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DOI: 10.1177/0096144208321876

2008 35: 53 originally published online 11 August 2008Journal of Urban HistorySamuel J. Martland

Trade, Progress, and Patriotism : Defining Valparaso, Chile, 1818-1875

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Trade, Progress, and Patriotism

Defining Valparaso, Chile, 1818-1875Samuel J. MartlandRose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana

Valparaso, Chile, defined itself as a relatively autonomous, cosmopolitan port city during the

nineteenth century. As the leading Pacific port in South America, it played a key role in the

Chilean economy. A strong foreign presence, rapid growth, and omnipresent commerce

accompanied local prosperity. Local leaders sought the latest urban technologies to bring

progressessentially, to mitigate problems created by rapid growth. Although Valparasosmercantile elite favored practical solutions rather than the Haussmann-esque urban renewal

seen in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Santiago de Chile, the city tackled planning challenges

aggressively and succeeded notably in some areas. It successfully negotiated tensions over its

residents dual allegiances to the Chilean state and to international trading communities until

the early twentieth century. At that point, political centralization in Chile subordinated

Valparaso to Santiagos power while economic and transportation changes diminished its

importance as an entrepot and the citys cosmopolitan identity receded.

Keywords: Valparaso, Chile; ideology of progress; urban technology; port cities; urban

planning

Apart from San Francisco, California, no well-known town has outstripped Valparaso in rapid

growth or relative importance on the waters of the western seas.

Vicente Prez Rosales1

By the 1870s, Valparaso was the leading port of Chile and one of the leading ports on

the west coast of the Americas. Local politicians, newspaper editors, and other boosters

called the city the Pearl of the Pacific and painted it as an industrious, progressive city.

Trade and related port activities, which bustled along the beach of a bay that offered no

shelter from the winters northerly gales, had drawn 100,000 people to live on a narrow

beach and a range of precipitous hillsnot far behind Santiagos 195,000. That trade also

financed local public works and private construction that few other secondary cities could

afford. Valparasos financial institutions overshadowed Santiagos. Valparaso was smaller

and less fashionable than Santiago, Chiles capital, but busier and more commercial.

Lumber from New England, and architecture to match, challenged local brick and adobe.

Commercial wealth overshadowed landed wealth. If Valparaso, with its scarce land, also

led the nation in urban overcrowding, that was the price of progress. Its buildings, services,technology, and so on were compared to those in a handful of other major Pacific ports and

in the great cities of Europerarely to Santiago.

53

Journal of Urban History

Volume 35 Number 1

November 2008 53-74

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The noisy, smelly, bustling, prosperous, polyglot waterfront was never far from the

minds of Valparasos boosters. Just as it was never more than a few blocks from anywhere

in the flat part of the city, and dominated the view from the hills, the port defined the city

in the Chilean imagination. Even those in other coast towns eventually came to callValparasos inhabitantsporteos (port people). The port defined the city not just because

it was the main economic reason for the existence of a city in such an inconvenient land-

scape, but because it made the city the most important meeting place between Chile and the

rest of the world, especially the industrializing world.

In the minds of residents and visitors alike, this prosperous, modern, emphatically com-

mercial port city was simultaneously Chilean and cosmopolitan. Its leaders were loyal

Chileans, but they tried to escape from Santiagos influence. Valparaso had more European

and North American residents than any other Chilean city. Foreign-born residents owned key

businesses, sat on the city council, and held other prominent social positions. Nevertheless,

the aura of technological and social Progress that those foreigners helped bring made it afocus of Chilean national pride. Moreover, its economic and strategic importance made it a

focus of Chilean nationalism. Customs duties levied on Valparasos trade financed much of

Chiles national budget (See graph, figure 1). Banks and companies based in Valparaso dom-

inated Chiles financial life and participated in that of their neighbors to the north.2

Beginning in the 1820s, local leaders invoked their hybrid identity to argue for the local

autonomy that they cravedand often got it. Chiles national government, unlike some of its

neighbors, was stable and effective enough to enforce the centralization that pervaded its con-

stitution, but Valparasos municipal government, businesses, and leading citizens planned and

regulated Valparaso remarkably independently. They gained no official autonomy beyond thesmall amount granted to all cities, but they used the notion of special circumstances and, less

explicitly, the fact of Valparasos financial importance to the government to convince the cen-

tral government to approve most porteo proposals for the city.3 The central government reined

in the local administration at times, but since it proposed few if any plans or regulations of its

own for cities, leading porteos held the initiative in shaping Valparaso with new technology,

new ideas about city life, and new ideas about the role of government.

There are relatively few studies of Latin American cities between independence and the

1870s, and the leading syntheses imply that urban development mattered little during that

period. The all-but-exhaustive Cambridge History of Latin America, for example, includes

chapters on urban development in all periods except this one.4 Perhaps this omission is dueto the stagnation or decline of many important colonial cities, especially inland ones, for

some decades after independence.5

However, the rise of Valparaso between 1820 and 1875, and the considerable growth of

some other Latin American ports at the same time, underlines the importance of port cities,

at least, to the newly independent countries. The mercantilist restrictions of imperial Spain,

weakened after 1795, disappeared with independence. Port cities profited from their role in

trade between foreign countries and inland cities and also enjoyed much cheaper and more

convenient access to foreign goods and markets than did their inland neighbors. National gov-

ernments dependent on customs revenue watched ports carefully. Buenos Aires gained wealth

and power faster than the inland cities and provinces of what became Argentina, reinforcing

the differences in regional interests that fueled decades of civil war. Perus government

triedand failedto make Callao the gateway port of the Pacific coast by diverting world

trade from Valparaso.6

54 Journal of Urban History



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Scholars may also have passed over Latin American cities from independence to 1870

for two other reasons, each of which reinforces the other. First, for decades, studies of urban

history tended to look at the few biggest capital cities. The tendency is especially evident

in synthetic works, such as James Scobies The Growth of Latin American Cities, 1870-1930, and in general histories of Latin America.7 A growing number of new studies

address secondary cities, such as Mark Overmyer-Velsquezs 2006 work on Oaxaca,

Mexico; and Christina Jimenezs 2004 work on Morelia, Michoacn, Mexico.8 These works

give us a more complete picture of urban life in the nineteenth century, when most Latin

American city-dwellers did not live in national capitals, when those capitals had yet to

become megacities ten times the size of their closest followers, and when political and eco-

nomic centralization was not as strong as it became in the twentieth century. Studies of sec-

ondary cities also illuminate the origins and development of the state, of nationalism, of

international trade, and of internal migration and help us understand the connections

between regions and between central governments and their regional and local officials.Second, many scholars have focused on the urban effects of national and international

economic and political developments, particularly urban projects carried out by foreign

businesses and national governments. Such projects were influential, and they offer fasci-

nating demonstrations of how cities fit into major political and economic trends in their

countries and the world. However, they disproportionately affected capital cities, and they

became common only in the 1870s and 1880s, leading attention away from the earlier part

of the century. Battles over utilities, residential segregation, health and safety regulations,

the involvement of business in rapid urban growth, the practice of urban improvement pro-

jects, and so on were not only outgrowths of the state-local-foreign interaction of the latenineteenth century. The case of Valparaso, for example, shows that these practices were

begun and the battle lines drawn by local residents, before outsiders had much influence.

