BRITISH POLICY IN THE WAR OF THE PACIFIC: CHILE VS. PERU AND BOLIVIA, 1879-1884. A CHAPTER OF FREE TRADE EXPANSION IN THE PAX BRITANNICA PERIOD (IMPERIALISM, PERIPHERY, BOURGEOISIE, INDEBTEDNESS)

Between 1879 and 1883 Peru and Bolivia were allied against Chile to fight the War of the Pacific. Peruvians and Bolivians have asserted that Great Britain supported Chile in the war. Those assertions found support in the then-Secretary of State of the United States James Blaine who labelled the conflict "an English war." British and Chileans have tended to deny the importance of Great Britain's role in the war. While conceding, up to a point, that significant economic ties existed between Chilean leaders and British capitalists with interests in the region, they cite a lack of evidence regarding the role of the British State in the conflict.;My working hypothesis was the following: in the War of the Pacific, the British and Chilean defense of Free Trade transformed them into allies, sharing the same interests, against a Peru that had opted for State monopoly as the main tool in reorganizing its economy.;If such an alliance did indeed exist, the fact that it was never sealed through a formal agreement made its existence difficult to verify. To establish whether Britain did take an active role in the war against Peruvian (and Bolivian) interests, how the British State took part in the conflict, the question of how private British interests were involved, and how they fared as a result of the war's outcome were investigated. The position of the British press regarding the war was also explored and evidence was uncovered reinforcing the thesis concerning an "informal" British-Chilean alliance.;The goal of this dissertation was to clarify the uncertainty surrounding the activities of the British during this war. I did so by carrying out research on a variety of primary sources, and by situating British-Chilean and British-Peruvian relations within the broader context of the English policy of the time. Special attention was paid to British efforts, in the Pax Britannica period, to promote Free Trade throughout the world, and particularly in the peripheral countries.