The Paraguayan War (1864?70) was the deadliest and most extensive interstate war ever fought in Latin America. The conflict involving Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil killed hundreds of thousands of people and had dire consequences for the Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano L¢pez and his nation. Though the Paraguayan War stirs the same emotions in South Americans as does the Civil War in the United States, there have been few significant investigations of the war available in English. In this first of two volumes, Thomas L. Whigham provides an engrossing and comprehensive account of the war's origins and early campaigns, and he guides the reader through the complexities of South American nationalism, military development, and political intrigue. Whigham portrays the conflict as bloody and inexcusable, though it paved the way for more modern societies in the continent. The Paraguayan War fills an important gap in our understanding of Latin American history.

This highly illustrated study examines, in detail, the brutal Paraguayan War of 1864--70, one of the largest and bloodiest conflicts in South American history. The Paraguayan War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, was the largest and most important military conflict in the history of South America, after the Wars of Independence, and its only true “continental” war. It involved four countries and lasted for more than five years, during which Paraguay fought alone against a powerful alliance formed by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. This conflict was remarkable in its huge scale and its terrible cost in lives, with the catastrophic human price paid by Paraguay amounting to more than 300,000 men, a loss of some 70 percent of the country's total population. The war was a real revolution for the armies of South America, and the first truly modern conflict of the continent. When the war began in 1864, the armies were small, poorly trained, and badly equipped semi-professional forces. However, by the time the war ended, most of them had adopted percussion rifles employing the Minié system and new weapons like breech-loading rifles and Gatling machine guns were being tested for the first time on the continent. This title covers the whole span of the war, from when the early days the conflict primarily involved small columns of a few thousand men seeking each other out in rugged and sparsely inhabited territory, through to the later Napoleonic-style positional battles fought at points of strategic importance. It also explores the unique challenges presented by the humid, subtropical climate, including the devastating impact of disease on the troops.

The Paraguayan War (1864?70) was the most extensive and profound interstate war ever fought in South America. It directly involved the four countries of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay and took the lives of hundreds of thousands, combatants and noncombatants alike. While the war still stirs emotions on the southern continent, until today few scholars from outside the region have taken on the daunting task of analyzing the conflict. In this compilation of ten essays, historians from Canada, the United States, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay address its many tragic complexities. Each scholar examines a particular facet of the war, including military mobilization, home-front activities, the war?s effects on political culture, war photography, draft resistance, race issues, state formation, and the role of women in the war. The editors? introduction provides a balance to the many perspectives collected here while simultaneously integrating them into a comprehensible whole, thus making the book a compelling read for social historians and military buffs alike.

In Colonial Kinship: Guaraní, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay, historian Shawn Michael Austin traces the history of conquest and colonization in Paraguay during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Emphasizing the social and cultural agency of Guaraní—one of the primary indigenous peoples of Paraguay—not only in Jesuit missions but also in colonial settlements and Indian pueblos scattered in and around the Spanish city of Asunción, Austin argues that interethnic relations and cultural change in Paraguay can only be properly understood through the Guaraní logic of kinship. In the colonial backwater of Paraguay, conquistadors were forced to marry into Guaraní families in order to acquire indigenous tributaries, thereby becoming “brothers-in-law” (tovajá) to Guaraní chieftains. This pattern of interethnic exchange infused colonial relations and institutions with Guaraní social meanings and expectations of reciprocity that forever changed Spaniards, African slaves, and their descendants. Austin demonstrates that Guaraní of diverse social and political positions actively shaped colonial society along indigenous lines.

Hemmed in by the vast, arid Chaco to the west and, for most of its history, impenetrable jungles to the east, Paraguay has been defined largely by its isolation. Partly as a result, there has been a dearth of serious scholarship or journalism about the country. Going a long way toward redressing this lack of information and analysis, The Paraguay Reader is a lively compilation of testimonies, journalism, scholarship, political tracts, literature, and illustrations, including maps, photographs, paintings, drawings, and advertisements. Taken together, the anthology's many selections convey the country's extraordinarily rich history and cultural heritage, as well as the realities of its struggles against underdevelopment, foreign intervention, poverty, inequality, and authoritarianism. Most of the Reader is arranged chronologically. Weighted toward the twentieth century and early twenty-first, it nevertheless gives due attention to major events in Paraguay's history, such as the Triple Alliance War (1864–70) and the Chaco War (1932–35). The Reader's final section, focused on national identity and culture, addresses matters including ethnicity, language, and gender. Most of the selections are by Paraguayans, and many of the pieces appear in English for the first time. Helpful introductions by the editors precede each of the book's sections and all of the selected texts.

In 1932 Bolivia and Paraguay went to war over the Chaco region in South America. The war lasted three years and approximately 52,000 Bolivians and Paraguayans died. Moving beyond the battlefields of the Chaco War, this volume highlights the forgotten narratives of the war. Studying the environmental, ethnic, and social realities of the war in both Bolivia and Paraguay, the contributors examine the conflict that took place between 1932 and 1936 and explore its relationship with and impact on nationalism, activism and modernity. Beginning with an overview of the war, the book goes on to explore many new approaches to the conflict, and the contributors address topics such as the environmental challenges faced by the forces involved, the role of indigenous peoples, the impact of oil nationalism and the conflict's aftermath. This is a volume that will be of interest to anyone working on modern Latin America and the relationship between war and society.

Weep, Grey Bird, Weep is the story of the most extraordinary love story of the 19th century, set against the background of the most disastrous war ever fought. The war saw the tiny republic of Paraguay fighting against the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. By the time the war ended, in March 1870, Paraguay's population had been reduced by more than half, and 80 per cent of the male population had been killed. Paraguay's leader in this war was Francisco Solano Lopez and by his side was his devoted lover, a girl from Ireland called Eliza Lynch. He was killed on the last day of the war and she buried him and their eldest son, who died trying to protect her, with her bare hands.