The Presence of So Many Foreignersand the Development of Valparaso, 1820-1860

Valparasos identity, and the commercial and strategic reality that lay behind it, were

children of the industrialization of world trade in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1810s,

before Chiles independence from Spain and the growth of its foreign trade, Valparaso was

a small town on the edge of Chile and the edge of the networks of world trade (See map,figure 2). Santiago, Chiles capital and largest city, was two days ride inland on a good

horse (freight took weeks), and most Chileans lived in the Central Valley, between Santiago

and Concepcin to the south. Valparaso did not even have a customhouse. The harbor was

poor. However, since it was the only usable harbor anywhere near the inland capital

(Santiago) and the populous Central Valley, in the ensuing decades Valparaso became a

gateway between the industrial North Atlantic and the mines and estates of central Chile,

much like St. Louis, Chicago, and San Francisco in the United States.9 (Boosters favored

comparisons to San Francisco.) Like those cities, Valparaso arose for the new kind of trade

and grew extremely rapidly in the mid-nineteenth century. It began with sails and throve onsteam. From the 1830s onward, porteos used an image of their city as constantly expand-

ing and changing to argue for special treatment; in turn, some of that special treatment

allowed further growth.

Martland / Trade, Progress, and Patriotism 55



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Global political and economic changes related to the end of the Napoleonic Wars created

the environment in which Valparaso would boom. Spains colonies, from Mexico toArgentina, won independence between 1810 and 1826. After winning its independence in

1818, Chile went through a dozen years of unstable government, mostly dominated by

Liberals. In 1830, Conservatives led by Valparaso merchant Diego Portales established a

stable, highly centralized government. This rather authoritarian republic, in which the pres-

ident was by far the most powerful force in government, lasted until 1891 without a suc-

cessful rebellion. Simultaneously, with the wars over and the countries of the Americas

open to trade, the growing flow of cloth and other manufactured goods from the mills of

Great Britain found its way onto fleets of merchant ships; the subsequent spread of indus-

try through the North Atlantic world only increased the flow. The industrial economy was

global almost from the beginning. In the 1820s, with government encouragement, Chiles

international trade expanded rapidly (see figure 1). After 1830, the national government

pushed to make Valparaso not only the principal port of Chile but also a dominant Pacific

port; the government built bonded warehouses in which merchants could store goods,

mostly European and North American, duty-free while waiting to reship them to fill orders

in Pacific-coast countries to the north when the market was favorable.10 Those policies, a

more stable government than that of neighboring countries, and a convenient location for

ships rounding Cape Horn attracted not only passing ships but also the offices of foreign

firms and immigrants from wealthy merchants to sailors.

Foreigners and trade helped define Valparaso as early as the 1820s, when the city wasstill quite small and the foreigners still essentially outsiders. From just 49 Spaniards and 9

other Europeans in 1813 (out of a total population of 5,317),11 the numbers, visibility, and

influence of foreigners increased significantly in the following decades. Some, like sailors,


Figure 1

1833

1835

1837

1839

1841

1843

1845

1847

1849

1851

1853

1855

1857

1859

1861

1863

1865

1867

1869

1871

1873

Year

0

5

10

15

20

MilliionsofPesos

Customs-Valparaso

Customs-Whole Country

Total state revenue

Note: The ordinary revenues of the Chilean central government, 1833-1874, showing the relative importance of

customs duties in general and of Valparaso in particular. Custom's revenues are in gold pesos of 45d, while

total revenues are in current pesos of 44-46d.



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Figure 2

Note: Valparaso, South America, and major sea routes (Pre-1879 borders between Peru, Bolivia, and Chile).



7/23

were passing through; some were temporary, including some commercial agents and entre-

preneurs; and others were long-term residents, including many who started families. With

independence and the opening of trade, the numbers of foreigners, especially non-Spanish

Europeans and North Americans, increased dramatically but still remained small enough,adaptable enough, and in some cases wealthy enough not to seem threatening to the Chilean

elite. The Waddington, Edwards, Lyon, and Ross families, all prominent in Chilean society

since the late nineteenth century, all started in Valparaso shortly after independence.12

Many porteos argued that their relatively close ties to world trade made them different

from Santiago. They sought aid, but they guarded what autonomy Chiles highly centralized

government allowed them. In 1828, the city council told the minister of the interior that the city

needed active, zealous administration by a competent governor, in part because of bustling

commerce, the presence of so many foreigners, [and] the frequency with [which] the warships

of all nations come to this port.13 The councilors apparently sought local autonomy rather

forcefully: the current governor wrote that Valparaso would not stand for a governor not bornin Valparaso and accused the city councilors of sedition.14 Seditious or not, the councilors

observed patriotic celebrations. In the following year, and several other years, the local govern-

ment asked the central government to fund its Independence Day celebration, which it thought

should be big enough to impress the many foreigners in the city.15 They expected this argument

to resonate with the cabinet in Santiagoand they got their money.

In the next few decades, the small provincial town became a wealthy city full of people born

elsewhereincluding laborers, merchants, and governors. For example, only 12 percent of

men and 22 percent women getting married in Valparaso had been born there; a significant

minority of the rest came from abroad.

16

The upper classes and government officials weremuch more likely to object to poor newcomers than to rich or highly skilled ones. They tended

to welcome all foreigners except sailors (the last a necessary evil) and to be slightly suspicious

of poor and working-class Chileans, many of them migrants. In 1835, the national census

counted 24,316 inhabitants, including at least hundreds of foreigners, in a Valparaso already

encroaching on the Almendral.17 Many of those foreigners were Protestant, which gave the city

a less Catholic identity than the rest of Chile. The busy traffic in the business district helped

too. In 1835, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ricket, probably English Protestants, did not notice the

citys priest coming down the street with the viaticum (communion for someone in danger of

death). They did not kneel. The priest accused them of disrespect and argued loudly with them.

The Rickets were luckier than some; the soldiers escorting the priest sometimes pushed theinattentive and the indifferent to their knees. In response to repeated incidents of this type, the

citys governor suggested that in Valparaso the viaticum be carried without publicity or solem-

nity. He said Valparaso needed a more tolerant priest because of the immense confluence of

men of diverse religious beliefs and practices [and] the impossibility of the transients learning

our religion, even just as a custom. He also argued that the main street was too crowded with

people going about their business. Moreover, he added, such a change would be good for the

dignity of the religion itself.18 This was not just Valparasos self-image, but the governments

view as well. The minister of the interior and the bishop in Santiago apparently both agreed,

although the priest was slow to change his ways.19

This consensus that Valparaso should tolerate Protestants was especially significant in

the Chile of 1835. The Liberal governments of the 1820s had practiced limited anticlerical-

ism and some religious toleration.20 Bernardo OHiggins, supreme director of the Chilean




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state, had allowed the countrys first Protestant cemetery, the Dissidents Cemetery, to open

in Valparaso in 1825. However, from 1830 onward, conservative governments took the oppo-

site stance. The constitution of 1833, which lasted until 1925, made the Catholic church offi-

cial and banned the public practice of other faiths. The Ricket case, therefore, shows that theConservatives who controlled the government saw Valparaso as a special case. They there-

fore recognized different rules for Valparaso, home of most of the foreigners who came to

conduct trade. The greater toleration of the Protestants among those foreigners extended

beyond the carrying of the viaticum: the Dissidents Cemetery stayed open.

