By the mid-nineteenth century, Chile’s Norte Chico had become a center of national economic and political activity. This region, lying between the Aconcagua Valley and the Atacama Desert, was the site of hundreds of small, mostly domestically owned and labor-intensive mines working the high-grade ore that provided the foundation of Chile’s booming copper export economy. By the 1850s, the Norte Chico had made Chile the world’s largest producer of copper; earnings from mineral exports constituted over one-half of Chile’s foreign revenues. Isolated from the hubs of national political and commercial activity, the None Chico became a locus of radical politics. During the civil wars of 1851 and 1859, the antigovernment movements against centralized conservative regimes whose base of power lay in Santiago and Valparaiso began in the mining areas of the north as well as in the southern areas around Concepción. In the Norte Chico these movements, led by regional mining elites, mobilized mine workers and dock-workers, who engaged in strikes, protests, and open revolts throughout the decade.
By detailing the experiences of an entrepreneur sent to Chile by a British mining company, Mining in Chile’s Norte Chico: Journal of Charles Lambert, 1825-1830 is able to chart important historical processes that defined Chile’s early postindependence history. Lambert’s journal provides a window onto the expanding role of British capital in Chile during the 1820s, both in trade and in investment. Although the “investment bubble” of the 1820s burst early, British merchants became a significant presence in the Chilean economy. Charles Lambert, however, was actually atypical; he was one of the few British investors who survived in the mining industry of the Norte Chico, which remained largely in Chilean hands for most of the nineteenth century. Both the journal and the accompanying introduction serve to highlight why Lambert, unlike other foreign investors, prospered as a miner. Key to Lambert’s success was his introduction of the modern reverberatory furnace and his reorganization and simplification of the local smelting process. In addition, his capacity to engage in a series of economic activities (which included building roads and bridges, and purchasing haciendas), act as a financier, and skillfully establish webs of local contacts allowed him to manipulate the complicated systems of credit and debt that underpinned the mining industry and to negotiate the rocky local legal terrain.
The journal documents the system of habilitación, the “facilitation” of mining enterprises through the advancement of credit and goods against future earnings. As many foreign observers pointed out during the early nineteenth century, the true route to wealth in Chile lay in commerce and financing, not mining production itself, and it was in these areas that British economic influence in Chile was located. For example, the journal shows George Edwards, the founder of the Edwards financial dynasty in Chile, engaged in the habilitación of mining enterprises. The domestic copper industry remained undercapitalized and most miners remained chronically indebted throughout the nineteenth century. The journal and the accompanying introduction offer insights into the limits of capital accumulation and the modernization of production techniques in the nineteenth-century copper mining industry. While Lambert introduced the modern reverberatory furnace in his mines, throughout the nineteenth century the majority of copper mines employed systems of extraction and smelting that had changed little since colonial times.
Lambert’s journal is a business diary and focuses on the activities of British entrepreneurs and Chilean elites involved in mining and trade. The journal also offers occasional impressions of the Norte Chico social landscape. At times Lambert refers to the problem of chronic indiscipline in the mines and to the revolts of mine workers (peones). The journal makes clear that one of the “secrets” of Lambert’s “success” (p. 21) in the mining industry was his use of the police and debt to impose labor discipline in the mines. Lambert employed convict labor to build the roads and bridges that would provide the necessary infrastructure for the mining industry. And Lambert himself would become head of both the Coquimbo municipal council and the police force, illustrating his capacity to establish political and economic ties with local elites. In these descriptions we see the social origins of the labor militancy that contributed to the participation of mine workers in the civil wars of the 1850s and in the radical labor movement of northern Chile during the late nineteenth century.
Mining in Chile’s Norte Chico paints a rich portrait of the activities of British capitalists in Chile and the development of Chile’s nineteenth-century copper industry following independence. In addition, Charles Lambert’s journal provides interesting perspectives on the social and political worlds of the Norte Chico mining economy.
