Colonization and new territory: the formation of the commercial elite of Temuco, 1885-1913

Abstract

The occupation of the Araucanía by the Chilean State obeyed, among other things, to economic principles related to annexation of new productive territories to the national context. For the success in this occupation there was an active policy of encouragement of the arrival of a civilizing agent, personify in the European habitant. This agent, together with Chilean colonists, arrived to Temuco, a city that will become soon the center of the new geography of power in Araucanía. This work aims to analyze the commercial dynamics of an incipient commercial elite formed by foreign and Chilean colonists in the early years of Temuco (1885-1913). Considering commercial records, city plans and chronicles of the time, differences by nationality are observed in the type of commercial activity and occupied space, as well strategies of economic, social and institutional diversification that transform the germans into the potential local elite of the city.