Valparaso, with Chiles largest more or less rooted foreign population, had Chiles first

Protestant churches even while such churches remained illegal in Chile. Presbyterian David

Trumbull founded an English-speaking nondenominational church in the 1850s. Between

1854 and 1858, Protestants built a church on Cerro Concepcion. The intendant, Manuel

Valenzuela Castillo, told the minister of the interior that even though the newspapers were

reporting that the building was a Protestant chapel, which was illegal, he could do nothingto stop it because the building did not appear to be a church from the outside and private

meetings were constitutionally protected.21 Whatever his excuses, government officials prob-

ably tolerated more open Protestant worship in Valparaso than they would have in other cities

because they thought of Valparaso as a port town full of foreignersas many as 3,000 of

Valparasos 52,413 inhabitants in 1854.22 De facto toleration in Valparaso helped bring

legal toleration throughout Chile in 1865.23

Beginning in 1822, the more prosperous of the English residents built a garden suburb

on two hills above the business district, Cerro Concepcin and Cerro Alegre. Mentioned by

travelers as early as 1825, it was the first garden suburb in Chile, and quite possibly the firstin all of Latin America.24 It was part foreign colony, part symbol of Valparasos progress.

Foreign visitors, especially Anglo-Saxon ones, regularly admired the neighborhood; well-

off Chileans seem to have accepted and even valued it, although they preferred downtown

houses and regarded the edge of town as a place for the poor.

These immigrants and long-term visitors from Europe and the United States did not live

as members of isolated communities. If the municipal and national governments tolerate

diversity among outsiders in the 1820s and 1830s, by the 1840s some foreigners were

themselves insiders. In 1843, Joshua Waddington, a naturalized Englishman, was a city

councilor, part of the elite of this city of 30,816.25 Many foreign men married Chilean

women and started families. Between 1845 and 1856, for example, 11 percent of groomsand 2 percent of brides came from foreign countries.26 In the following decades, immigrants

and long-term foreign residents were important at all levels of society in Valparaso, both

in their own businesses, schools, clubs, and churches and in the broader local institutions.

Tackling Technology

By the early 1840s, Valparasos leaders, Chilean and foreign alike, had been making con-

certed efforts to improve the city for more than a decade. Citizens and government had

undertaken public works and created new institutions, not only to fix specific problems, butin hopes that each new technology or organization would make the city as a whole better.

Valparasos growth made some of the problems, and the overall situation, more urgent.




9/23

Drinking water was beginning to run short in the summers. Traffic chokedand potholed

the streets. And those streets were a major link not only between Valparasos neighborhoods

but also between the factories of the industrializing North Atlantic and the resources and con-

sumers of central Chile. Goods traveling to and from the port and customhouse in wagons andoxcarts had to cross the entire city by the only roads available, the one or two main streets on

which local residents went about their business. So did the travelers boarding shipsby the

late 1840s, steamersfor foreign countries and for southern and northern Chile.

A decade later, the Santiago and Valparaso Railroads car and locomotive shops became

the citys first industry. The line did not reach Santiago until 1863, but as soon as the short

segment to the nearby village of Via del Mar opened in 1854, the cheaper, faster trans-

portation brought produce into Valparaso and took tourists out of it into a new hinterland.

(The railroad took a different route from the old cart road, tying formerly remote areas to

the citys market.) Its terminal at the northeast corner of the Almendral attracted passen-

gers, freight, and businesses, speeding up the expansion of Valparaso across the Almendralthat was already in progress. The citys leaders took the problems seriously, but they saw

the growing wealth and technology brought by trade as ways to make their bigger city not

only barely livable but distinctly orderly, clean, safe, and maybe even pleasant. This con-

text allowed them to define their city, cheerfully, as a place with extensive international

trade, dense urban growth, and frequent changes in the built environment.

From the 1840s until 1856, nearly all of Valparasos political leaders sought to bring

gaslight to the city. Their search reveals that they thought their city had joined a high class

of cities, and that they saw technological innovation as patriotic, but also that they focused

technology on concrete advantages more than on image-making. In a world of Western andLatin American cities that often chose infrastructure projects for the sake of image,

Valparasos own image paradoxically included downplaying flashy aesthetics. The city

councilors, newspaper editors, and such who discussed gas and streetlights in general mostly

made practical arguments: potholes, thieves, hillside stairs, and other hazards made it hard

to walk at night. Often they believed that gaslight would be cheaper than oil, or that the city

would earn more than enough from the concession to pay for its streetlights. (They suffered

from similar delusions about many other infrastructure proposals).27 These arguments fit

well with the citys self-image as a place of rational, industrious trade. They rarely, if ever,

said that Valparaso ought to have gaslight (or any other urban amenity) because of its

abstract rank in an imagined hierarchy of cities, or that gaslight in itself would makeValparaso superior, but their early dealings with gaslight entrepreneurs show that they

thought they lived in a major city.28 In the 1840s, most British cities and even small towns

had gaslight, as did some French and U.S. cities and a scattering of German ones.29

In 1848, Alejo Cornou, an itinerant French gas engineer, mocked the city councils dim

understanding of gaslight. The councilors complained that Cornou wanted to charge much

more than was charged in London, but Cornou pointed out that London was much closer to

the English coal mines from which Valparaso would also buy coal, and that it had great

economies of scale. Exasperated, he fumed (in French),

Then always London.Eh bien! I, too, accept London. Do you know what London consumed

in 1837, I refer to the city, to the City Government! Take a report which I have seen . . . and

which I believe is not unknown to me: you will find 56,680 beaks or lamps.30




10/23

The Valparaso City council was thinking of installing three or four hundred lights, but they

got their ideas from readings on gas in the world center of gaslight, rather than from smaller

English, U.S., or continental cities. The council and intendant were willing to accept the

contract even with the abuse, but the central government apparently vetoed what it thoughtwere overly monopolistic terms.31

Over the next few years, two more contracts failed. In January 1853, the council hired

William Jenkins to provide interim portable-gas street lighting. (Portable gas lamps seem

to have been fueled by the vapors given off by bottles of some volatile liquid.) The leading

local newspaper,El Mercurio, complained that Montevideo had beaten Valparaso to gaslight,

but rejoiced that Valparaso would soon add one more distinction to the many that make it

stand out among its Pacific rivals: Copiap, Lima, San Francisco itself.32 The rival cities run

up the coast: the (already gas-lit) mining boomtown of northern Chile, the capital of Peru,

and, greatest of all, the golden city of California. The writer presented San Francisco, a boom-

town since the gold rush of 1849, as Valparasos real competition on the Pacific coast of theAmericas. He did not bother to compete with the capital, Santiago, which in the 1850s was

backward by comparison, with fewer new buildings, less traffic, and less nightlife.

If Valparaso wanted gas, it would have to build the system itself. The city council and

two Chilean businessmen built a coal gasworks and a network of gas mains. The intendant

himself lit the first gas streetlight during the 1856 Independence Day celebrations. Lest

anyone miss the symbolism, celebratory signs claimed patriotic glory for those who had

brought the new technology to their city.33 The display of local and national pride implied

that Valparasos gasworks and other new technologies made the city an important center

of Chilean national progress and national pride.El Mercurio

, speaking more explicitly,offered a vote of thanks, in which the whole population and the whole Republic will con-

cur, to the gas company.34 Technological innovation, often driven by the extremely dense

settlement of Valparasos limited flat land (see figure 3), was becoming part of the citys

identity. Porteos, or at least porteo boosters, added that innovation to their list of differ-

ences between Valparaso and other Chilean cities, but they spun that difference as con-

tributing to the nation, rather than straying from it.

Valparasos adaptation of the products, and some of the methods, of industrialization

included not only physical technologymachinesbut also new kinds of organizations

and practices. Those concerning fire provide key examples of local officials citing unique

local conditions as a reason for different treatment of Valparaso. In the 1840s and 1850s,a series of devastating fires eventually called into being Valparasos first major civic orga-

nization, the volunteer fire department. In its early decades, the volunteer fire department

was an elite social club; its first aim was to protect downtown property, including that of

the merchants who organized it, from the dangers of a crowded business district full of

combustible merchandise and wooden structures. The department brought Chilean and for-

eign businessmen together and boosted local pride.

