The number of people who died in the Paraguayan War (1864–1870) is unknown. Widely diverging estimates have been made. "Determining the size of Paraguay's population has always been an exercise in frustration." However, there is a widespread impression that the casualties (military and civilian) were immense; there was also some population loss from non-lethal causes such as migration. The Dutch human geographer Jan Kleinpenning thought that Paraguay lost between a quarter and a half of its population, but much higher and lower estimates have been made. No academic demographic scholarship makes it less than 7% (including migration) or greater than 69%.
Traditional estimate The traditional estimate was that the War cost Paraguay at least half its population including military and civilian casualties (the latter mainly owing to disease, dislocation and malnutrition) and that 90% of males of military age died. Assuming that to be so, the Paraguayan War must have been 10 to 20 times more lethal than the slightly earlier American Civil War. The traditional estimate was based partly on anecdotal evidence and partly on a supposed census of 1857 (which, according to Reber, never took place)See below. according to which Paraguay had a prewar population of about 1.3 million; implying an utterly catastrophic decline in the subsequent War. The following extract from an unsigned article in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica: is illustrative of the spurious precision of the era.There were, in fact, no censuses giving those numbers: see below.
During this warfare every male Paraguayan capable of bearing arms was forced to fight, whole regiments being formed of boys from 12 to 15 years of age. Even women were used as beasts of burden to carry ammunition and stores, and when no longer capable of work were left to die by the roadside or murdered to avoid any ill consequences occurring from their capture. When the war broke out the population of Paraguay was 1,337,439; when hostilities ceased it consisted of 28,746 men, 106,254 women above 15 years, and 86,079 children. During the retreat of the Paraguayans the dictator ordered every town and village passed through to be razed to the ground, and every living animal for which no use could be found to be slaughtered. When the end came the country and people were in a state of absolute prostration.
On those figures, since shown to be false, Paraguay lost 84% of its population.
In the modern mainstream media, the view that the loss in life was likely around half the population has been expressed by, among others, the current Encyclopædia Britannica entry (last revised in 2001) and a 2012 article in The Economist. In 2015, the BBC and Reuters stated Paraguay "lost more than half of its population", and the Los Angeles Times stated "at least 70% of Paraguay's male population was killed".
Modern demographic scholarship in peer-reviewed journals The first step in modern research was realising that prewar Paraguay's population could not possibly have been 1.3 million.
John Hoyt Williams In 1976, John Hoyt Williams published 'Observations on the Paraguayan Census of 1846'. He analysed 20,000 pages of documentation surviving from an 1846 census of Paraguay ordered by the dictator Carlos Antonio López. Correcting the raw figures for missing returns, he arrived at an estimated population of the order of 240,000 for the year 1846. To estimate the population for the year before the War (1864) he assumed various growth rates, yielding a range between about 373,000 (annual growth rate 2.5%) to about 575,000 (annual growth rate of 5%). He remarked that “even the highest figure is far short of what is usually claimed by historians not utilizing hard data”. In his opinion the most likely growth rate was 3%, implying a population of about 407,000. He concluded:
The oft-posited figure of a million or more Paraguayans in 1864, in the absence of immigration, is absurd.
The Reber/Whigham–Potthast controversy
Vera Blinn Reber The traditional view was challenged even more strongly by historian Vera Blinn Reber in 1988 in 'The Demographics of Paraguay: A Reinterpretation of the Great War, 1865–1870'. Noticing that, even with the most sophisticated weapons of military destruction available after 1914, population losses in war were never remotely of the 50% order,However, Geyer and Bright wrote that this was a basic blunder, because "She uses battlefield casualty rates for modern systems wars (derived from Small and Singer, Resort to Arms) which were far lower than the casualty rates for early modem wars – a counterintuitive observation but quite undisputed in military history. The former are distinctly below 20 percent, while the latter are distinctly above". (Geyer and Bright, 628.) she examined the traditional estimates with some scepticism.
She noted that, hitherto, mortality estimates had depended on comparing various censusesUnlike modern censuses, Paraguayan censuses of the nineteenth century – of which there were few – did not record the names of those counted. Instead, local officials were ordered to send in returns of population broken down by age and gender. Hence, there was no ready way of cross-checking the returns. of the Paraguayan population before and after the war. However, she claimed that the census data that had been used were not reliable. In particular, a supposed 1857 census, relied on by earlier historians, and which gave Paraguay a population of 1.3 million, was illusory and had never taken place, being mere government propaganda of the time.She reasoned that: 1. There were no papers in the archives to support the existence of a census in 1857. 2. The Paraguayan government of the time had a motive to exaggerate the size of the population, because the country was surrounded by powerful neighbours. 3. The figure of 1.3 million implied a preposterous annual growth rate of 17% over the 1846 census (the one analysed by John Hoyt Williams). For Reber, there were only four Paraguayan censuses of even relative accuracy: 1792, 1846, 1886 and 1899. She accepted John Hoyt Williams's estimate for 1846, then created a curve by applying the technique of log-linear least squares regression to those four censuses, and achieved a best fit with an annual population increase of 1.48% (which, she argued, was compatible with what was known of other 19th century Latin American growth rates). She thus estimated the Paraguayan population on the eve of the war as of the order of 300,000.
