Paraguayan War

Territorial disputes Since their independence from Portugal and Spain in the early 19th century, the Empire of Brazil and the Spanish-American countries of South America were troubled by territorial disputes. Each nation in this region had boundary conflicts with multiple neighbors. Most had overlapping claims to the same territories, due to unresolved questions which stemmed from their former metropoles. Signed by Portugal and Spain in 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas proved ineffective in the following centuries, as both colonial powers expanded their frontiers in South America and elsewhere. The outdated boundary lines did not represent the actual occupation of lands by the Portuguese and Spanish. By the early 1700s, the Treaty of Tordesillas was deemed not useful, and it was clear to both parties that a newer treaty had to be drawn based on feasible boundaries. In 1750, the Treaty of Madrid separated the Portuguese and Spanish areas of South America in lines that mostly corresponded to present-day boundaries. Neither Portugal nor Spain was satisfied with the results, and new treaties were signed in the following decades that either established new territorial lines or repealed them. The final accord signed by both powers, the 1801 Treaty of Badajoz, reaffirmed the validity of the previous Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777), which had derived from the earlier Treaty of Madrid. The territorial disputes became worse when the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata collapsed in the early 1810s, leading to the rise of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay. Historian Pelham Horton Box wrote: "Imperial Spain bequeathed to the emancipated Spanish-American nations not only her own frontier disputes with Portuguese Brazil but problems which had not disturbed her, relating to the exact boundaries of her own viceroyalties, captaincies general, audiencias and provinces." Once separated the three countries quarreled over lands that were mostly uncharted or unknown. They were either sparsely populated or settled by indigenous tribes that answered to no parties. In the case of Paraguay and Brazil, the problem was to define whether the Apa or Branco rivers should represent their actual boundary, a persistent issue that had confused Spain and Portugal in the late 18th century. A few indigenous tribes populated the region between the two rivers, and these tribes would attack Brazilian and Paraguayan settlements that were local to them. Political situation before the war There are several theories regarding the origins of the war. The traditional view emphasizes that the policies of Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López used the Uruguayan War as a pretext to gain control of the Platine basin. That caused a response from the regional hegemons, Brazil and Argentina, both of which exercised influence over the much smaller republics of Uruguay and Paraguay. The war has also been attributed to the aftermath of colonialism in South America with border conflicts between the new states, the struggle for power among neighboring nations over the strategic Río de la Plata region, Brazilian and Argentine meddling in internal Uruguayan politics (which had already caused the Platine War), Solano López's efforts to help his allies in Uruguay (which had been defeated by the Brazilians), and his presumed expansionist ambitions. A strong military was developed because Paraguay's larger neighbors, Argentina and Brazil, had territorial claims against it and wanted to dominate it politically, much as both had already done in Uruguay. Paraguay had recurring boundary disputes and tariff issues with Argentina and Brazil for many years during the rule of Solano López's predecessor and father, Carlos Antonio López. Regional tension In the time since Brazil and Argentina had become independent, their struggle for hegemony in the Río de la Plata region had profoundly marked the diplomatic and political relations among the countries of the region. Brazil was the first country to recognize the independence of Paraguay, in 1844. At this time Argentina still considered it a breakaway province. While Argentina was ruled by Juan Manuel Rosas (1829–1852), a common enemy of both Brazil and Paraguay, Brazil contributed to the improvement of the fortifications and development of the Paraguayan army, sending officials and technical help to Asunción. As no roads linked the inland province of Mato Grosso to Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian ships needed to travel through Paraguayan territory, going up the Paraguay River to arrive at Cuiabá. However, Brazil had difficulty obtaining permission from the government in Asunción to freely use the Paraguay River for its shipping needs. Uruguayan prelude Brazil had carried out three political and military interventions in the politically unstable Uruguay: • in 1851 against Manuel Oribe in order to fight Argentine influence in the country and to end the Great Siege of Montevideo; • in 1855, at the request of the Uruguayan government and Venancio Flores, leader of the Colorado Party, which was traditionally supported by the Brazilian Empire; • in 1864, against Atanasio Aguirre. This last intervention would lead to the Paraguayan War. On 19 April 1863, Uruguayan general Venancio Flores, who was then an officer in the Argentine army as well as the leader of the Colorado Party of Uruguay, invaded Uruguay, starting the Cruzada Libertadora with the covert support of Argentina, which supplied the rebels with arms, ammunition and 2,000 men. Flores wanted to overthrow the Blanco Party government of president Bernardo Berro, which was allied with Paraguay. ==Opposing forces==

