Paraguayan War Research Paper

1862 – 1864
Francisco Solano Lopez was elected as the president of Paraguay following the death of his father, Carlos Antonio Lopez in 1862. The isolationisms turned to self-sufficient when it had one of the largest armies in the region. Yet, after his father died, Lopez brought Paraguay out of isolation by forming alliance with the Blanco party in Uruguay. However, in 1863, the exiled leaders of the Uruguayan Colorado party returned to Uruguay and with the help of the Argentinean government led rebellion against the Blanco party. Meanwhile, Lopez demanded that the Argentinean stop supporting the rebellion but then he was ignored. In October 1864, Brazil also intervened into the conflict on the side of the rebels. Not long after that, Lopez cut off relations with Brazil and began conscripting more troops into an already large army yet it was said it was poorly equipped. In November in the same year, the Paraguayans captured a Brazilian ship and a month later declared war on Brazil thus invaded Mato Grosso.

1865 – 1870 In January 1865, the Colorado’s finally took power in Uruguay. Lopez asked

Both countries respectively wanted to expand their power in the Rio de la Plata region as it was a strategic region that all neighboring countries had disputes on including the Paraguay. Not only, since Brazil was the first country that recognized the Paraguay as an independent state in 1844 it wanted to dominate the Paraguayan’s political affairs as it did to Uruguay. At the same time, the Paraguay had evolved a rapid economic and military growth which had attract Argentina and Brazil to claim its territory yet only Brazil managed to do so as Argentina at that particular time can be considered as weaker than Brazil based on its unstable political affairs which involved in many conflicts and