In the 1840s, the threat of conflagration hung over Valparaso like the smoke from a

burning warehouseor lumberyard, smithy, store, or house. The fire brigade, a special unit

of the citys artisan and working-class militia, was ill equipped, poorly funded, and barely

trained. Valparasos firefighting situation was typical of Chilean cities and towns, but the

fire danger was not. Valparasos streets were narrow and winding, in defiance of colonial

Spanish laws that prescribed minimum widths in the rest of Chile. Wood was more




11/23

common than in other Chilean towns. The town huddled under the hills or climbed the

ravines in ready-made chimneys for conflagration. When a building caught fire, porteos

turned out to fight it, from the working-class militiamen to the elite merchants. The inten-

dant himself organized ad hoc efforts by whomever showed up. British and French naval

ships landed men, pumps, and sometimes gunpowder. Everyone watched the wind, the only

factor that could truly determine the outcome.

Such was the scene on the night of March 15, 1843, when a new commercial building onAduana Street in the business district caught fire. In spite of all efforts, which included tear-

ing down one building to make a firebreak, most of the western half of the business district

burned.35 In addition to straightening the burned street, porteos responded to the fire by dis-

cussing fire insurance and improvements to the fire brigade. The Valparaso English Mercury,

a weekly published byEl Mercurio, challenged porteos to use the resources already present

within the town to create better fire engines and a better fire department worthy of the

European civilization with which the newspaper identified. It described the Turks as taking

no action to put out fires, and the Chinese as isolating fires by tearing down buildings, and

asked whether the porteos could take stronger action than folding arms or levelinghouses.36 In the short term, the answer was no: an attempt to establish a voluntary fire-fighting

contribution of 1 percent of each propertys value (totaling two to three thousand pesos a year)

failed when some owners rejected any contribution based on property values.37


Figure 3

Note: Valparaso in 1853, showing small flat areas and very limited development on the hills.



12/23

In early 1844, property owners tried to organize a mutual fire insurance company.

Despite significant early subscriptions and eventual municipal enrollment, it did not last.

Perhaps the national government did not renew its reluctant permission for the municipal

government to participate for a one-year trial.

38

Perhaps organizers realized that an insur-ance scheme limited to one small, combustible city would go bankrupt at the first confla-

gration but were unable to attract participants in other cities. (When insurance eventually

came, a decade or so later, it came in the person of branch offices of foreign insurance

firms, not a local company.) Valparasos rapid growth and topographically enhanced

crowding seem to have made insurance attractive there earlier than in Santiago, just as they

led porteos to seek gaslights and other utilities sooner than their counterparts in the capi-

tal. In March 1844, the city councils secretary claimed that mutual fire insurance was of

more interest in Valparaso than anywhere else in Chile.39 In November 1844, trying to get

the government to approve municipal participation, he insisted that fire insurance was vital

in this Portbecause of the frequency with which fires occur and the poor condition of thefire engine establishment.40

It took another conflagration to spur porteos to find an institutional solution to fire pro-

tection. The solution that they found summed up the defining characteristics of Valparaso:

local leadership, participation of long-term foreign residents, the dominance of commerce,

and a preference for voluntary associations. On December 15, 1850, a fire started in a

Puerto cigar shop and spread so rapidly through the neighboring houses, stores, ware-

houses, and customs buildings that people barely escaped with their lives and a very few

possessions. The fire burned west to the Cruz de Reyes, the edge of the main commercial

area. Afterward, Intendant J. S. Melo told the minister of the interior that Valparaso neededto be ready to spot and fight fires because of special circumstances, including easily com-

bustible buildings and highly valuable contents.41

The state urged the residents to action but did not decide on the measures. The special

circumstances, the concerns of Valparasos merchants, and the experience of foreign resi-

dents with firefighting in other countries combined to create a new solution. With the bless-

ing of the state but under their own direction, many of Valparasos richest and most

prominent menthey held organizational meetings in the stock marketfounded, staffed,

and managed a private volunteer fire department. Foreign residents participated heavily, but

the Chilean merchant Jos Toms Ramos Font was the first superintendent. The central

government, eager to protect lucrative commerce and its own buildings, contributed somemoney and exempted the auxiliaries from militia service to help recruitment. Young, well-

to-do volunteers wielded hoses and entered burning buildings; they also pumped for a few

years, until paid working-class auxiliaries, described by one intendant as used to being wet,

took it over.42 For the volunteers, but not for the paid auxiliaries, the fire companies became

social clubs as well as service organizations. English, Spanish, Italian, French, and German

companies eventually served as foci of national pride among foreign residents, while the

organization that governed all the companies simultaneously linked foreigners and

Chileans together as active citizens of Valparaso.

A twentieth-century writer, claiming that Valparaso had a great many fires, tried to nick-

name the city Pirpolis. Like many others writing about Valparaso, he described

porteos exuberant participation in volunteer fire companies as a defining characteristic of

the city. Cities up and down the length of Chile followed Valparasos example, many




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within months. Further evidence of Valparasos leadership in firefightingand thereby of

its national importance more generallyis that interested citizens of the capital itself,

Santiago, would have copied Valparaso in 1851 had not political tension and fears of civil

unrest provoked the national government to quash their efforts.The Chilean state was stronger and more stable than most of its Latin American neigh-

bors, but its somewhat authoritarian centralized rule bred resentment among the opposition.

In 1851, alliances of radical liberals from Santiago and anticentralist forces from the north

and south tried to topple President Manuel Montt. It is worth noting that freemasons and

volunteer firefighters, both influential groups in Valparaso, were closely associated with

the uprising throughout Chile.43 In addition, the political factions, not yet parties, that arose

under Montt operated in Valparaso and even took sides on whether horse cars were a good

idea. A second revolt, in 1859, pitted Liberals and pro-Catholic Conservatives against anti-

clerical central authority. It included an uprising in Valparaso but once again blew over

quickly.44 The convulsions of the state were relatively minor, and Valparaso grew and mod-ernized in spite of them.

Shake Off Your Ashes and Again Be Queen:A Patriotic and Cosmopolitan Identity

By the 1860s, paradoxically, the city was more Chilean andmore international than it

had been three or four decades before. Valparaso was prosperous, experimenting with var-

ious new technologies, and, above all, busy. Chilean government policy, political stability,

and geographic convenience had made Valparaso into a major center of trade, transporta-tion, and finance for the west coast of South America. Seaborne trade continued to increase.

Steamships, which first came in the 1840s, had multiplied, speeding mail and some freight.

The railroad reached Santiago in 1863, making it cheap and easy to ship goods to and from

the Central Valley. Between them, these two transportation improvements had made

Valparaso less peripheral both within Chile and in the world of the Industrial Revolution.

International observers recognized what porteo boosters hoped was true. In about 1863,

imagining the 1960s, Jules Verne listed Valparaso as one of the worlds half dozen key

financial centers.45

In 1865, the city had about seventy-five thousand residents and mostly filled the flat land

between the bay and the hills. A horse car line crossed the city, and there were plans for

landfills to extend the citys flat land into the harbor. Merchants were beginning to lobby

for a deepwater pier so that cargo would not have to come to the beach in small boats, but

lighters and longshoremen still lined the waterfront. Valparasos local identity still sup-

ported various claims for exceptions and special treatment in national politics, and now it

was strong enough for some Porteos to mock people from the capital.