Paraguay Paraguay began the war with over 60,000 trained men—38,000 of whom were already under arms—400 cannons, a naval squadron of 23 steamboats and five river-navigating ships (among them, the gunboat Tacuarí). Communication in the Río de la Plata basin was maintained solely by river, as very few roads existed. Whoever controlled the rivers would win the war, so Paraguay had built fortifications on the banks of the lower end of the Paraguay River. Brazil and its allies At the beginning of the war, the military forces of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay were far smaller than Paraguay's. Argentina had approximately 8,500 regular troops and a naval squadron of four steamers and one schooner. Uruguay entered the war with fewer than 2,000 men and no navy. Many of Brazil's 16,000 troops were located in its southern garrisons. The Brazilian advantage, though, was in its navy, comprising 45 ships with 239 cannons and about 4,000 well-trained crew. A great part of the squadron was already in the Rio de la Plata basin, where it had acted under the Marquis of Tamandaré in the intervention against Aguirre's government. Brazil, however, was unprepared to fight a war. Its army was disorganized. The troops it used in Uruguay were mostly armed contingents of gauchos and the National Guard. While some Brazilian accounts of the war described their infantry as volunteers (Voluntários da Pátria), other Argentine revisionist and Paraguayan accounts disparaged the Brazilian infantry as mainly recruited from slaves and the landless (largely black) underclass, who were promised free land for enlisting. The cavalry was formed from the National Guard of Rio Grande do Sul. Ultimately, a total of about 146,000 Brazilians fought in the war from 1864 to 1870, consisting of the 10,025 army soldiers stationed in Uruguayan territory in 1864, 2,047 that were in the province of Mato Grosso, 55,985 Fatherland Volunteers, 60,009 National Guardsmen, 8,570 ex-slaves who had been freed to be sent to war, and 9,177 navy personnel. Another 18,000 National Guard troops stayed behind to defend Brazilian territory. ==Course of the war==

Paraguayan offensive In Mato Grosso (''L'Illustration'', 1866) Paraguay took the initiative during the first phase of the war, launching the Mato Grosso campaign by invading the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso on 14 December 1864, after its captured by the allies The combined Brazilian, Argentine, and Uruguayan army continued advancing north through hostile territory to surround Humaitá. The Allied force advanced to San Solano on the 29th and Tayi on 2 November, isolating Humaitá from Asunción. Before dawn on 3 November, Solano López reacted by ordering the attack on the rearguard of the allies in the Second Battle of Tuyutí. By December 1867, there were 45,791 Brazilians, 6,000 Argentines and 500 Uruguayans at the front. After the death of Argentine vice president Marcos Paz, Mitre relinquished his position for the second and final time on 14 January 1868. Allied representatives in Buenos Aires abolished the position of Allied commander-in-chief on 3 October, although the Marquess of Caxias continued to fill the role of Brazilian supreme commander. On 19 February, Brazilian ironclads successfully made a passage up the Paraguay River under heavy fire, gaining full control of the river and isolating Humaitá from resupply by water. Humaitá fell on 25 July 1868, after a long siege. Fall of Asunción En route to Asunción, the Allied army went north to Palmas, stopping at the Piquissiri River. There Solano López had concentrated 12,000 Paraguayans in a fortified line that exploited the terrain and supported the forts of Angostura and Itá-Ibaté. Resigned to frontal combat, Caxias ordered the so-called Pikysyry maneuver, which would lend its name to this phase of the fighting, the Pikysyry campaign. While a squadron attacked Angostura, Caxias made the army cross to the west side of the river. He ordered the construction of a road in the swamps of the Gran Chaco along which the troops advanced to the northeast. At Villeta the army crossed the river again, between Asunción and Piquissiri, behind the fortified Paraguayan line. in 1869|leftInstead of advancing to the capital, already evacuated and bombarded, Caxias went south and attacked the Paraguayans from the rear in December 1868, in an offensive which became known as "Dezembrada". Very soon the city hosted about 30,000 Allied soldiers; for the next few months these looted almost every building, including diplomatic missions of European nations. After a successful beginning which included victories over the remnants of Solano López's army, the Count fell into depression and Paranhos became the unacknowledged, de facto commander-in-chief. Death of Solano López (second from right, standing), responsible for killing Solano López President Solano López organized the resistance in the mountain range northeast of Asunción. At the end of the war, with Paraguay suffering severe shortages of weapons and supplies, Solano López reacted with draconian attempts to keep order, ordering troops to kill any of their colleagues, including officers, who talked of surrender. Paranoia prevailed in the army, and soldiers fought to the bitter end in a resistance movement, resulting in more destruction in the country. Two detachments were sent in pursuit of Solano López, who was accompanied