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Radio War Nerd EP #174 — War of the Triple Alliance (Patreon)

Published:
2019-03-27 03:54:32
Edited:
2019-03-29 15:57:55
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Guest: Thomas Whigham, author & professor 

Recorded: March 22, 2019

Also known as the "Paraguayan War"—the War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860s was the bloodiest war in South America, and ended with the near total-extermination of Paraguay's adult male population. It remains an all too obscure war, one that this show has discussed in the past and that the War Nerd has written about. This episode, we're joined by one of the very few English-language historians of that war, Thomas Whigham, who wrote a fantastic two-volume history of the war that we discuss in this episode.

At 1:47:30 the Nerd and Ames discuss Washington's official support of Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights . . . UAE despot proposed to Pompeo assassinating Taliban peace negotiators . . . more Pentagon corruption, even in their war games . . . 

Buy Thomas Whigham's books — "The Paraguayan War: Causes and Early Conduct" and "The Road to Armageddon: Paraguay Versus the Triple Alliance, 1866-70" . 

Maps & Images

*Map of the Paraguayan War

*Map of South America ~1870

*Paraguayan dead on battlefield

Total time: 2:24:47

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

xnfec

I thought that was really good and the professor covered it pretty thoroughly. I liked how he took over the talk and that you let him. Solano-Lopez had an Irish wife who was not mentioned. What happened to her? The siege of Canudos in Brazil (Late victorian holocausts) would be a good topic for a show. The Blanco-Colorado fights in Uruguay went on until 1904 and ended with the death of the Blanco leader Aparicio Saravia (who was from the region bordering Brazil and died from his wounds, seeking refuge there). I think they tended to take on the character of the periods in which they were fought in the begining. For example, in the 1850's siege of Montevideo, the Blancos were allied to the Argentine Caudillo Rosas while the Colorados were allied with his Federalist enemy, Urquiza. At the time of the siege you could have argued that the Blancos were landowners and the Colarados were urban and they might have represented the Conservative/Liberal divide which characterised other countries in Central/South America. Later on though, the differences became less clear and by 1904 the fights were likely, purely internal.

xnfec

I emailed the professor with a query and he came back with a very good reply which he has kindly given me permission to post: My email: Hi Professor I am writing to let you know how much I enjoyed your interview with Radio War Nerd. Your coverage was very thorough and easy to follow. I have a personal interest in this as my great-great grandfather fought in the war, at least in the early stages, at Uruguaigana as part of the Uruguayan army. Although it shows at the bottom of the map, it has always surprised me how far south the Paraguayans got. I actually went to Uruguaiana in the 70's before I knew of the family connection - we did it in a day trip from Paysandu. You are right about the distinctions between the Uruguayan Colorados and Blancos being blurred. My ancestor was a Colorado and fought in the siege of Montevideo where it probably looked like the Blancos were landowners following Rosas and the Colorados were classic urban liberals, yet later on, he became a landowner and settled in the middle of Blanco country. When I was last there, many years ago, my family got on really well with the neighbours who were all Blanco (though they never discussed politics). You could still find the odd bullet hole in the walls of the old house though. I've always wondered how the Paraguayans managed to rebuild. Is there a distinction between the descendants of the surviving, original Paraguayans, and, presumably, the newcomers who came afterwards. A lot of them must have been european immigrants I guess (Stroessner for example?). I guess the birth rate must have gone through the roof in the aftermath? His reply: The best way to understand the Uruguayan part of the war is that for the Orientales, it was a Colorado war, and the troops that went north to fight in Paraguay proper were either Colorados or war-prisoners that the latter had taken early in the conflict and were now being used against their own Paraguayan countrymen. This is a story that neither the Uruguayans nor the Paraguayans like to admit, so it tends to get buried, but insofar as the Uruguayan units in the Allied armies were concerned there was never much patriotism involved and by the end of 1869, there were almost no Uruguayans left in the Batallon Florida, for instance. And since having served against Paraguay meant that those Paraguayans who had done so would have no future in the country of their birth, most went to Montevideo, took out Oriental citizenship, and then served as shock-troops in the Rebelion de las Lanzas in the 1870s. They intermarried with local girls and pretty much get lost in history. You can put together a bit of their story by looking at the documents of the veterans' association (the Centro de Guerreros del Paraguay), which are now to be found in National Historical Archive in the Casa de Lavalleja in Montevideo. Also, there were Blancos who fought on the Paraguayan side. Some of their testimony can be found in the Zeballos Collection at the Paraguayan Defense Ministry's archive on Avenida Mariscal Lopez. One of those Blancos was a fellow named Salvanach, a Basque, who evidently went back to Uruguay and again, fought in that Lanzas war. BTW, best day to day source on the Uruguayans in the Triple Alliance conflict is Palleja's diary (which deserves to be translated into English and never has been). As to how the Paraguayans "recovered," well, the first thing to remember is that Argentina and Brazil were too jealous of each other to annex the country outright, so Paraguay bumped along into the 20th century as an independent entity. It takes over a generation to recover from large population displacements, but it does happen on its own without too many modifications in the birthrate or strange, harem-like arrangements (Yugoslavia after WW1 illustrates the point). And yes, Paraguay, like Argentina, Uruguay, and Rio Grande do Sul, was the recipient of considerable outside immigration. I suppose if you were an immigrant coming from southern Europe in 1900, however, the best option to move up in the world would be to give Paraguay a pass and stay in Buenos Aires (or even go to Canada or Australia). Of course, people rarely think in terms of long-term potential, which explains why so many immigrants headed north to participate in Paraguay in the quebracho and petitgraine oil industries, both of which flat-lined by the third decade of the new century. To hear the Paraguayans tell it, they never DID recover from the war, but we shouldn't forget that that's a major part of the national mythology, which stresses sacrifice over demographics and tends to be as ahistorical as tales of George Washington and the cherry tree. If you ever get your hands on my book The Road to Armageddon, you will find this demographic theme addressed in extenso in the final chapters. You can get an on-line version of the book from the U of Calgary Press for a pretty cheap price. I think you'll enjoy the read.

Teleseen

Amazing as a usual. Thank you.

Rade Spasojevic

Fleetwood Mac also originally wrote the song "The Green Manalishi", a song that is better known as a Judas Priest hit.

David Andrews

I'd never even heard of this war. Excellent episode.

radiowarnerd

Ah, a fellow Tripla fan! It's one of my favorites, if that's the word.