Many wealthy residents from the inland capital, Santiago, including the principal offi-

cers of the national government, spent summer vacations in the cooler port city. Many of

them looked down on Valparaso. In January 1863, La Unin Liberal ran a series of car-

toons (see figure 4) that satirized Santiago tourists, based partly on class, but also on place.La Unin Liberal proclaimed itself the newspaper of Valparasos workers and artisans, in

implicit contrast toEl Mercurio and its other colleagues, which represented more or less




14/23

elite political and social factions, and the cartoons humor hinges on place and class. The

cartoons show the tourists in various familiar places, all the while mocking the visitors for

being unfamiliar with the ocean and the town. The tourists, with men in tail coats and top

hats, stay in rat-ridden lodgings. On their first outing, they get chased by a bull on a hill

outside town. In the evening, they sit in a formal row in front of the state-owned bonded

warehouses, contemplating the sea.46 After getting seasick on a rowboat ride across the

bay, one dandy gets tangled in a fishing net and nearly drowns when a large wave picks himup.47 Ridiculing tourists fit well into the attitude ofLa Unin Liberal, which attacked not

only the conservative Montt-Varistas but also the elite liberals of Santiago. That attitude, in


Figure 4

Note: Bathing in the Sea:La Unin Liberal mocks tourists from Santiago (January 10, 1863).



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turn, reflected porteos tendency to say that outsiders did not understand their city. If

mocking tourists suggested a strong local identity based on confidence in Valparasos

importance, the 1865 to 1866 naval war with Spain proved Valparasos commercial and

political importance and tested its Chilean and cosmopolitan natures.When Spain seized lucrative Peruvian guano islands in an 1864 dispute, Chile banned

sales of coal to the Spanish fleet, and Chileans demonstrated against Spain. The Spanish

Admiral demanded . . . explanations from Chile and a twenty-one gun salute;48 Chile

refused, and the Spanish fleet began to blockade Chiles six principal ports. The Spanish

fleet was too small to blockade every port, so trade in neutral bottoms (most of the trade)

continued through secondary ports. Eventually only Valparaso remained blockaded.49

However, Valparaso dominated Chiles trade so much that the restricted blockade devas-

tated trade, hampered communications, and shrank government revenues.

Porteos of all classes made dashing patriotic gestures. Recaredo Tornero, owner ofEl

Mercurio, offered the government free use of his printworks. A customhouse workerdonated his whole savings of some two hundred pesos to the war effort, outdoing his col-

leagues who merely loaned theirs.50 El Mercurio asked its readers for a copy of the

Ecuadorean national anthem for use at public ceremonies51showing the limited cultural

and political ties with the neighboring countries whose trade flowed partly through

Valparaso.

When the violence of war threatened their city, porteos appealed to the international

part of its identity. In February 1866, the Spanish admiral threatened to bombard Valparaso

if the Chileans tried to sink his ships with torpedoes or mines. In March, he threatened to

bombard the city if Chile did not apologize to Spain and salute the Spanish flag atValparaso.52 Local newspapers, citizens, and public officials decried the Spanish admirals

intention to bombard a city without military value, forts, or batteries. An editorial of March

14 proclaimed that Valparaso was a mere commercial station, in which most property

belongs to citizens of neutral powers.53 How could any Chilean, within the enhanced

wartime patriotism displayed in the city, claim that Valparaso was not really Chilean? It

makes more sense if the protesting porteos defined their city and country as peaceful

members of the international mercantile community. Any Chilean patriot could honor Chile

by deriding Spain for an unjustified attack on an undefended commercial city. Therefore,

Chileans could downplay Valparasos Chilean identity to play up the dastardly nature of

the Spanish attack. (There was also a touch of desperation. After the attack, two ofValparasos newspapers suggested that porteos make their own cannons and mount their

own defense, because the national government had abandoned them.54) The notion of neu-

tral property served only to protest attacks on the city as a whole. Once the attack was a

certainty, neither law nor public opinion countenanced foreigners (other than consuls) fly-

ing their own flags to warn the Spanish away from their own buildings.55

Events made clear that Valparaso had an identityand loyal residentswho were not

Chilean. The foreign residents of Valparaso, together with their consuls and the comman-

ders of their squadrons in port, protested to the Spanish admiral that the goods and instal-

lations that would be targeted in a bombardment were almost entirely foreign property.

English, French, and U.S. merchants and property owners tried to convince their naval

commanders and diplomatic corps to prevent a Spanish bombardment by force, as a violation

of international law. The U.S. naval commander was willing to do so, and the U.S. minister,




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General Kilpatrick, was eager.56 Their British counterparts refused, however, and the

United States would not act alone. Chileans in the port went through a spate of tirades

against the British government, even though the local British merchants were none too

happy with their government either.

57

In Santiago, where there were very few British peo-ple, there was greater public outcry, and the British minister was evicted from his house and

expelled from the Club de la Unin.58

On March 27, 1866, Admiral Nez announced that he would bombard Valparasos

public buildings on March 31 at 9 a.m.59 On the appointed day, crowds of people, some with

tents and piles of household goods, crowded the hills above the city, a surreal grandstand

for the punctilious destruction. The people of the city had moved as much property as they

could out of range, but much remained. The bonded warehouses were still full. Everyone

was evacuated. The two men who died were serving as guards or firefighters. The Spanish

had said they would attack only public buildings, and mostly they did so, but a few private,

church, and hospital buildings were also hit. Spanish shells burned several blocks in thePuerto business district and a large part of the state bonded warehouse complex. Porteos

reacted with predictable outrage, but also with patriotic pride in facing the enemy with calm

and order. A group of foreign residents told the intendant that Valparaso has given new

proof of her high morality and civilization.60

When the smoke cleared, the Chilean state had lost about 550,700 pesos in damaged

buildings and installations. Private citizens of various nationalities had lost some 633,000

pesos in buildings and 1.5 million pesos in goods and furniture. Twelve million pesos

worth of goodsnearly all foreignhad been lost in the burned bonded warehouses.61 The

porteos had not exaggerated too much when they said their city was a foreign commercialstation. Foreign merchants always owned nearly all the goods on deposit in the state ware-

houses, although some of those foreigners may actually have been longtime residents of

Valparaso with no plans to go home any time soon. The bombardment harmed the mer-

chants of a dozen countries; Valparaso really was an important center for international

trade on the Pacific coast. It also became an international scandal, showing that people

around the world recognized the citys importance. Newspapers as far away as Australia

published engravings of the attack.62 The local poet who told Valparaso, Oasis of the

Pacific, oriental castle,/Shake off your ashes and again be queen/Of the extended coast of

the peaceful sea63 was exaggerating, as his genre demanded, but he described a real

commercial situation.