by 200 men in the forests in the north. On 1 March 1870, the troops of General José Antônio Correia da Câmara surprised the last Paraguayan camp in Cerro Corá. During the ensuing battle, Solano López was wounded and separated from the remainder of his army. Too weak to walk, he was escorted by his aide and a pair of officers, who led him to the banks of the Aquidaban-nigui River. The officers left Solano López and his aide there while they looked for reinforcements. Before they returned, Câmara arrived with a small number of soldiers. Though he offered to permit Solano López to surrender and guaranteed his life, Solano López refused. Shouting "I die with my homeland!", he tried to attack Câmara with his sword. He was quickly killed by Câmara's men, bringing an end to the long conflict in 1870. List of battles ==Casualties of the war==

, July 1866 (Bate & Co. W., albumen print, 11 x 18 cm, 1866; Museo Mitre, Buenos Aires) Paraguay suffered massive casualties, and the war's disruption and disease also cost civilian lives. Some historians estimate that the nation lost the majority of its population. The specific numbers are hotly disputed and range widely. A survey of 14 estimates of Paraguay's pre-war population varied between 300,000 and 1,337,000. Later academic work based on demographics produced a wide range of estimates, from a possible low of 21,000 (7% of population) (Reber, 1988) to as high as 69% of the total prewar population (Whigham, Potthast, 1999). Because of the local situation, all casualty figures are a very rough estimate; accurate casualty numbers may never be determined. After the war, an 1871 census recorded 221,079 inhabitants, of which 106,254 were women, 28,746 were men, and 86,079 were children (with no indication of sex or upper age limit). The worst reports are that up to 90% of the male population was killed, though this figure is without support. One estimate places total Paraguayan losses—through both war and disease—as high as 1.2 million people, or 90% of its pre-war population, but modern scholarship has shown that this number depends on a population census of 1857 that was a government invention. A different estimate places Paraguayan deaths at approximately 300,000 people out of 500,000 to 525,000 pre-war inhabitants. During the war, many men and boys fled to the countryside and forests. In the estimation of Vera Blinn Reber, however, "The evidence demonstrates that the Paraguayan population casualties due to the war have been enormously exaggerated". A 1999 study by Thomas Whigham from the University of Georgia and Barbara Potthast (published in the Latin American Research Review under the title "The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone: New Evidence on the Demographics of the Paraguayan War, 1864–1870", and later expanded in the 2002 essay titled "Refining the Numbers: A Response to Reber and Kleinpenning") used a methodology to yield more accurate figures. To establish the population before the war, Whigham used an 1846 census and calculated, based on a population growth rate of 1.7% to 2.5% annually (which was the standard rate at that time), that the immediately pre-war Paraguayan population in 1864 was approximately 420,000–450,000. Based on a census carried out after the war ended, in 1870–1871, Whigham concluded that 150,000–160,000 Paraguayan people had survived, of whom only 28,000 were adult males. In total, 60–70% of the population died as a result of the war, For academic criticism of the Whigham-Potthast methodology and estimates see the main article Paraguayan War casualties. Steven Pinker wrote that, assuming a death rate of over 60% of the Paraguayan population, this war was proportionally one of the most destructive in modern times for any nation state. Allied losses As was common before antibiotics were developed, disease caused more deaths than war wounds. Bad food and poor sanitation contributed to disease among troops and civilians. Among the Brazilians, two-thirds of the dead died either in a hospital or on the march. At the beginning of the conflict, most Brazilian soldiers came from the north and northeast regions; the change from a hot to a colder climate, combined with restricted food rations, may have weakened their resistance. Entire battalions of Brazilians were recorded as dying after drinking water from rivers. Therefore, some historians believe cholera, transmitted in the water, was a leading cause of death during the war. ==Women and ethnic aspects==

Women in the Paraguayan War enlisted in the Brazilian Voluntários da Pátria disguised as a man. On her sex being discovered she was fêted as a patriot and used in a recruitment drive, though formally denied a combatant role. Paraguayan women played a significant role in the Paraguayan War. During the period just before the war began many Paraguayan women were the heads of their households, meaning they held a position of power and authority. They received such positions by being widows, having children out of wedlock, or their husbands having worked as peons. When the war began women started to venture out of the home, becoming nurses, working with government officials, and establishing themselves into the public sphere. When The New York Times reported on the war in 1868, it considered Paraguayan women equal to their male counterparts. The support of the Paraguayan women to the war effort can be divided into two stages. The first is from the time the war began in 1864 to the Paraguayan evacuation of Asunción in late 1868. During this period of the war, peasant women became