Historia Económica De América

The 1840’s and 1850’s was a rather clam time, there were two sets of states, the western (Chile and the other western states) and Eastern (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil), there was no major warfare until the beginning of 1864 when Brazil and Argentina tried to influence the Uruguayan politics to their own benefits, and they even might have become involved in a war against each otherover Uruguay. But Paraguay managed to get all three of these states into a war against it. Until 1860’s Paraguay was ruled by dictators, the second Dictator, Carlos Antonio Lopez, putted his son Francisco Solano Lopez in charge of Paraguay’s army, in that role he traveled to Europe to get arms, and ammunition, following the ideas of Napoleon III in France, in 1862 his father died and he became thepresident of Paraguay, he was suspicious about Brazil and Argentina’s motives towards Uruguay, in 1864 when he was sure of the imperialistic ambitions of Brazil when sent his army through Argentina to get to Uruguay even though Argentina did not allow it, so he found himself in war against this three countries, during the war a secret treaty was known where Brazil and Argentina agreed to fighttogether against Paraguay and then they would just divide the territory for themselves, numbers show that the war cost something between 8.7 and 19.5 of its prewar population .
Nations of the western side objected to the plan of disarming Paraguay and this culminated in the war of the pacific with Chile on one side and Peru and Bolivia in the other, they fought over the rich in nitrate Atacamadesert, the Chileans were the most successful but unfortunately in the territory that belonged to Peru and Bolivia, so they raised taxes and set barriers to the Chilean success, what Chile answered by using the force, they won that war that began in 1879 and was done by 1883, they took Antofagasta and other places from Bolivia and Peru, Chile entered an era of economic growth due to the minerals thatwere in the territory they took and Bolivia and Peru got nothing from the war but grievances, Bolivia lost its only seaport and Peru got back Tacna but in 1929 with the intervention of the US government as a mediator.
The changing of the guard.-
the United States issued its Monroe doctrine in 1823, this warned other states to refrain from colonizing efforts in the western hemisphere, at thattime, the United States lacked the strength to get the doctrine to be obeyed, but Great Britain aided the United States and Latin America to enforce the doctrine, an exception occurred in 1864 when France set up the empire of Maximiliam in Mexico, the efforts from the United States and Great Britain to keep other powers out of Latin America were mainly successful but as the U.S. had a long term planto become the biggest power in the western hemisphere they got into quite some arguments and war scare with Great Britain through the years until 1895, in this year the Britain empire got challenged by Venezuela for the control of the British Guiana that is limited with Venezuela, the British ultimately gave in because they were more concerned with the Germans giving them problems in southAfrica, the year 1895 is when the British empire control in south America began to get challenged. In 1898 the U.S acquired Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines from the Spanish, by 1903 they helped Panama get out of the Colombian control and in return they got the permission to build a canal, a year after Theodore Roosevelt he proclaimed a corollary to the Monroe doctrine that claimed the right tointervene in the western hemisphere internal affairs if there was an act of wrongdoing or such that needed the intervention of an ‘international police power”, the U.S. army used this as an excuse to invade many countries through the next years, the Calvo doctrine and the Drago doctrine were first to stop European countries to get into Latin American business but soon the biggest threat was not...