1863: Anglo-Brazilian War

From here(Wikipedia):
"This period of calm came to an end when the British consul in Rio de Janeiro nearly sparked a war between Great Britain and Brazil. He sent an ultimatum containing abusive demands arising out of two minor incidents at the end of 1861 and beginning of 1862.[59] The Brazilian government refused to yield, and the consul issued orders for British warships to capture Brazilian merchant vessels as indemnity.[60] Brazil prepared itself for the imminent conflict,[61][62] and coastal defenses were given permission to fire upon any British warship that tried to capture Brazilian merchant ships.[63] The Brazilian government then severed diplomatic ties with Britain in June 1863.[64]"

So let's say that the British Navy tries to capture a Brazilian ship, and the Brazilians fire on it. Some British sailors are killed, angering the public, and Britain declares war. How would this effect Brazil, and the emerging war with Paraguay?
 
Bumping this because there's so little discussion of South America in this thread. Come on, it's a chance for Paraguay to win the War of the Triple Alliance!
Well, then, that certainly grabbed my interest. Not sure if Paraguay was at the same level of preparedness it was in 1864, but at this time the Brazilian military was in shambles. Fewer men than Paraguay, and they were poorly organized. Many of them were stuck out in frontier posts in the furthest reaches of the Amazonian jungle, and some soldiers were so isolated they did not know who their own officers were.

Now, the Brazilian military did show they could shape up quickly, but that was against the poorly armed and equipped Paraguayans. Against the British they'd be in trouble. Their navy was in a better shape than the army IIRC, but it doesn't mean much when you are fighting the Royal Navy. Not sure what Argentina does. Uruguay I think is ruled at this time by the Blanco party, allied to Paraguay. Argentina was a rival of both the Blancos and Brazil, and were also still in a bit of a civil war themselves. Paraguay might still try to go through Argentine territory, but I have no clue what their response would be. They were militarily speaking in a worse situation than Brazil.

Basically, I guess the Royal Navy would just pound the hell out of the Brazilians while the Paraguayans take the Matto Grosso and march through Corrientes into Rio Grande do Sul, to achieve Lopez's dream of a Paraguayan coast. If Argentina declares war on Paraguay, the Paraguayan navy will secure their Argentine conquests as Argentina's navy was pretty much non-existent and the Brazilian navy is getting sunk by the British. The end result might possibly be a Paraguay that grabs chuncks of Brazil and Argentina now stretching to the coast and serving as a staunch ally of the British Empire, dominating the east of South America.
 
Interesting. I don't think it would really escalate into a full blown war simply because neither side would want it, the Brazilians certainly don't want to face one of the great powers of the day and the British aren't going to want to because it'll cost money for little to no gain. As far as I'm aware they were already able to trade freely in Brazil unlike with China where they used the Opium Wars to force them to open up to trade. I'm sure that there might be a certain amount of jingoism by the public back in the UK but the government would probably want it settled as quickly as possible with as little cost so that commerce, the main interest of the Empire, was allowed to start flowing again.
 
Interesting. I don't think it would really escalate into a full blown war simply because neither side would want it, the Brazilians certainly don't want to face one of the great powers of the day and the British aren't going to want to because it'll cost money for little to no gain. As far as I'm aware they were already able to trade freely in Brazil unlike with China where they used the Opium Wars to force them to open up to trade. I'm sure that there might be a certain amount of jingoism by the public back in the UK but the government would probably want it settled as quickly as possible with as little cost so that commerce, the main interest of the Empire, was allowed to start flowing again.

This. IOTL basically there was no war because neither country wanted it. The problem was caused by two incidents. First, in June 1861, the merchant ship Prince of Wales grounded on the coast of Rio Grande do Sul, near the border with Uruguay. The crew abbandoned the ship and went to the port of Rio Grande in order to ask for help. But while they were there the local population thought that it was a shipwreck, and they looted the cargo. When the crew arrived back to the ship they noticed the lack of the cargo, and sent a letter complaining about this to the British ambassador in Rio de Janeiro, William Dougal Christie, who asked in "non polite" terms to the Emperor Pedro II an indenization. The Emperor refused.

Secondly, in 1862 two drunk sailors of the Royal Navy, members of the crew of the HMS Emerald, were dressed as civilians in Rio and got involved in a street fight with Brazilian sailors. What sparked the fight was a competition involving women (probably prostitutes). The police arrested the British, but released them the following morning.

However, two days later, the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a letter to Christie, asking to let the two British sailor be suffer penalties according to the Brazilian Justice. At the time, Brazil and the UK had a legal agreement that stated that British citizen could only be judged by the Bristish courts. This angered Christie, who again demanded the indenization for the loss of the Prince of Wales, the arrest of the Brazilian sailors, the firing from the Police of the Brazilian policemen who arrested the British sailors and a formal excuse from the Empire to the UK. If these demands were not accepted, they he threatened to block the port of Rio and to capture Brazilian merchant ships.

Of course the government refused, and in December 1862 Britain did blockade the harbour of Rio de Janeiro, and they captured 5 Brazilian ships. Then Brazil asked for international arbitration, choosing Leopold I of Belgium to decide the matter. Pedro II also asked for an indenization for the Brazilian ships captured, and demanded a formal excuse from London, that refused. Only then we cut our diplomatica relations with Britain, in May 1863.

After that, Pedro II decided to pay the indenization asked by the British, as he believed that the matter was more related to offended honour of the country than only money. But Leopold I decided the question in favour of Brazil, and then the Emperor asked the money and the formal excuses from the British ambassador. He didn't receive any of them. Only in 1865, one year after the beggining of the Tripple Alliance War, Britain replaced the ambassador and sent formal excuses to the Brazilian government.

So, it was never a casus belli. The British already had a lot of advantages in Brazil, and we couldn't lose our greatest market. It was all a matter of national pride. However, if there a possibility of conflict is higher, then probably the government wouldn't risk to make an intervention in the Uruguayan civil war in 1864. Without the Brazilian invasion Paraguay would have no reason to declare war against Brazil, and so we would have no Tripple Alliance War, or at least a delayed one. However, it would only happen while Mitre was in power in Argentina, as he had the same aims for the region as the Liberal government in Brazil. If the Conservatives gain the Parliament or Mitre and his allies are not in power then the cooperation between Brazil and Argentina doesn't exist, and the whole context of the war is changed.
 
Thanks for the information. If Brazilian shore cannons fired on a British ship and damaged it during the bloackade, would that overcome the obstalces and lead to war between them?

I think it would be more a British decision to go to war over this than a Brazilian one. And what could possibly the British demand in this case? Nobody really cared for the borders in Guyana at the time, or was willing to send anyone there to investigate it. The British were already free to trade in all places, and had several favourable agreements - as the treaty stating they could only be judged by the Bristish courts, and not by Brazilian ones. I'm not sure if it would be enough to make London declare war.
 

Thande

Donor
Sink some ships, bombard some ports, and maybe get a slightly more generous border in British Guyana. But it's not in Britain's best interests to rile up the Brazilians too much given our trade interests in South America. Just enough to satiate the public demanding blood and get the Royal Navy all happy when they get to try out their nice shiny new ironclad ships.
 
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