Certain Special Circumstances:Struggles over City Planning, 1870-1875

In 1872, when the new intendant of Santiago, the Liberal writer and politician Benjamn

Vicua Mackenna, wrote to the intendant of Valparaso for advice on his new job, it made

sense. By then,Valparaso had more experience with urban crowding, dangerous industries,

world trade, and other phenomena of industrializing cities, as well as with the infrastruc-

ture and organization that such cities were developing in response to those phenomena. Thehills that rimmed the city left little room for expansion and much room for conflicts over

space. The lack of space helped make the streets crowded and helped encourage landowners




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to tear down old buildings and build new ones in their places much more frequently than in

other Chilean cities. Vicua Mackenna could turn to Francisco Echaurren (intendant 1870

to 1875) not only as an old friend but also as an experienced public official in an advanced

city. His friend could even send a sample of a cut-stone paving block (cost: 3.50 Chileanpesos, plus installation) and explain why he had not found it cost-effective to have prison-

ers make them.64

Vicua Mackenna and Echaurren had similar ideas about how cities should work. Their

different application of those ideas to Santiago and Valparaso demonstrate key differences

between the two cities. Typically for their era, both fretted about hygiene, circulation, and

order. Some of their projects were similar. Both planned substantial ring roads to mark the

outer limit of future urbanization. However, while Santiagos would frame a grid of wide

streets, Valparasos would snake along the contour line, roughly 150 meters above sea

level. Valparasos dependence on topography set it apart from most Spanish American

cities, which had been carefully located in places flat enough for the street grids thatsixteenth-century Spanish law imposed. It brought charming viewsand challenges such

as floods, landslides, and crowding. Vicua Mackennas flagship project turned Santiagos

one topographical obstacle, Santa Luca Hill, into a fantasy park for well-off walkers and

carriage riders. Echaurrens flagship project was an attempt to straighten and widen

Valparasos narrow, winding streets.

Echaurren regularly argued that Valparaso was such an important and unique city that

national laws applied to it in a different way. Nowhere did he argue this more strenuously,

or with less effect, than in his street-widening struggle. Echaurren, the City Council, and

many other observers argued that safety, health, and commerce demanded that they takeland by eminent domain to straighten and widen the citys streets and open new plazas.

They first argued that existing national laws allowed them to do so. When the central gov-

ernment ruled that existing laws actually prohibited them from doing so, they argued that

Valparaso was different and eventually sought a special law for Valparaso. Echaurren

probably argued as he did partly because he valued state power, as exercised by his office,

very highly, but he also made a concrete argument about Valparaso.65

First, fires and earthquakes visit[ed] [Valparaso] frequently. Valparaso city officials

and other observers had argued for two decades that wider streets and more plazas would

shelter fleeing people and salvaged goods, as well as serving as firebreaks. Second, the

demands of public health [were] more pressing than in other cities that are older and muchmore populous because of Valparasos limited area. In good hygienist fashion, he implied

that bigger plazas would clean the citys air, reduce the extremely high population density,

and generally make the city healthier. Third, Valparaso was the emporium of the

Republics trade; porteo authorities invoked this catchphrase whenever they were not

sure what else to say, but in this case the movement of trade goods actually was a good rea-

son for better streets.66

Echaurren and the City Council first tried to take extra land for the streets without spe-

cial permission from the national government. Some landowners, however, refused to sell

and complained to the minister of the interior. No one seriously denied that the streets were

narrow and tortuous; the dispute was over compensation for lost property. Echaurren,

barred from further independent action in 1872, sought a special law.67 Property owners

who did not want to give up land to the streets convinced many senators that Echaurrens




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proposed law was an expropriation, which the constitution required the Senate to judge.

The Senate, in turn, demanded the detailed plans required for expropriation decisions. The

property owners balkiness and the Senates reaction exemplified the power of commercial

interests. Both sides could claim to want to protect commerce, since widening the streetscould speed transportation through the city but could also limit the commercial usefulness

of some lots.

In August 1874, Echaurren wrote that the senators who reported on [the proposed

Valparaso street law] do not live in this locality, and therefore have been unable to under-

stand certain special circumstances known only to those who have lived in Valparaso for

many years.68 In other words, senators from other cities had scrapped key provisions

because they did not understand that the streets were so narrow and tortuous that traffic

would always jam up in them, fires leap over them, and earthquakes shower them with fly-

ing bricks. The city attorney agreed that Valparaso had special needs, different from those

of other Chilean cities. He complained that Santiagos municipal government had facedfewer obstacles and legal requirements in improving the streets of its city, located in con-

ditions incomparably more advantageous than Valparasos.69 He chastised the senators for

refusing to allow measures to lessen the special dangers of fire and earthquake in the nar-

row Valparaso streets, dangers they should all understand because they visited at least once

a year.70 It took them a while to understand, apparently; only in 1876 did Congress finally

pass the law, laying out a plan for gradually widening and straightening the streets of the

flat part of town and for building the ring road (Camino de Cintura) along the hills at about

150 meters elevation.

Echaurren even said that his plan was much more respectful of property rights than thosecommon in Europe, such as Baron Haussmanns in Paris.71 While this was truethe pro-

posed law did not authorize demolitions; the city would take land to widen the streets when

buildings burned or were demolished to be rebuiltit was not much of an argument against

the requirements of the Chilean constitution for taking land by eminent domain. It shows

us, however, that Echaurren imagined Valparaso in the context of the great cities of Europe,

at least when he thought about urban planning.

Indeed, most leading porteos of the 1870s, like their 1840s predecessorsand perhaps

ordinary newspaper readers, toolooked to Paris, London, and other large cities that were

regularly described in the local newspapers rather than to cities similar in size and situation

to Valparaso. European and North American cities served as models for some of the regu-lations, just as they had provided examples of uses for new technology. Some officials and

commentators said they wanted Valparaso to be more like Europe, but more often they said

or implied that Valparaso was already a world-class city that deserved the same rules and

services as its European counterparts.

Conclusion

Between the 1810s and the 1870s, Valparaso grew from a very small coast town into a

substantial port city. Its trade grew enormously from the 1820s to the early 1870s, as theport funneled raw materials, manufactured goods, and people between Chile and its Pacific

Coast neighbors and the industrializing North Atlantic. Within Chile, the city went from




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being a primitive place on the edge of economic, political, and social systems to being

nearly as central as the capital. Valparasos trade attracted many transient and resident for-

eigners, whose presence shaped the city. From the Dissidents Cemetery in the 1820s to

Protestant churches in the 1850s, Valparasos foreigners got exceptions to certain nationallaws. Beginning in the 1840s, foreigners brought ideas and expertise to street lighting, fire-

fighting, and other innovations too numerous to study here. In dealing with people, goods,

and ideas from abroad, Valparasos leaders increasingly imagined their city as an equal of

others far away. Sometimes this did not make much sense, as when the councilors of the

1840s tried to base their gaslight system on Londons, or when the intendant of the 1870s

dragged a comparison to Baron Haussmanns Paris into a debate on Chilean eminent

domain law. Nevertheless, anyone lobbying the Chilean government for some special treat-

ment for Valparaso pointed out its international trade. It did not always work, but it was a

smart card to play with a government that mostly depended on customs revenues. Around

the Spanish bombardment of 1866, Chileans spun Valparasos international nature as partof its patriotic identity.

In 1875, Valparaso filled the entire flat area and was climbing the hills faster than

before. The Valparaso and Santiago Railroad had recently opened an extension across the

waterfront and helped to build a landfill that added a row of buildings and two new east-

west streets to the narrowest part of the city. The city still had problemspopulation

growth was making them worsebut it now groped for solutions as an established city of

importance to Chile and at least of relevance to international economic networks.

Valparaso was a leading city of the Pacific Coast. Local leaders no longer worried about

their city being backward or provincial. With about 100,000 inhabitants to Santiagos195,000, it was the second city of Chile. In 1882, Vicente Prez Rosales, a Chilean politi-

cian, writer, and sometime government recruiter of German immigrants, could shock his

readers with his description of a small, poor, and untidy Valparaso of 1814.72 Even though

Valparaso was no longer peripheral, it was still part Chilean, part international. The nationality-

based fire companies; the English, U.S., and German Protestant churches; and a collection

of schools, clubs, and other institutions showed that, as did the names of German pharma-

cists, English merchants, and various other foreign small businessmen on signs throughout

the city. Valparaso had had many foreigners when most Latin American cities did not. That

had made it cosmopolitan, and a kind of international commercial city.

