1845-70 - The Guano Era
The guano boom, made possible by the droppings from millions of birds on the Chincha Islands, proved to be a veritable bonanza for Peru, beginning in the 1840s. By the time that this natural resource had been depleted three decades later, Peru had exported some 12 million tons of the fertilizer to Europe and North America, where it stimulated the commercial agricultural revolution. Commercial development of these nitrate deposits first occurred on extremely arid islands off the coast of Chile and Peru around 1840. These island deposits – derived from whole cliffs of seabird excrement, or guano, deposited over thousands of years – were quickly depleted within a few decades.
Seabirds concentrate marine-derived nutrients on breeding islands in the form of feces (guano), and these nutrients dramatically alter terrestrial ecosystem ecology. For centuries, guano has played a pivotal role in the agricultural and economic development of Latin America, East Asia, and Oceania. As their populations ballooned during the Industrial Revolution, North American and European powers came to depend on this unique resource as well, helping them meet their ever-increasing farming needs. The production and commodification of guano shaped the modern Pacific Basin and the world's relationship to the region. This once little-known commodity was an engine of Western industrialization.
Crops take up nutrients from the soil as they grow. The major nutrients are nitrogen (N); phosphate (P205), the oxide form of phosphorus (P); and potash (K20), the oxide form of potassium (K). Commercial fertilizers are applied by farmers to ensure sufficient nutrients for high crop yields. From the settlement of the United States until the 19th century, increased food production came almost entirely from expanding the cropland base and mining the nutrients in the soil. However, the expanding demand for agricultural commodities required soil nutrient replacement to maintain or expand crop yields. First, manure and other farm refuse were applied to the soils. Later, applications of manure were supplemented with fish, seaweed, peatmoss, leaves, straw, leached ashes, bonemeal, and Peruvian guano, materials that contained a higher percentage of nitrogen, phosphate, and potash than did manure.
Peru's transformation from a tottering colonial economy based on extraction of precious bullion to a massive exporter of bulk goods like guano shows how a struggle between protectionists and free traders shaped the state. With no strong national state institutions and frequent elections, popular participation in politics produced frequent civil wars. With permanent bankruptcy - because there was no sound tax system - the fragile national state adopted policies fitted to the elites who payed the war's bills (in the Peruvian case, was the monopolist corporation of Lima's merchants).
Between Silver and Guano: Commercial Policy and the State in Postindependence Peru (Princeton Legacy Library) by Paul Eliot Gootenberg is perhaps the most thorough examination of exactly how those internal class and productive forces contributed to Peru's under-development. Gootenberg shows that after 1840, with the bankruptcy of the special interests - who could make money with unstable governments and more unstable public policies and with no good environtment for trade and investment? - the Peruvian state bureaucracy could choose more open markets policies, restoring its independence, military power against regional militia, and setting the terms of negotiation with every regional elite. The Peruvian state, was a consequence of the fatigue of civil wars funders, and a profitable alliance between bureaucrats and special interests groups, which was funded by the rich trade of guano, after 1840.
Gregory T. Cushman’s Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History provides an examination of guano (excretion) and its importance to global economies and world history. Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas, Cushman has created a work that blends history, environmental science, climatology, political science, and economics into a cohesive and comprehensive study. Cushman’s topic is quite obscure, but of tremendous historical and economic importance. Cushman makes a particularly striking statement in his preface in which he states that the importance of guano in world history is comparable to that of the Second World War, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and the Black Death. He ambitiously attempts to prove the monumental importance of guano throughout the book by detailing the staggering impact guano harvesting and trade has had on the world.
Guano is the excrement of various sea-birds, as the cormorants, flamingoes, cranes, &c., and is found on many little islands off the coast of Peru, situated between 13° and 21° south latitude. Its quantity is so great that it is obtained by means of mining operations. The word guano belongs to the old Peruvian or Quichma language, and signifies muck or dung. It is pro nounced Huanu by the Peruvians, which the Spaniards, according to the genius of their language, spell guano.
This substance was known to the inhabitants of Peru as a valuable manure long before the possession of their country by the Spaniards; and the success of the culture of the barren sandy tracts of land along the coast depended in a great measure on the use of this substance, so favourable to vegetation.
The use of guano as a manure was first mentioned by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, a Spaniard who wrote on Peru as early as #28, in a work entitled “Comentarios Reales.” “On the sea-coast,” says he “between Arequipa and Tarapacá, in a tract of land more than two leagues in length, they have no other kind of manure than that afforded by sea- birds, which dwell in countless numbers on the sea-coast. They lay their eggs on certain islands along the coast, and the quantity of excrement they leave there is astonishingly great. At a distance the masses of excrement look like the tops of a range of hills.
