From entrepôt to commercial port of the South Pacific: Talcahuano (Chile), 1872-1914

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the port status of Talcahuano during the transition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when it went from being an entrepôt to a commercial port of the South Pacific. To achieve this purpose, demographic transformations as well as the commercial societies that operated in Talcahuano  between the 1870s and 1910s are described. Both elements conditioned the economic modernization of this space, laying the foundations for the creation of the social fabric of Talcahuano, whose socio-cultural features developed at the eaves of its economic forms, linked to trade, manufacturing and services. The research was carried out with sources from the Trade Fund of the National Historical Archive of Santiago de Chile and data from national population censuses carried out between 1875 and 1907.