The Army of Chile on the eve of the Pacific War. The recruitment problems (1866-1879)

Abstract

In the context of the life of the Army of Chile during the interwar period (1866-1879), this work aims to explain the constant disparity between the forces that were legally authorized and those that were actually recruited, the second ones being numerically inferior to the first. To reach such an explanation, four main factors are analyzed: wages of troops, conditions in the Arauco area, and defects of the recruitment. Refining the first two, the author is inclined to assign greater importance to the last two.