BRIEF HISTORY OF NITRATE

Once the caliche (raw material of nitrate) was extracted and after having crushed it into small pieces, it was leached by cooking it with water in one or two copper cauldrons, which were heated over live fire by means of a furnace or firebox, which, placed under or between the two cauldrons permitted heating both. With the increase in temperature to which the mass was subjected inside the cauldrons, sodium chloride precipitated and the water became increasingly saturated with nitrate of soda thus achieving the separation of the different substances. Once these were dissolved, the liquid saturated with the same - called mother liquor - passed to another deposit where it was clarified and ended by becoming crystallized . When nitrate that first was in a state of solution is crystallized, it is a perfectly white clot, of a characteristic smell and that keeps the humidity, so it must be exposed to the air to dry.

This first system for the elaboration of nitrate of soda, was known subsequently with the name of "Paradas", and was used until the Second half of the 19th century, having been reformed frequently . The copper cauldrons that were used were the same that were used by the Spaniards in the treatment of silver minerals and there is no doubt that the Spanish miners were the first producers of nitrate of Tarapacá, being efficiently assisted by the natives who carried out the same operations in different places of Pampa del Tamarugal using small boilers.

In mid 1830 nitrate was purchased in France and the United States, almost immediately after in England and later in Germany, Italy and other European countries. The commencement of the export of nitrate to the Old World marks the most important milestone in the history of the nitrate industry.
The nitrate industry started to receive new impulses since the decade of 1850. The province of Tarapacá had a greater labor contingent and capital expressed in the affluence of entrepreneurs, in their majority foreigners and mainly Chileans. In addition, in that period (1853) a technical procedure was invented to elaborate nitrate based on the dissolution of the caliche through water steam, system that traces back to the Chilean inventor Mr. Pedro Gamboni, thanks to which the first Oficinas emerged with steam engines and with an incomparably higher production capacity than those of the Parada system.

Until 1866 iodine had been a substance of which no advantage had been taken in the Nitrate Pampa. The same Chilean industrialist and inventor, after lengthy experiments, was able to constitute a procedure to extract iodine from the mother liquor and requested the patent and the legal privilege to exploit it.

The same year, another matter of great importance for the development of the nitrate industry took place outside the Peruvian territory, when the Chilean industrialist and explorer Mr. José Santos Ossa, carried out with success before the Bolivian government, the legal proceedings to explore for nitrate in it.

In October 1869 the elaboration of nitrate commenced in Oficina Salar del Carmen, the first nitrate producing plant that was installed beyond the Peruvian territory, south of River Loa.

The first nitrate railway, inaugurated in mid 1871 was established to connect the port of Iquique with the district of La Noria. Thus a new era was established in the nitrate transportation, commencing the replacement of the old hoof roads.

The decisive and immediate cause of the war between Chile and Bolivia was the violation, on the part of this latter nation, of the Treaty of Boundaries in effect between the two countries since 1874. The tax that the Bolivian government imposed on Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta, violating what was stipulated in such Treaty, precipitated the war conflict when the Company refused to pay this duty, and the Bolivian government ordered the attachment of its property, its sale in public auction and subsequently, the recovery of the nitrate companies maintained by the Company. The reaction of the Chilean Government was the occupation of the port of Antofagasta, event that occurred on February 14, 1879.

In the month of April of that year war had been declared, on the one hand, between Chile and Bolivia, and on the other between Chile and Peru. The Peruvian intervention in the conflict had its origin in the Treaty of the Alliance executed between this country and Bolivia in 1873. Military operations followed until the Chilean forces entered the Peruvian capital in January 1881, where the last resistance was liquidated.

Before the Pacific War commenced, more than 50% of the sums invested in the exploitation of nitrate in Tarapacá were Peruvian capitals; the Chilean capital was in the second place, the third and fourth places being for the English and Germans. Apart from these nationalities, there were investments in the industry by a few Italian, Spanish, Bolivian and French producers, in order of importance.

Towards 1890 and shortly after around 60% of the nitrate industry was controlled directly or indirectly by the stock corporations that were based in London. In the following years, however, no increase was observed in Chilean and German investments and thereafter the preponderance of the English influence started to decline, remaining proportional to the Chilean influence in the first decade of the Twentieth Century. In 1912 and considering the joint production of the two provinces, Tarapacá and Antofagasta. the Chilean interests represented nearly 40% and those of other nationalities were around 60%. Exports exceeded two million tons per year.

One of the issues to which not sufficient importance was given at first was the advertising of the product, notwithstanding that for such purpose a Permanent Nitrate Committee was formed in 1886. A better organization of the media, to make known the fertilizer in the foreign agricultural and agronomic institutions was established in 1884 when the Advertising Nitrate Association was founded in 1884, which later became the Association of Nitrate Producers of Chile in 1919.
In the course of the decade of 1870 the English engineer Mr. Santiago Humberstone was able, after lengthy studies, to conclude a system of elaboration based equally on the use of water steam, but indirectly, in closed tubes, and with a new type of cauldrons of great capacity and provided inside with serpentines, through which the steam passed to heat the mass of caliche and water under treatment. The cauldrons adapted by Mr. Humberstone for the elaboration of nitrate were based on those of the Shanks System used in England for the preparation of soda.

Most of the nitrate was still produced in Tarapaca, where almost all the nitrate districts had been under exploitation since before the war. Between the first and second decade of the Twentieth century, production started to be strengthened with the growing increase of the exploitation in the regions of El Toco, Antofagasta, Aguas Blancas and Taltal. Since 1910 these districts of the South competed with the old nitrate province of the North and shortly after 1912 Antofagasta exceeded Iquique as port of exports. The industry in those years employed over 45,000 workers, of which 21,000 were located in the Tarapacá nitrate oficinas. According to the census of 1907, the nitrate population of the two provinces that year amounted to 36,700 workers.