Valparaso remained an important Pacific port, and the leading port of Chile, into the1900s. It continued to be a center of banking and trade. It stayed close behind Santiago

in population and remained even with the capital in city services. Nevertheless, its rela-

tionship to international economic networks began to change. Even though its wealth

and population were still growing, it became relatively less powerful. Much of the

growth in Chilean exports and customs revenue after 1880 came from the nitrate fields

taken from Bolivia and Peru in the War of the Pacific (1879-1884). Nitrate wealth came to

Valparasomany proprietors and stockholders lived in Valparaso, local banks were

involved in the trade, workers and supplies passed through Valparaso on their way from

central Chile to the north, and so onbut the citys relative importance to the national

economy and customs revenue declined. In 1880, the Valparaso Drainage Company, Ltd.,

a British company, took over the citys growing sewer system, apparently because the

Chilean entrepreneur who held the concession lacked the capital to build the system.




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A board of directors in Britain ran the company through a manager in Valparaso. From

now on, some of the foreigners who shaped Valparaso would never see it. This was entirely

unexceptional for a late-nineteenth-century Latin American city, but for Valparaso this first

incursion of foreign-based businesses into city services was a sign of reduced economicpower in international economic networks. It could also be read as a sign of closer involve-

ment with the industrialized world.

In the twentieth century, Valparaso would become a small city again; though its popu-

lation would continue to grow, it was far outstripped by the capital. Improved transporta-

tion and communication would vastly reduce Valparasos role as a transshipment point,

making it more peripheral. Corporate and financial headquarters would drain away. The

influential community of resident foreigners would decline. Some families became

Chilean, and others eventually went home. Improved communication had helped bring the

change and would shrink the foreign community in a few decades, once trading companies

overseas realized they did not need long-term resident representatives in Valparaso itself.The newly small city of Valparaso gained an aura of romance. The hillside neighbor-

hoods, born and maintained for lack of a better place to build, became sights to see.

Nostalgia looked back to a golden age. In the early twenty-first century, UNESCO named

Valparaso a world heritage site. The municipal government and other local organizations

lobbied for the distinction, which they hoped would help them preserveand profit from

the aging buildings and infrastructure of the late nineteenth century. In the business district,

where foundations reached bedrock and rode out earthquakes, whole streets of buildings

built from the 1870s to the 1900s have survived; no subsequent boom demolished them to

build new ones, and better transportation made it easier to build a whole new competingdowntown in nearby Via del Mar. The oldest hill neighborhoods, including Cerro Alegre

and Cerro Concepcion, are similarly intact. The citys fourteen or so ascensores, funicular

railroads adapted to the difficult terrain, add another idiosyncratic dash of Victorian tech-

nology. With new construction picking up as Chiles economy grew in the late 1990s,

Valparasos leaders began to think of formal preservation for these accidental relics of a

half-remembered golden age that began more or less where this article ends and lasted until

about 1906. Ironically, the romanticized golden age was roughly the years in which

Valparaso was as close to the cutting edge of technology and economy as it ever got.

Notes

1. Vicente Prez Rosales,Recuerdos del Pasado (1814-1860) (Santiago de Chile, c. 1860; reprint, Santiago

de Chile: Zig-Zag, 1930), 1:32-33.

2. Eduardo Cavieres Figueroa analyzes Valparasos role in trade in Comercio chileno y comerciantes

ingleses 1820-1880: un ciclo de historia economica, Monografias Historicas 2 (Valparaiso, Chile: Instituto de

Historia, Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, 1988).

3. This notion reflects what Santiago Lorenzo S., Gilberto Harris B., and Nelson Vsquez L. called

entrepreneurial spirit in Vida, costumbres y espritu empresarial de los porteos: Valparaso en el siglo XIX, Serie

Monografas Histricas 11 (Via del Mar, Chile: Instituto de Historia, Universidad Catlica de Valparaso, 2000).

4. Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, 11 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1984-).5. Works on trade and economic policy point out this decline: A. Kim Clark writes of the ruralization . . . of

the highlands in late colonial and early independent Ecuador: The Redemptive Work: Railway and Nation in

Ecuador, 1895-1930 (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1998), 23; Paul Gootenberg describes a shift from active




21/23

internal trade to self-sufficiency in the interiors of many of the new Latin American republics:Between Silver

and Guano: Commercial Policy and the State in Postindependence Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1989), 39.

6. Gootenberg,Between Silver and Guano, 28.

7. James Scobie, The Growth of Latin American Cities, 1870-1930, in The Cambridge History of LatinAmerica, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-), 4:234-37. See, for example,

Gerald M. Greenfield, ed, Latin American Urbanization: Historical Profiles of Major Cities (Westport, CT:

Greenwood, 1994), xv. There were always exceptions, such as James R. Scobie, Secondary Cities of Argentina:

The Social History of Corrientes, Salta, and Mendoza, 1850-1910, completed and edited by Samuel L. Baily

(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988). Six of the nine substantive articles in Ronn Pineo and James A.

Baer, eds., Cities of Hope: People, Protests, and Progress in Urbanizing Latin America, 1870-1930 (Boulder,

CO: HarperCollins-Westview, 1998) deal exclusively with major capital cities, but three deal with smaller cities.

8. Mark Overmyer-Velsquez, Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition, and the Formation of

Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Christina Jimnez, Popular

Organizing for Public Services: Residents Modernize Morelia, Mexico, 1880-1920,Journal of Urban History

30 (2004): 497.9. For the concept of the gateway city, see A. F. Burghardt, A Hypothesis about Gateway Cities,Annals

of the Association of American Geographers 61 (1971): 269-85.

10. Simon Collier and William F. Sater,A History of Chile, 1808-1994 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 60-61.

11. Chile, Archivo Nacional, Censo de 1813 Levantada por don Juan Egaa, de orden de la junta de gobierno

formada por los seores Perez, Infante y Eyzaguirre (Santiago: Imprenta Chile, 1953), unnumbered pages of

tables near page 215.

12. Baldomero Estrada Turra, Doblamiento e inmigracin en una ciudad-puerto, in Baldomero Estrada

Turra, Eduardo Cavieres Figueroa, Karin Schmutzer Susaeta, and Luz Mara Mndez Baltrn, Valparaso:

sociedad y economa en el siglo XIX (Via del Mar, Chile: Instituto de Historia, University Catlica de

Valparaso, 2000), 18.

13. Jose Matias Lopes, Jose Domingo Otaegui, Ambrosio Ramon Achurra, and Jos Pieso [representing the

Valparaso city council] to Minister of Interior, Dec. 5, 1828, Archivo Nacional Histrico, Santiago de Chile,

Ministerio del Interior (hereafter, ANHI), vol. 86, fol. 86.

14. Francisco de la Sastra to Minister, Dec. 6, 1828, ANHI, vol. 86, fol. 89.

15. Manuel Manterola, city governor, to Jos M. Benavente, military governor, Aug. 18, 1829, ANHI, vol.

86, fol. 123.

16. Ren Salinas Meza, Nupcialidad, familia y funcionamiento del mercado matrimonial en Valparaso

durante el siglo XIX, in Primera Jornada de Historia Urbana, Valparaso 1536-1986 (Valparaso, Chile:

Universidad Catlica de Valparaso, 1987), 78-78.

