Is there a way plucky Paraguay could have won the War of the Triple Alliance against Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil? How about Paraguay not declaring war on Argentina and facing only Uruguay and Brazil?
What would such a victory look like?
Paraguay was moderately industrialized for 1860s South America, at the time it had the longest functioning railway in South America and had free, universal and compulsory education, low levels of foreign debt, and incipient iron furnaces, textile, arms, gunpowder and shipbuilding industries, having chosen a protectionist and state-led method to develop its economy rather than the laissez faire attitude prevalent on most of Latin America at the time. Though arguably the nation's internal market was small to sustain industrialization and its mercantile economic model was exhausted by the time the war rolled in, one could only wonder what would have happened if the war had taken a different turn. After all they did lose 70% of its male population according to the highest estimates.
But what if they had won? Or at least achieved a white peace?
How does the world change?
It's not every day that a regional power chooses collective national suicide.
What would such a victory look like?
Paraguay was moderately industrialized for 1860s South America, at the time it had the longest functioning railway in South America and had free, universal and compulsory education, low levels of foreign debt, and incipient iron furnaces, textile, arms, gunpowder and shipbuilding industries, having chosen a protectionist and state-led method to develop its economy rather than the laissez faire attitude prevalent on most of Latin America at the time. Though arguably the nation's internal market was small to sustain industrialization and its mercantile economic model was exhausted by the time the war rolled in, one could only wonder what would have happened if the war had taken a different turn. After all they did lose 70% of its male population according to the highest estimates.
But what if they had won? Or at least achieved a white peace?
How does the world change?
It's not every day that a regional power chooses collective national suicide.