In 1536 Diego de Almagro formed the first expedition to explore the territories to the south of the Inca Empire, which had been granted to him as the Governorship of New Toledo.

After Almargo's death, Pedro de Valdivia solicited and was granted in 1539 the right to explore and conquer the area with Francisco Pizarro's approval.

Valdivia founded the city of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo and a few months later its cabildo (municipal council) appointed him governor and Captain General of New Extremadura on June 11, 1541.

A Mapuche revolt was triggered following the news of the battle of Curalaba on the 23 of December 1598, where the vice toqui Pelantaru and his lieutenants Anganamon and Guaiquimilla with three hundred men ambushed and killed the Spanish governor Martín García Óñez de Loyola and nearly all his companions.

The kingdom went from being a gold exporter with potential for expanding to the Strait of Magellan to being one of the Spanish Empire's most problematic and poor in natural resources.

The Criollos (American born Spaniards) enjoyed privileges like the ownership of encomiendas (Indian labor jurisdictions) and were allowed limited access to government and administrative positions such as corregidor or alférez.

Mestizos made up initially a small group, but with time grew to become a majority in Chilean society becoming more numerous than native indigenous peoples.

[14] Native peoples experienced the most discrimination among societal groups in colonial Chile; many of them were used as cheap labor in encomienda, causing their numbers to decrease over time due to disease.

Pehuenches, Huilliches and Mapuches living south of La Frontera were not part of the colonial society since they were outside the de facto borders of Chile.

Black slaves made up a minority of the population in colonial Chile and had a special status due to their high cost of import and maintenance.

During late colonial times new migration pulses took off leading to large numbers of Basque people settling in Chile mingling with landowning criollos, forming a new upper class.

The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed on June 7 of 1494, set the areas of influence of Spain and Portugal, west and east, respectively, of a line running from pole to pole that was never demarcated (at 46° 37 'W in the Spanish classical interpretation, and further west, according to the Portuguese interpretation), so the Antarctic areas claimed by Chile today, while still unknown at that time, fell within the control of Spain.

The treaty, backed by the papal bull Ea quae pro bono pacis in 1506 was made mandatory for all Catholic countries, was not recognized by European non-Catholic states and even by some that were, like France.

For Britain, Dutch, Russia and other countries, the Antarctic areas were considered res nullius, a no man's land not subject to the occupation of any nation.

One of the most important works of Spanish literature, the epic poem La Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla (1569), is also considered by Chile as favorable to their argument, as you can read in the seventh stanza of his Canto I: Is Chile North South very long,new sea coast of the south called;will from East to West of wideone hundred miles, so wider taken,under the Antarctic Pole heighttwenty-seven degrees,prolonged until the sea Ocean and Chileanmix their waters within narrow.In the fourth stanza of his Canto III: This was the one who found the sectionsIndians of Antarctic regions.There are also stories and maps, both Chilean and Europeans, indicating the membership of the Terra Australis Antarctica as part of the Captaincy General of Chile.