century, they swept into other lands not yet conquered, such as those located south of the Bío-Bío.

The indigenous people became the object of extermination because they were considered an obstacle to national modernization. For this reason, the State defeated the Mapuche ethnic groups and the Araucanía ethnic groups.

However, the transition between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the new century was characterized by giving land titles to indigenous leaders (longko) or Chilean land chiefs.

In the same way, the end of the century ended with the 1981 Civil War produced by a confrontation between Congress and President José Manuel Balmaceda. The conflict reached its peak when the president tried to close the Congress, after the parliamentary body ignored the executive branch.

The war ended with 4,000 deaths, the resignation of Balmaceda and the seizure of power by General Manuel Baquedano.

The conformation of the teaching State

With the end of the Enlightenment, an intellectual culture has spread throughout Europe and Latin America, resulting in the founding of the university.

The state comes to play a predominant role in an educational structure formerly run by the Catholic Church and focuses education on civil interests.

The foundation of the University of Chile in 1942 constituted the formation of an educational system directed by the State where science and intellectual reason predominate in the teaching process.

The influence of the Venezuelan Andrés Bello ended up giving education the academic structure of Greco-Roman heritage, refined by the modern bastion of the scientific method.

Also, the study of the professions of medicine, law and engineering became the academic guideline of the moment. Furthermore, in 1870, Parliament approved secondary and higher instruction.

With its key events, the 19th century constitutes a century of transition where the economic structure needs development and advances, while the country's legal structure and political dynamics will be the germ of the 20th century processes.

References

1. Bauer, AJ (1970). Economic expansion in a traditional society: Central Chile in the 19th century. Recovered from: repositorio.uc.cl
2. Boccara, G., & Seguel-Boccara, I. (1999). Indigenous policies in Chile (XIX and XX centuries). From assimilation to pluralism (The Mapuche case). Revista de Indias, 59 (217), 741-774. Recovered from: revistadeindias.revistas.csic.es
3. Serrano, S. (2016). University and Nation: Chile in the 19th century. Editorial University of Chile. Recovered from: books.google.es
4. Valenzuela, JS (1997). Towards the formation of democratic institutions: electoral practices in Chile during the 19th century. Public Studies, 66, 215-257. Recovered from: cepchile.cl
5. National Library of Chile (s / f). Chilean Memory: The Civil War of 1891. Recovered from: memoriachilena.gob.cl