When Chile became an independent nation in 1818 it was the poorest territory in the Americas, by the 1890s it had become richer than Sweden, and twice as rich than Japan and it became one of the 15 richest nations in the world, a position it would retain for decades, even as late as the 1950s it remained richer than Ireland and its former colonial master, Spain, and almost as rich as Germany but the Chilean economy had been in a steady decline since the late 1920s and in 1910 it had an industrial capacity superior to that of 1950, it was not until the late 1970s that the decline started to be reverted, although Chile never regained its former status.