"At the time the Incas governed Peru the birds were preserved with great care. The punishment of death was decreed against those who landed on the island during breeding-time, or frightened the birds, or at any time destroyed them. Each island was a distinct province, or, when large, was divided into several provinces, over each of which an overseer was appointed by the Incas, whose care it was to see that every district had its due proportion, and no one defrauded his neighbour of the universally-needed manure.”
The guano-layers, according to the length of time they have been deposited, have undergone many changes. Here and there they are covered with siliceous sand, and have thus been protected from the infiuence of the weather. In other places, on the other hand, they are open and exposed to the action of light, air, and water, which have effected in them many decompositions. Such changes are indicated in most cases by an ochre-yellow guano, resembling Spanish snuff, the colour changing according to the greater or lesser amount of decomposition. Fresh guano is of a white colour, but that which is dug up has a bright or ochre-yellow, brown, or red colour. The chemical composition of guano was very various.
Among animal manures guano clearly claimed the first position. It was uncommonly rich in ammoniacal salts, and these salts acted very favourably on vegetation.
In the 19th Century British guano miners were searching the Pacific for islands with significant guano (bird droppings) deposits to be used for agricultural fertilizer.
Under an Act of the US Congress of Aug. 18, 1856, 48 USC Ch. 8: GUANO ISLANDS section 1411 et seq: "Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other government, and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.
"The discoverer shall, as soon as practicable, give notice verified by affidavit, to the Department of State, of such discovery, occupation, and possession, describing the island, rock, or key, and the latitude and longitude thereof, as near as may be, and showing that such possession was taken in the name of the United States; and shall furnish satisfactory evidence to the State Department that such island, rock, or key was not, at the time of the discovery thereof, or of the taking possession and occupation thereof by the claimants, in the possession or occupation of any other government or of the citizens of any other government, before the same shall be considered as appertaining to the United States.
"No guano shall be taken from any island, rock, or key mentioned in section 1411 of this title, except for the use of the citizens of the United States or of persons resident therein. The discoverer, or his widow, heir, executor, administrator, or assigns, shall enter into bond, in such penalty and with such sureties as may be required by the President, to deliver the guano to citizens of the United States, for the purpose of being used therein, and to none others, and at the price prescribed, and to provide all necessary facilities for that purpose within a time to be fixed in the bond.... The President is authorized, at his discretion, to employ the land and naval forces of the United States to protect the rights of the discoverer or of his widow, heir, executor, administrator, or assigns..."
On the basis of a truly enormous flow of revenue to the state (nearly US$500 million), Peru was presented in the middle decades of the nineteenth century with a historic opportunity for development. Why this did not materialize, but rather became a classic case of boom-bust export dependence, has continued to be the subject of intense discussion and debate. Most analysts, however, concur with historian Magnus Morner that "guano wealth was, on the whole, a developmental opportunity missed."
On the positive side, guano-led economic growth — on average 9 percent a year beginning in the 1840s — and burgeoning government coffers provided the basis for the consolidation of the state.
With adequate revenues, Castilla was able to retire the internal and external debt and place the government on a sound financial footing for the first time since independence. That, in turn, shored up the country's credit rating abroad (which, however, in time proved to be a double-edged sword in the absence of fiscal restraint). It also enabled Castilla to abolish vestiges of the colonial past — slavery in 1854 and the onerous native tribute—modernize the army, and centralize state power at the expense of local caudillos.
The general impression held in other countries after 1900 regarding the accumulations of guano in Peru was that they were comparable to coal formations, in that they represented the very gradual accumulations of untold years, and were, practically speaking, a finished formation. By the very nature of such deposits they would surely be exhausted sooner or later.
As these deposits had been successively exhausted of various high grades, there was left only the lowest grades that it is profitable to extract, and also some supplies of such very low grade that under present conditions they are not marketable. However, the birds were each year making new deposits, especially on their nesting-grounds, and this new fresh guano usually has a very high per cent, of nitrogen and a comparatively low per cent, of sand. Now, as the remaining deposits of old guano were rapidly being exhausted, the annual gross output of guano is bound to decrease very considerably, and the industry would be dependent entirely upon the yearly deposit of the birds.
The merit of placing the guano extraction in the hands of a company depends upon making the contract last for a period of years, say for ten years or more. By this means the company is induced to plan for the future, which is the desideratum. The alcatras was once an abundant and important bird in this region, but it practically abandoned the region. By 1907, the few alcatrases which remain had chosen this one island, of all in the Chincha and Ballestas groups, for their nesting-ground. The islands of Lobos de Afuera were abandoned for two years, and the alcatrases settled themselves chiefly in the northern part of the eastward island, and on an islet near by. Here was an ideal arrangement: while the extraction of guano on a large scale was in operation in the Lobos de Tierra Islands, these timid birds were in undisturbed possession of the Lobos de Afuera. Unfortunately, this condition was not permitted to continue, for last season the extraction of guano was resumed on these islands, and the birds were entirely routed.
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