17. Chile, Oficina Central de Estadstica, Censo jeneral de la Repblica de Chile levantado en abril de 1854

(Santiago, Chile: Imprenta del Ferrocarril, 1858), unnumbered last page.

18. Ramn Cavareda to Minister, Sept. 28, 1835, ANHI, vol. 148, fols. 49-50.

19. Cavareda to Minister, Dec. 19, 1835, ANHI, vol. 148, fol. 54.20. Collier and Sater,History of Chile, 59.

21. Manuel Valenzuela Castillo to Minister, 11 Mar. 1858, ANHI, vol. 393. (Intendants were presidentially

appointed officials who governed Chiles provinces and presided over the city councils of the provincial capi-

tals, much as governors had done before Valparaso became a provincial capital.)

22. Chile, Oficina Central de Estadstica, Censo jeneral, unnumbered last page. The part of the census that

I have lists 3,738 foreigners in the Province of Valparaso; most of them probably lived in the city, but some

must have lived elsewhere in the province.

23. Sol Serrano, Qu hacer con Dios en la Repblica: Poltica y secularizacin en Chile (1845-1885)

(Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 2008), 184-191.

24. Fernando Rivas I., El Barrio del Cerro Alegre: Orgenes y Desarrollo (MA thesis, Pontificia

Universidad Catlica de Valparaso, Chile: 2000), 30.25. Chile, Oficina Central de Estadstica, Censo jeneral de la Repblica de Chile levantado en abril de 1854,

unnumbered last page.




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26. Salinas Meza, Nupcialidad, familia y funcionamiento del mercado matrimonial en Valparaso durante

el siglo XIX, 78-78.

27. I analyze this aspect of gaslight and horsecars in Cuando el gas pas de moda: la elite de Valparaso y

la tecnologa urbana, 1843-1863,Eure 83 (May 2002): 67-81.

28. I show this contrast in Progress Illuminating the World: Street Lighting in Santiago, Valparaso, and LaPlata, 1840-1890, Urban History 29, no. 2 (2002): 223-38.

29. Wolfgang Schivelbusch,Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century,

trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 32.

30. Alejo Cornou, Valparaso, to Miguel Santa Maria, Valparaso, Oct. 10, 1848, ANHI, vol. 203, p. 193.

31. City council minutes for Nov. 3, 1848, and July 17, 1849, ANHI, Municipalidad de Valparaiso, vol. 16,

pp. 687, 808-9.

32. Alumbrado de gas,El Mercurio, Jan. 27, 1853, p. 2.

33. Festividades del 18,El Mercurio, Sept. 20, 1856), p. 3. The ceremony took place in front of (wealthy

anglo-Chilean merchant) Mr. Edwardss new house, which was presumably in a prominent downtown location.

It must have required many more lamplighters than on ordinary days.

34. Las fiestas del diez y ocho,El Mercurio, Sept. 20, 1856, p. 3.35. Jos Mara de la Cruz, Valparaso, to Minister of Interior, Santiago, Mar. 16, 1843, ANHI, vol. 695, p.

224. The vivid report, written while the ruins were still smoldering, does not give cross-streets, only the names

of owners of houses.

36. Valparaiso English Mercury, Dec. 23, 1843, p. 1.

37. Anacleto de la Cruz, Annual report of the city council, Nov. 14, 1844, ANHI, vol. 212, p. 209.

38. Irarrzaval, Minister, and [Manuel] Montt, President, Valparaso [summer capital], note of official

decision, Dec. 17, 1844, attached to [Joaqun] Prieto, Intendant, Valparaso, to Minister, Valparaso, Nov. 26,

1844, ANHI, vol. 212, pp. 188-89.

39. Anacleto de la Cruz, Memoria de los trabajos de la Municipalidad, Mar. 12, 1844, ANHI, vol. 212, p. 51.

40. de la Cruz, Annual report, 209-10. Italics mine.

41. J. S. Melo to Minister, Dec. 23, 1850, ANHI, vol. 265, p. 170.

42. Jorge Garn Jimnez, Historia del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Valparaiso (Santiago, Chile[?]: Imprenta

Salesianos S.A., 1998), 91-92; Roberto Simpson, Interim intendant, to Minister, Sept. 1, 1853, ANHI, vol. 291,

pp. 506-7.

43. Cristian Gazmuri,El 48 Chileno: igualitarios, reformistas, radicales, masones y bomberos. Imagenes

de Chile (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1992), passim.

44. Brian Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 2nd. ed. (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1988), 165.

45. Jules Verne, Paris au XXe siecle: Roman (MS rejected in 1863; Paris: Hachette, 1994).

46. Los baos de mar,La Unin Liberal, Jan. 3, 1863, p. 1.

47. Los baos de mar [Part 2],La Unin Liberal, Jan. 10, 1863, p. 1.

48. Collier and Sater,History of Chile, 117.

49. Naval War College (United States), International Law Situations with Solutions and Notes, 1901(Washington, DC: 1901), 23-26.

50. J. R. Lira, Intendant, to Minister [2 letters], Oct. 4, 1865, ANHI, vol. 474.

51. La cancin ecuatoriana,El Mercurio, Mar. 3, 1966.

52. Naval War College,International Law, 27.

53. Vuelve la tctica de la intimidacin,El Mercurio, Mar. 13, 1866, p. 3.

54. Caones,El Mercurio, Apr. 5, 1866, p. 2.

55. Las banderas,El Mercurio, Mar. 28, 1866, p. 3.

56. Those familiar with the U.S. Civil War may recognize Kilpatrick as the pugnacious, but not always pru-

dent or effective, general Kill-Cavalry.

57. Collier and Sater,History of Chile, 118.

58. Bien hecho!El Mercurio, Apr. 7, 1866.59. Naval War College,International Law, 28.

60. Los residents estranjeros,El Mercurio, Apr. 9, 1866, p. 2.

61. Untitled Article,El Mercurio, Apr. 3, 1866, p. 3.




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62.Australian News for Home Readers, Aug. 27, 1866.

63. Valparaso,El Mercurio, Apr. 23, 1866.

64. Francisco Echaurren, Valparaso, to Benjamn Vicua Mackenna, Santiago, Apr. 26, 1872, Archivo

Nacional Histrico, Santiago, Chile, Archivo Benjamn Vicua Mackenna, vol. 360, p. 100.

65. I analyze Echaurrens attitude toward state power, municipal regulation, and public order in EveryClass of Guarantee and Security: Urban Growth, Technology, and Government Power in Mid-Nineteenth

Century Valparaso, a paper presented at the XXVII International Congress of the Latin American Studies

Association, Montreal, Canada, September 7, 2007.

66. City council minutes for Aug. 17, 1874, in Valparaso, Documentos municpales i administrativos de

Valparaiso, Tomo Primero [Aug. 7, 1872Dec. 23, 1874] (Valparaso, Chile: Imprenta del Mercurio, 1875),

1:658.

67. Echaurren to Minister, Nov. 5, 1873, ANHI, vol. 660.

68. City council minutes for Aug. 17, 1874, in Valparaso,Documentos, 1:656.

69. City council minutes for Nov. 16, 1874, in Valparaso,Documentos, 1:750.

70. Ibid., 1:738-50. The senators came during the governments summer migration to the port.

71. Ibid., 1:747-49.72. Prez Rosales,Recuerdos del Pasado, 32-33.

Samuel J. Martland is an assistant professor of history and Latin American studies at the Rose-Hulman

Institute of Technology. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003. He

has published articles on Chilean and Argentine cities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


trade, progress and patriotism_defining valparaiso 1818 1875

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