There is a long-standing debate on the performance of manufacturing industries in Chile during the First Globalisation, both at the qualitative level and through indirect estimates of production. This paper, using information from industrial censuses and a wide range of statistical sources, offers a new estimate of industrial production in Chile between 1860 and 1924, disaggregated into 12 branches of industrial activity. The results show significant growth of the manufacturing sector during the First Globalisation, closely linked to the expansion of the domestic market caused by primary-export expansion, and a long phase of contraction that began during the First World War and lasted until the end of the 1930s, when public policies were explicitly oriented towards import-substitution industrialisation.