Paraguay and the United States: Distant Allies (review)
Two broad themes emerge from Frank O. Mora and Jerry W. Cooney's study of Paraguay's relationship with the United States. Firstly, for long periods after Paraguay's formation in the early nineteenth century, the United States had little interest in its affairs or, indeed, diplomatic relations. As a small, land-locked, and isolated country (isolated from the United States, anyway), Paraguay's relationship with Washington was a distant one. What connections there were pivoted on private U.S. trading interests pushing up the navigable Parana and Paraguay rivers, which, as with other European empires at this time, depended, from time-to-time, on military and diplomatic help from the metropolitan power. This dragged the United States into clashes with Paraguay, including a riverine gunboat intervention in the 1850s—apparently the largest naval expedition ever to leave the United States up to that time—that succeeded in forging a new treaty of commerce and navigation between the two states in 1859. As with other parts of the globe, the new technology of the ironclad, steam-driven warship extended the frontiers of empire deep into the interior of South America. Mora and Cooney tease out the highs and lows of U.S.-Paraguayan diplomacy in the period before World War I when relations between the two countries were, indeed, 'distant.'