practically the sole producers of agricultural goods. From the conflict's outbreak, women also served the military in an auxiliary capacity. In addition to being nurses in military hospitals (which became increasingly valuable during the war's later stages during cholera outbreaks), those from the countryside would accompany Paraguayan army divisions in separate groups. These attachments were composed of volunteers who by extension were unpaid and not provided rations for (they had to share the food and supplies the enlisted men were provided). Regardless, they served supportive duties such as wagoning supplies, tending to casualties, digging trenches, maintaining discipline and order at camps, and acting as messengers to Asunción by reporting on the latest frontline happenings. Following the Paraguayan navy's defeat by Brazil's in June 1865, effectively depriving the country of any overseas trade, the Paraguayan government ordered and organized women to harvest and weave textiles, including standardized military uniforms, miscellaneous clothing, and cots for military hospitals. Assessing Paraguayan women's contributions to the war accurately is difficult due to their not acting as regulars in Paraguay's armed forces exacerbating lacking historical records from the conflict's closing years. Most probably (as had been the case in the prior stage of the war) the role of women was a non-combative, supportive one. Paraguayan indigenous people Prior to the war, indigenous people occupied very little space in the minds of the Paraguayan elite. Paraguayan president Carlos Antonio López even modified the country's constitution in 1844 to remove any mention of Paraguay's Hispano-Guarani character. This marginalization was undercut by the fact that Paraguay had long prized its military as its only honorable and national institution and the majority of the Paraguayan military was indigenous and spoke Guarani. However, during the war, the indigenous people of Paraguay came to occupy an even larger role in public life, especially after the Battle of Estero Bellaco. For this battle, Paraguay put its "best" men, who happened to be of Spanish descent, front and center. Paraguay overwhelmingly lost this battle, as well as "the males of all the best families in the country." The now remaining members of the military were "old men who had been left in Humaita, Indians, slaves and boys." For most of these women, the principal reason they became vivandeiras was because their male loved ones had joined as soldiers, and they wanted to take care of them. However, the Brazilian government actively worked to minimize the importance of their work by labeling it "service to their male kin, not the nation" and considering it to be "natural" and "habitual." The reality was that the government depended heavily on these women and officially required their presence in the camps. Poor Afro-Brazilian women also served as nurses, with most of them being trained upon entry into the military to assist male doctors in the camps. These women were "seeking gainful employment to compensate for the loss of income from male kin who had been drafted into the war." ==Territorial changes and treaties==

Paraguay permanently lost its claim to territories which, before the war, were in dispute between it and Brazil or Argentina, respectively. In total, about were affected. Those disputes had been longstanding and complex. Disputes with Brazil In colonial times certain lands lying to the north of the River Apa were in dispute between the Portuguese Empire and the Spanish Empire. After independence they continued to be disputed between the Empire of Brazil and the Republic of Paraguay. After the war Brazil signed a separate Loizaga–Cotegipe Treaty of peace and borders with Paraguay on 9 January 1872, in which it obtained freedom of navigation on the Paraguay River. Brazil also retained the northern regions it had claimed before the war. Those regions are now part of its State of Mato Grosso do Sul. Disputes with Argentina Misiones In colonial times the missionary Jesuits established numerous villages in lands between the rivers Paraná and Uruguay. After the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish territory in 1767, the ecclesiastical authorities of both Asunción and Buenos Aires made claim to religious jurisdiction in these lands and the Spanish government sometimes awarded it to one side, sometimes to the other; sometimes they split the difference. After independence, the Republic of Paraguay and the Argentine Confederation succeeded to these disputes. On 19 July 1852, the governments of the Argentine Confederation and Paraguay signed a treaty, by which Paraguay relinquished its claim to the Misiones. However, this treaty did not become binding, because it required to be ratified by the Argentine Congress, which refused. Paraguay's claim was still alive on the eve of the war. After the war the disputed lands definitively became the Argentine national territory of Misiones, now Misiones Province. Gran Chaco The Gran Chaco is an area lying to the west of the River Paraguay. Before the war it was "an enormous plain covered by swamps, chaparral and thorn forests ... home to many groups of feared Indians, including the Guaicurú, Toba and Mocoví." There had long been overlapping claims to all or parts of this area by the Argentine Confederation, Bolivia and Paraguay. With some exceptions, these were paper claims, because none of those countries was in effective occupation of the area: essentially, they were claims to be the true successor to the Spanish Empire, in