As a separate and distinct point, an examination of the sex ratio after the war provided further evidence that mortality was lower than often assumed. The census of 1886 reported that there were 3 female Paraguayans for each male over 30 years old – not the 10:1 ratio often suggested.
Her conclusion was: My analysis of comparative rates in nineteenth-century Latin America, together with a re-evaluation of the Paraguayan censuses and household structure, indicates that the War of the Triple Alliance actually cost Paraguay between 7 and 18.5 percent of its prewar population… The evidence demonstrates that the Paraguayan population casualties due to the war have been enormously exaggerated.
Causes of Paraguay population loss According to Reber's estimates, not all of the Paraguayan population loss during the war was caused by mortality. Some must have been owed to migration or loss of territory. Her estimates were as follows.
CausePercentage of Paraguayan population lost Minimum Maximum Military 5.0% 8.0% Cholera 1.0% 3.0% Yellow fever 0.5% 1.0% Other disease 1.0% 3.0% Migration 1.0% 3% Loss of territory 0.2% 0.5%
Whigham and Potthast Reber was challenged by Whigham and Potthast in 'Some Strong Reservations: A Critique of Vera Blinn Reber's "The Demographics of Paraguay: A Reinterpretation of the Great War, 1864–70"'. They did not take issue with Reber's finding that the supposed 1857 census was spurious. But they said that there was no reason to assume the Paraguayan birthrate was the same as in other Latin American countries, because the Paraguayan culture was unique. They asked what could have caused the 'traditional' population loss estimates to be made, and argued that even if the evidence was anecdotal it could not simply be ignored. In a brief reply, Reber in effect said the Whigham–Potthast critique, by failing to embrace demographic techniques, was non-responsive.
In a footnote in an article in the Journal of Latin American Studies Mario Pastore said that Whigham and Potthast, in attacking Reber's estimate, had misrepresented it; but, on the other hand, had failed to notice one of its weakest points, namely, "that it was based on a non-linear regression with very few degrees of freedom".
The ‘Paraguayan Rosetta Stone' In 1999, Whigham and Potthast returned to the fray. Their new paper contained two strands. First, they argued that John Hoyt Williams’ population estimate based on the 1846 census needed to be raised; he was working with incomplete data (missing parishes, and undercounting of some ethnic groups and children). Furthermore, 1846 was only two years after a smallpox epidemic which must have reduced the population anyway. Accordingly: we feel safe in arguing that Paraguay had a population somewhere between 420,000 and 450,000 at the beginning of the war.
The second strand was the recent discovery (by a Major Hugo Mendoza) in the Paraguayan national archives of a census for the year 1870. This census had been ordered by the Provisional Government i.e. the government in Paraguay that operated under the occupying Allied armies. Whigham and Potthast hailed this discovery as the ‘Paraguayan Rosetta Stone' and called their article 'The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone: New Insights into the Demographics of the Paraguayan War, 1864 -1870'.
After considering the data they said as follows: How many Paraguayans died or were displaced by the War of the Triple Alliance? All our findings indicate that the number must have been tremendous. Previous references to an 18 percent loss, a 30 percent loss, or even a 50 percent loss must now be set aside. The true figure appears to have reached 60 to 69 percent.
This paper attracted criticism from the Dutch human geographer Jan Kleinpenning in his paper 'Strong Reservations about “New Insights into the Demographics of the Paraguayan War” '. Kleinpenning asked how they knew that the census was reliable seeing that in 1870 “Paraguay was a thoroughly damaged and disorganized country”. Unless one assumed an unfeasible large growth rate its figures conflicted with later censuses. He also criticised the paper for failing to use certain population data, long available in German language sources, including an 1873 census that put the population at 221,079. Summarising his criticism, Professor Kleinpenning wrote:To conclude, it appears that Whigham and Potthast have too readily considered the 1870 census results reliable data, enthusiastic as they were about having found a new source of information on Paraguay's postwar population. They have paid too little attention to other postwar figures and the work of Reber.
However, despite those criticisms, while not able to support the more extreme figures traditionally claimed, Kleinpenning concluded as follows: