The Saltpetre War ended with a stunning victory for Chile. In January 1881 Chilean forces occupied Lima; by 1884 they had signed truces with Bolivia and Peru and took a vast swathe of territory to their north, including Antofagasta, all of Bolivia’s coastline and a large chunk of Peru’s caliche zone. It is hard to think of many other wars with a more consequential result than this. Chile won control of some of the most important mineral resources in the world—not just the nitrates of the Atacama, but the world’s biggest reserves of copper and lithium. This conflict turned the country into a
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