Chincha Islands War
| Chincha Islands War | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 1865 South America during the Chincha Islands War. Orange: Peru. Green: Bolivia. Yellow: Ecuador. Blue-Green: Colombia. Purple: Chile. |
|||||||
|
|||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Spain
|
 Peru ChileJoined in 1866:  Ecuador Bolivia
|
||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
Juan Manuel Pareja † Casto Méndez Núñez
|
Mariano Ignacio Prado Juan Williams Rebolledo
|
||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 300 | 700 | ||||||
The Chincha Islands War, also known as Spanish-South American War (Spanish: Guerra hispano-sudamericana) was a series of coastal and naval battles between Spain and its former colonies of Peru and Chile from 1864 to 1866. The conflict began with Spain's seizure of the guano-rich Chincha Islands in one of a series of attempts by Spain, under Isabella II, to reassert its influence over its former South American colonies. The war saw the use of ironclads, including the Spanish ship Numancia, the first ironclad to circumnavigate the world.
Military expenditure greatly increased during Isabella's reign, and as a consequence, Spain rose to a position as the world's fourth naval power. Spain engaged in colonial adventures in the 1850s and 1860s in regions as disparate as Morocco, Indochina, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic (which it briefly reoccupied).
At the end of 1862, Spain sent a scientific expedition to South American waters, with the covert purpose of reinforcing the financial and legal claims of Spanish citizens residing in the Americas. The expedition was under the command of Admiral Luis Hernández Pinzón – a direct descendant of the Pinzón brothers who had accompanied Christopher Columbus on his voyage that resulted in the modern European discovery of America. Pinzón's squadron was composed of four warships: the twin steam frigates Triunfo and Resolución, the corvette Vencedora and the schooner Virgen de Covadonga.
...
Wikipedia