ABSTRACT
The history of foreign investment in Chilean copper has been the subject of several scholarly studies, and no attempt will be made to duplicate or to provide a comprehensive review of this material. 1 The purpose of this chapter is to relate aspects of this documented history to our approach to conflict and to the joint ventures between the foreign companies and the government of Chile which have been recently established as a form of accommodation. Another purpose is to provide an institutional background for the following chapter by Markos Mamalakis, which is mainly concerned with a quantitative analysis of the contribution of the copper export sector to the Chilean economy.
