Chile saltpetre
noun · first attested 19th century
A fertilizer redrew the map of South America and then vanished from the economy.
Naturally occurring sodium nitrate, used as fertilizer and in gunpowder; the mineral nitratine.
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 19th century
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Chile
- In English
Chile saltpetre
The nitrate beds of the Atacama were the world's main natural source of sodium nitrate before synthetic ammonia, and they lay in Peruvian and Bolivian territory. Chile took them in the War of the Pacific, fought from 1879 to 1883, which left Bolivia landlocked and made Chilean nitrate a world commodity. The Haber-Bosch process, industrialized from 1913, fixed nitrogen from air and destroyed the trade within a generation.