The war of Triple Alliance opposed 1865 with 1870 a coalition of three countries (Brésil, Argentine and Uruguay) to the Paraguay. There are two interpretations different from this conflict. Paraguayan historians, as well as " révisionnistes" Argentinian and some Brazilian, affirms that the objective of the war was the destruction of the power Industrie lle incipient from Paraguay, which attracted the British investments and diverted them, partly, other countries. In addition, the most recent research led to Brazil, especially by the historian Francisco Doratioto, and Americans, charges the responsibility for the conflict to the dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano Lopez.

About 1864, the Empire of Brazil had succeeded in drawing up reports/ratios of alliance with the governments of Argentina and Uruguay, two countries which had been subjected to long internal conflicts, unlike Brazil and of Paraguay. The government of Rosas had drawn aside in Argentina and after a few years Bartolomé Miter, an ally of Brazil, became president of recent Argentinian Confédération. In Uruguay, the forces of presidents Oribe and Berro had been defeats by the coalition of Brazilian and their Argentins allies. From the point of view of Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, it was peace. From the point of view of Asunción, it was a threat for their country, at the time independent, rather autarkical out of economic material and full rise, following the governments of Dr. Francia and of Carlos Lopez. With the fact, there existed a kind of " informellement; third voie" in the area, connecting Paraguay to Uruguay by the provinces, Argentinas but still almost independent in fact, among Rios and of Corrientes. Brazil and Argentina seemed laid out to put up with a working arrangement according to which Rio renonçait to annex Uruguay (which had belonged to the Spanish Viceroyalty of Plata and that the Argentinian ones coveted, but had been under the Portuguese supervision, then Brazilian, during about fifteen years), and Buenos Aires agreed not to try to be attached Paraguay, from which it had been long much in recognizing independence. But the apprehensions of Paraguay, in front of the rise with the capacity in the two other countries of Spanish language of friendly politicians of Brazil, could be justified.

Immediate antecedents

The president of the Uruguay lets make continual Uruguyan incursions in Brazilian territory; he calls upon the arbitration of Francisco Solano López, the president of the Paraguay. This one, impressed by a noise which would run according to which the Argentine and the Brésil were to be intended to absorb the first Paraguay and the second Uruguay, gives his total support to Montevideo. The Brazilian army invades Uruguay, while the fleet blocks the ports. The Uruguyan president is replaced by an adversary which recognizes the founded good of the Brazilian complaints.

The war

Lopez reacts, firm the Paraguay river with the Brazilian traffic and makes take a Brazilian ship which transported the president of the Mato Grosso in its province. It breaks the diplomatic relations with Brazil. It also invades the province of Mato Grosso. It is possible that its great fault was to cross, without the agreement of Buenos Aires or at least of the provinces concerned, part of the Argentinian territory the November 12th 1864, with an aim of maintaining the contact with its Uruguyan allies, which had just been demolished in the civil war.

Interpretations and controversy

For Paraguay, it was true catastrophe, which some compare with a war of extermination. It was completed by a total rout of the Paraguay, and a demographic catastrophe for this country, which lost most of its inhabitants, some quantifying it to two thirds, especially male sex, passing from 525  000 inhabitants before the war with 221  000 in 1871, of which only 28  000 men. The revisionists also affirm that it lost until 140  000 km ² of its territory, annexed by Brazil and Argentina, which occupied moreover the country until in 1876.

This interpretation butts however against major problems. First is that the military attack which started the war was the work of Francisco Solano López - which found death at the end of the conflict in 1870 - and which it caused itself the alliance of the two powerful neighbors, which would end up destroying it. Second is that the borders of the three countries which made border between them - Argentinian, Brésil and Paraguay - were very vague, especially in the forest, which the first of them had of national unit only since one ten years, and which the two large winners of the conflict affirm not to have annexed no territory which was not already asserted by them. The last problem relates to the character of Solano Lopez itself, which did not hesitate to make kill his/her brother, to subject his/her two sisters to torture and to inflict ill treatments with his/her own mother after being driven out of Asunción, in 1869. He is regarded as a national hero in Paraguay and is also by the Argentinian revisionists, while in Brazil and by other historians he is seen like a dictator mislaid by his ambition.

To see

Alfredro de Taunay, the Retirement of Laguna , Phébus Editions, Paris, 1995.

Alfredo de Taunay (1843 - 1899) is a Brazilian officer of old French stock. He recalls in his book, written in French, the retirement of a Brazilian column decimated by the Paraguayan forces and the fevers through the hell of Mato Grosso . An excellent work, a very beautiful writing on behalf of the Brazilian Xénophon.

Random links:

Theology of the Process | List races asines of France | Michel Frédérick | Ethnic quota | Bonotsu