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Kingdom of Chile
The Kingdom of Chile or Realm of Chile , also known as the General Captaincy of Chile (Capitania General de Chile), was an administrative territory of the Spanish Empire from 1541 to 1818, the year in which it declared itself independent, becoming the Republic of Chile. It had a number of governors over its long history, and technically one king, from which it derived its unusual designation as a "kingdom."
Background
In Old Spanish Reyno (compared to modern Reino ("Kingdom") was more descriptive of a geographical unity rather than a political one. This can lead to confusion since politically there was not one Kingdom of Spain until the Bourbon instauration in 1700, but several kingdoms inside and outside the Iberian Peninsula. Spain was in that sense a reyno before becoming a reino. Each of these independent kingdoms was ruled in Spain as a personal union by the Spanish King, since the time of Charles I.
The Chilean kingdom (the Reyno de Chile) was a personal possession of the King of Castile (then a geographical entity more than a political one) as were all the other Spanish possessions in the New World. Naples or Sicily, on the other hand, were possessions of the King of Aragon, who happened to be the same person. There was no common administrative apparatus between different independent reinos, and each one was governed by the king, its own council, and its own laws. The day to day work was handled mostly by viceroys who represented the king's will, e.g., in Aragon, Sicily, Mexico or Peru.
Chile never reached the status of a viceroyalty (it was too small and too poor for that) but that of a captaincy general, dependent on the Peruvian Viceroyalty. Therefore, in English maybe it would be more appropriate to refer to colonial Chile as a realm under the rule of the Castilian (and later Spanish) King, rather than as a kingdom.
Political history
The district was designated a Governorship during the initial exploration and settlement of the area, because the local Amerindian peoples demonstated fierce resistance and thus a more autonomous, military-based governmental authority was needed. This was not an unusual arrangement for the Spanish colonizers.
In 1554, however, the future Philip II of Spain married Queen Mary I of England, when he was still just the heir to the Spanish throne. In order to bring him up to an equal rank with the Queen, he was named the "King of Chile" by his father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Additionally he received the Kingdom of Naples, which came with a claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Thus the marriage treaty could jointly style the couple as King and Queen, and would reflect not only Mary's but also Philip's dominions and claims:
Philip and Mary, by the grace of God, King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, Chile and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol
After Philip inherited the throne and became King of Spain in 1556, the Kingdom of Chile merged back into the Spanish crown, continuing its practical identity as a captaincy, but maintaining the honorific title of Kingdom.
Later, Chile became a Captaincy General and a Royal Audiencia. It lost more than half of its territory with the Bourbonic reforms of Charles III, that transferred all trans-andean possessions to the domain of the newly created Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1776.
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Kingdom of Chile
