Captaincy General of Chile

The Captaincy General of Chile was incorporated to the Crown of Castile as were all the other Spanish possessions in the New World. The Captaincy General of Chile was first known as New Extremadura (a name subsequently given to a part of Mexico) and then as Indian Flanders.

The administrative apparatus of the Captaincy General of Chile was subordinate to the Council of the Indies and the Laws of the Indies, like the other Spanish colonial possessions. The day-to-day work was handled mostly by viceroys and governors, who represented the king in the overseas territories. The areas of the Americas, which had been the site of complex civilizations or became rich societies were usually referred to by the Spanish as "kingdoms," such as the "New Kingdom of Granada", the "Kingdom of Mexico", or the "Kingdom of Guatemala."

Chile never reached the status of a viceroyalty and was instead classified as a captaincy general because this was a very warlike territory and thus was ruled by a military and not a nobleman like a viceroy. In a colloquial and unofficial way it was known as the Kingdom of Chile (Reyno de Chile in old Spanish spelling) for figuratively speaking the Chilean dominions, although in official documentation, letters, trades, etc., the country is referred to as "Reyno de Chile".[1][2]

History of Chile
Early history Monte Verde Origin of the Mapuche Early Mapuches Incas in Chile
Colonial times Conquest Colonial Chile Captaincy General Arauco War Destruction of the Seven Cities
Nation-building Patria Vieja War of Independence Reconquest Patria Nueva Civil war (1829–30) War of the Confederation
Republican period Conservative Republic Liberal Republic Occupation of Araucanía War of the Pacific
Parliamentary period 1891 Chilean Civil War Parliamentary Republic 1924 coup d'état
Presidential period 1925 coup d'état Presidential Republic Radical governments Allende and UP era
Pinochet regime 1973 coup d'état Military dictatorship
Contemporary Transition to democracy Student protests Mapuche conflict Social Outbreak Politics of Chile
Related topics Agriculture history Economic history Maritime history Mining history Chilean coups d'état Political scandals

As noted, the area had been designated a governorship (gobernación) during the initial exploration and settlement of the area, but because the local Amerindian peoples demonstrated fierce resistance, a more autonomous, military-based governmental authority was needed. Thus, the governor was given command of the local military and the title of captain general. This arrangement was seen in many places of the Spanish Empire.

The greatest setback the Spanish settlements suffered was the Disaster of Curalaba in 1598, which nearly wiped them out. All cities south of the Biobío River with the exception of Castro were destroyed. The river became La Frontera the de facto border between Spanish and Native areas for the next century. (See Arauco War.)

Chile lost more than half of its territory with the Bourbon reforms of Charles III, when all of its trans-Andean possessions were transferred to the domain of the newly created Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776. Chile gained two intendancies, Santiago and Concepción in 1786 and became a Bourbon-style Captaincy General in 1789.

World Map by Abraham Ortelius (1570), where appears the Terra Australis Incognita.

For many years, cartographers and European explorers speculated about the existence of the Terra Australis Incognita, a vast territory located in the south of the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego and reached the South Pole.

The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed on June 7 of 1494, set the areas of influence of Spain and Portugal, west and east, respectively, of a line running from pole to pole that was never demarcated (at 46° 37 'W in the Spanish classical interpretation, and further west, according to the Portuguese interpretation), so the Antarctic areas claimed by Chile today, while still unknown at that time, fell within the control of Spain. The treaty, backed by the papal bull Ea quae pro bono pacis in 1506 was made mandatory for all Catholic countries, was not recognized by European non-Catholic states and even by some that were, like France. For Britain, Dutch, Russia and other countries, the Antarctic areas were considered res nullius, a no man's land not subject to the occupation of any nation.

In 1534, The Emperor Charles V divided in three governorates the South American territory :

• New Castile or Peru to Francisco Pizarro,
• New Toledo or Chile to Diego de Almagro and
• New León or Magellanic Lands for Simón de Alcazaba y Sotomayor, which was subsequently extended to the Straits of Magellan.

In 1539, a new governorate was formed south of New León called Terra Australis to Pedro Sanchez de la Hoz. In 1554, the conqueror Pedro de Valdivia, who led the Governorate of Chile, he talked to the Council of the Indies to give the rights of New León and the Terra Australis to Jeronimo de Alderete, which, after the death of Valdivia the following year, became governor of Chile and annexed the Chilean colonial territory.

Proof of this are numerous historical documents, among which include a Royal Decree of 1554:

Because it was personally consulted, we will grant, to the Captain Jeronimo de Alderete the land across the Magellan Strait

Later, in 1558, the Royal Decree of Brussels it prompted the Chilean colonial government to take ownership in our name from the lands and provinces that fall in the demarcation of the Spanish crown in Referring to the land across the Strait, because at that time it was thought that Tierra del Fuego was an integral part of the Terra Australis.

One of the most important works of Spanish literature, the epic poem La Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla (1569), is also considered by Chile as favorable to their argument, as you can read in the seventh stanza of his Canto I:

Is Chile North South very long,
new sea coast of the south called;
will from East to West of wide
one hundred miles, so wider taken,
under the Antarctic Pole height
twenty-seven degrees,
prolonged until the sea Ocean and Chilean
mix their waters within narrow.

In the fourth stanza of his Canto III:

This was the one who found the sections
Indians of Antarctic regions.

There are also stories and maps, both Chilean and Europeans, indicating the membership of the Terra Australis Antarctica as part of the Captaincy General of Chile.

The Spanish navigator Gabriel de Castilla sailed from Valparaiso in March 1603 in command of three ships in an expedition entrusted by his brother cousin viceroy of Peru, Luis de Velasco y Castilla, to repress the incursions of Dutch privateers in the Southern Seas, reaching 64 degrees south latitude. There have not founded in the Spanish archives documents confirming the reached latitude and sighted land; however, the story of the Dutch sailor Laurenz Claesz (is a testimony dateless, but probably after 1607), documents the latitude and time. Claesz said:

Sailed under the Admiral don Gabriel of Castile with three ships along the coasts of Chile towards Valparaiso, and from there to the strait. In March of 1603 he reached 64 degrees and they had a lot of snow there. In the following April they returned back to the coast of Chile

Another Dutch document, published in Amsterdam in three languages in 1622, says that at 64°S there are "very high and mountainous, snow cover, like the country of Norway, all white, land It seemed to extend to the Solomon Islands" This confirms a previous sighting of the lands would be the South Shetland Islands.

Other historians attribute the first sighting of Antarctic land to the Dutch marine Dirk Gerritsz, which would have found the islands now known as South Shetland. According to his account, his ship was diverted from course by a storm after transposing the Strait of Magellan, in the journey of a Dutch expedition to the East Indies in 1599. There are doubts about the veracity of Gerritsz.

At this time was already known the existence of a white continent in south of the Drake Passage, separated from the Tierra del Fuego. In 1772, the British James Cook circumnavigated the waters of the Southern Ocean.

• Real Audiencia of Concepción
• Royal Governor of Chile
• Spanish immigration to Chile
• Chilean Antarctica in colonial times