Interview with Andrew Nickson, author of “Great Britain and the War of the Triple Alliance: The Lincolnshire Farmers Colonization Scheme to Paraguay and the Fourth Ally Thesis”
Depiction of village of Itapé in 1875, two years after the Lincolnshire Farmers were settled there. From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12960

Interview with Andrew Nickson, author of “Great Britain and the War of the Triple Alliance: The Lincolnshire Farmers Colonization Scheme to Paraguay and the Fourth Ally Thesis”

Publicado em

Andrew Nickson is honorary reader in public management and Latin American studies at the University of Birmingham and lead trainer at the United Nations Service Staff College on Decentralised Governance and Peacebuilding. He is coeditor of The Paraguay Reader: History, Culture, Politics (2013), author of the chapter “El régimen de Stroessner: 1954–1989” in Nueva Historia del Paraguay (2nd ed.; 2020), and author of Historical Dictionary of Paraguay (3rd ed.; 2015), in addition to recent academic articles on Paraguay. You can read his article “Great Britain and the War of the Triple Alliance: The Lincolnshire Farmers Colonization Scheme to Paraguay and the Fourth Ally Thesis” in HAHR 104.1.

Interview by Rebeca Martínez-Tibbles

1. How did you become interested in Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance?

I have been researching on contemporary Paraguay and its history for fifty years, but this is my first incursion into the War of the Triple Alliance (1865–70), which remains a very hot and controversial topic in the country. As Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen has said, “All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.”

2. What is the “fourth ally thesis” to which you refer in the article’s title? What is its legacy today, if any, in Paraguay and elsewhere?

The “fourth ally thesis” argues that Great Britain was the instigator of the war against Paraguay, financing the campaign waged by the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Ironically, the thesis originated in Argentina in the 1950s and quickly took root in Paraguay itself, where today it is stronger than it has ever been.

3. How does your argument challenge the historiography on the War of the Triple Alliance?

The “fourth ally thesis” argues that Great Britain orchestrated the war against Paraguay as part of its imperial expansion in the Southern Cone of Latin America. Its supporters argue that the nationalist development strategy adopted by postindependence regimes in Paraguay was a threat to that expansion. My contribution to the debate is to examine British policy to Paraguay in the immediate postwar period when the country lay decimated after a war in which around two-thirds of the adult male population died. I examined the fate of almost 900 mainly English colonists, known as the “Lincolnshire Farmers,” who were taken to Paraguay in 1872–73 as part of a scam organized by financiers in order to “boom” the price of Paraguayan government bonds on the London stock market. I found that, far from viewing them as a convenient tool for imperial expansion, the British government was extremely hostile. It actively sought to dissuade people from joining the colonization scheme and did nothing to assist them once they arrived in Paraguay. Most were eventually evacuated thanks to support from French and Italian diplomats and a collection by the British community in Buenos Aires.

4. How did you assemble the source base for your argument? What challenges if any did you face in assembling the sources?

I was fortunate in having access to a new family database on the colonists created by a colleague, Mary Godward, in Buenos Aires. I was also able to access the Foreign Office records for the period as well as primary source materials from participants and observers of the scheme.

5. What are the implications of your article for the public memory of this period in Paraguay?

The article contributes further evidence that questions the view that the War of the Triple Alliance was an imperial conflict. However, the public memory in Paraguay of this period remains wedded to this view, which conveniently fits with the questionable but widespread belief that during the nationalist period from 1814–65, it was the most developed country in Latin America.

6. Read anything good recently?

I am reading Laurie Blair’s excellent Patria: Lost Countries of South America (Penguin Books, 2024), which examines a range of little-known historical events in different Latin American countries through which he counters simplistic mythologies about the region and its past.