Uniforms
of the Pacific War 1879-1884
The Land Campaigns
Patricio Greve Moller & Claudio Fernández Cerda
(Translated by Anne Farnsworth)
(Revised & edited by Ron Poulter, Doriam Montana and Henry Hyde
ISBN: 978-1-85818-612-2
256 pages (full colour throughout)
248mm x 168mm
Hardback
£44.50
This remarkable work brings to the attention of the Englishspeaking world for the first time the extraordinary events of the Pacific War of 1879-1884, fought between Chile, Peru and its ally Bolivia.
Four campaigns were fought in total, over some of the world’s most challenging terrain, with troops on all sides displaying deeds of great courage in extremes of temperature ranging from the frozen rock of the Peruvian peaks to the desolate and parched sands of the Atacama desert. Inevitably, the death toll was high, as these South American nations learned the hard way that colourful cloth was no protection against the increasing lethality of quick-firing rifled firearms and long range artillery.
Military enthusiasts more familiar with the European wars of the nineteenth century or the American Civil War will find startling similarities in uniform and equipment. The beautiful illustrations, based on exhaustive research and often accompanied by contemporary photographs of men in uniform, bring the conflict vividly to life, showing military costume that would even have been more at home on the first Napoleon’s battlefields, rather than at the end of a bloody century in far away places.
In addition, access to artifacts has been graciously granted by many private and public collections, allowing the authors to include in this work a large number of photographs of uniforms, arms and equipment which have rarely been seen outside South America.
In lavish colour throughout, this volume deserves to be in the collection of all serious students of military history.
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