an area never effectively occupied by Spain itself, and wherein Spain had no particular motive for prescribing internal boundaries. The exceptions were as follows. First, to defend itself against Indian incursions, both in colonial times and after, the authorities in Asunción had established some border forts on the west bank of the river Paraguay—a coastal strip within the Chaco. By the same treaty of 19 July 1852, between Paraguay and the Argentine Confederation, an undefined area in the Chaco north of the Bermejo River was implicitly conceded to belong to Paraguay. As already stated, the Argentine Congress refused to ratify this treaty; and it was protested by the government of Bolivia as inimical to its own claims. The second exception was that in 1854, the government of Carlos Antonio López established a colony of French immigrants on the right bank of the River Paraguay at Nueva Burdeos; when it failed, it was renamed Villa Occidental. After 1852, and more especially after the State of Buenos Aires rejoined the Argentine Confederation, Argentina's claim to the Chaco hardened; it claimed territory all the way up to the border with Bolivia. By Article XVI of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance Argentina was to receive this territory in full. However, the Brazilian government disliked what its representative in Buenos Aires had negotiated in this respect and resolved that Argentina should not receive "a handsbreadth of territory" above the Pilcomayo River. It set out to frustrate Argentina's further claim, with eventual success. The post-war border between Paraguay and Argentina was resolved through long negotiations, completed 3 February 1876, by signing the Machaín-Irigoyen Treaty. This treaty granted Argentina roughly one third of the area it had originally desired. Argentina became the strongest of the River Plate countries. When the two parties could not reach consensus on the fate of the Chaco Boreal area between the Río Verde and the main branch of Río Pilcomayo, the President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, was asked to arbitrate. His award was in Paraguay's favor. The Paraguayan Presidente Hayes Department is named in his honor. ==Consequences of the war==

Paraguay There was a destruction of the prewar state structure, a definitive loss of disputed border territories, and the ruin of Paraguay's economy. The war also cost Paraguay almost all the territory it disputed with Argentina and Brazil—approximately 30 percent of the land over which it had claimed sovereignty before the conflict —and, since the occupying forces had no interest in conquering or rebuilding the country, Paraguay suffered the destruction of defenses such as Humaitá and industries such as the Ybycuí foundry. It is estimated that Paraguay lost up to 69% of its population, most of them due to disease, hunger, and exhaustion, including as much as 90% of its male population according to the most extreme reports. The country also retained a large war debt to the Allied nations which, unpaid in full, was finally forgiven in 1943 by Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas. A pro-Brazilian government was installed in Asunción in 1869, while Paraguay remained occupied by Brazilian and Argentine forces until 1876, when a border treaty between Paraguay and Argentina was concluded with U.S. arbitration, guaranteeing Paraguay's sovereignty and leaving it as a buffer state between its larger neighbors. Brazil The War helped the Brazilian Empire to reach its peak of political and military influence, becoming the Great Power of South America, and also helped to bring about the end of slavery in Brazil, moving the military into a key role in the public sphere. However, the war caused a ruinous increase of public debt, which took decades to pay off, severely limiting the country's growth. The war debt, alongside a long-lasting social crisis after the conflict, are regarded as crucial factors for the fall of the Empire and proclamation of the First Brazilian Republic. During the war the Brazilian army took complete control of Paraguayan territory and occupied the country for six years after 1870. In part this was to prevent the annexation of even more territory by Argentina, which had wanted to seize the entire Chaco region. During this time, Brazil and Argentina had strong tensions, with the threat of armed conflict between them. During the wartime sacking of Asunción, Brazilian soldiers carried off war trophies. Among the spoils taken was a large caliber gun called Cristiano, named because it was cast from church bells of Asunción melted down for the war. In Brazil the war exposed the fragility of the Empire and dissociated the monarchy from the army. The Brazilian army became a new and influential force in national life. It developed as a strong national institution that, with the war, gained tradition and internal cohesion. The Army would take a significant role in the later development of the history of the country. The economic depression and the strengthening of the army later played a large role in the deposition of the emperor Pedro II and the republican proclamation in 1889. Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca became the first Brazilian president. As in other countries, "wartime recruitment of slaves in the Americas rarely implied a complete rejection of slavery and usually acknowledged masters' rights over their property." Brazil spent close to 614,000 réis (the Brazilian currency at the time), which were gained from the following sources: Due to the war, Brazil ran a deficit between 1870 and 1880, which was finally paid off. At the time foreign loans were not significant sources of funds. Argentina Following the war, Argentina faced many federalist revolts against the national government. Economically it benefited from having sold supplies to the Brazilian army, but the war overall decreased the national treasure. The national action contributed to the consolidation of the centralized government after revolutions were put down, and the growth in influence of Army leadership. It has been argued the conflict played a key role in the consolidation of Argentina as a nation-state. That country became one of the wealthiest in the world, by the early 20th century. It was the last time that Brazil and Argentina openly took such an interventionist role in Uruguay's internal politics. By the account of historian Mateo Martinic the war put a temporary hold on Argentine plans to challenge the Chilean occupation of the Strait of Magellan. Uruguay Uruguay suffered lesser effects, although nearly 5,000 soldiers were killed. As a consequence of the war, the Colorados gained political control of Uruguay and, despite rebellions, retained it until 1958. ==Modern interpretations of the war==

Interpretation of the causes of the war and its aftermath has been a controversial topic in the histories of participating countries, especially in Paraguay. There it has been considered either a fearless struggle for the rights of a smaller nation against the aggression of more powerful neighbors, or a foolish attempt to fight an unwinnable war that almost destroyed the nation. Several revisionist historians consider the mass extermination of the Paraguayan people during the war to be a case of genocide. In 2022, the Mercosur Parliament formed the Sub-Commission for Truth and Justice on the War of the Triple Alliance, within its Human Rights Commission, to investigate the potential crimes (including genocide) committed during the war and then arrive at a "consensual truth" on the matter within the parliament. In December 1975, after presidents Ernesto Geisel of Brazil and Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay signed a treaty of friendship and co-operation in Asunción, the Brazilian government returned some of its spoils of war to Paraguay but has kept others. In April 2013 Paraguay renewed demands for the return of the "Christian" cannon. Brazil has had this on display at the former military garrison, now used as the National History Museum, and says that it is part of its history as well. Theories about British influence on the outbreak of war A popular belief among Paraguayans and Argentine revisionists since the 1960s contends that the outbreak of war was due to the machinations of the British government, a theory which historians have noted has little to no basis in historical evidence. In Brazil, some have claimed that the United Kingdom was the primary source of financing for the Triple Alliance during the war, with British aid being given in order to advance Britain's economic interests in the region; something, which historians have noted, has little evidence to support it as well; noting that from 1863 to 1865 Brazil and Great Britain were engaged in a diplomatic incident, and five months after the outbreak of the Paraguayan war the two countries temporarily broke off relations. They have also noted that in 1864, a British diplomat wrote a letter to Solano López asking him to avoid initiating hostilities in the region, and there remains no evidence that Britain "forced" the allies to attack Paraguay. Some left-wing historians of the 1960s and 1970s (most notably Eric Hobsbawm in his work "The Age of Capital: 1848–1875") claimed that the Paraguayan War broke out as a result of British influence on the continent, claiming that as Britain needed a new source of cotton during the American Civil War (as the blockaded American South had been their main cotton supplier before the war). Right wing and even far-right wing historians, especially from Argentina and Paraguay, have also claimed that British influence was a major reason for the outbreak of war. Noteworthy is the fact that both the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and the Great Russian Encyclopedia, considered as official sources of the USSR and the Russian Federation respectively, also claim that the British Empire had much to do for sustaining the war effort and finances of the "Triple Alliance" against Paraguay. A document which has been used to support this claim is a letter from Edward Thornton (Minister of Great Britain in the Plate Basin) to British Prime Minister Lord John Russell, which contained the following statement: Charles Washburn, who was the Minister of the United States to Paraguay and Argentina, claimed that Thornton spoke of Paraguay, months before the outbreak of the conflict, as: However, historian E.N. Tate noted that: Other historians have also disputed the claims of British influence in the outbreak of war, pointing out that there is no documented evidence for it. ==Effects on yerba mate industry==

Since colonial times, yerba mate had been a major cash crop for Paraguay. Until the war, it had generated significant revenues for the country. The war caused a sharp drop in harvesting of yerba mate in Paraguay, reportedly by as much as 95% between 1865 and 1867. Soldiers from all sides used yerba mate to diminish hunger pangs and alleviate combat anxiety. Foreign entrepreneurs entered the Paraguayan market and took control of its remaining yerba mate production and industry. ==Notes==