Historians have long considered that Paraguay under…

Historians have long considered that Paraguay under José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1813–1840) and Carlos Antonio López (1841–1862) had developed quite differently from other South American countries.

The aim of Rodríguez de Francia and Carlos López had been to encourage self-sufficient economic development in Paraguay by imposing a high level of isolation from neighboring countries.

The regime of the López family is characterized by a harsh centralism without any room for the creation of a true civil society.

There is no distinction between the public and the private sphere, and the López family rules the country as it would a large estate of land.

The government exerts its control on all exports.

The export of yerba mate and valuable wood products maintain the balance of commerce between Paraguay and the outside world.

The Paraguayan government is extremely protectionist, never accepting loans from the outside and, through high tariffs, refusing the importation of foreign products.

Francisco Solano López, officially the eldest son of Paraguay’s president, Carlos Antonio López, was born in Manorá (Asunción).

He had been made Brigadier General of the Paraguayan army by his father at the age of eighteen, in 1844, during the spasmodic hostilities then prevailing with Argentina.

Sent in 1853 as minister plenipotentiary to Britain, France and Italy, he had spent a year and a half in Europe.

Purchasing large quantities of arms and military supplies, together with several steamers, he had organized a project for building a railroad and establishing a French colony in Paraguay.

He had also become infatuated with the empire of Napoleon III and Napoleon himself.

López had equipped his army with exact copies of uniforms of Napoleonic army.

He had ordered for himself an exact replica of Napoleon's crown.

While there, he had met Parisian courtesan Eliza Lynch and brought her with him back to Paraguay, where she will be his mistress and de facto first lady till his death, strongly influencing his later ambitious schemes.

Returning to Paraguay, he had become Minister of War in 1855, and was subsequently appointed as Vice President by his father.

In November 1859, López had been on board the war steamer Tacuari when it was attacked by British Royal Navy ships attempting to pressure his father into releasing a British citizen from prison.

The British consul who ordered the attack is Sir Edward Thornton, who will later personally support Argentina in the Paraguayan War.

This is one of several incidents that has damaged Paraguayan relations with Britain.

Thornton had later apologized for the action in order to repair relations, and promised Britain has no intention of interfering with Paraguayan jurisdiction.

When his father died in 1862, López had called a congress that had unanimously chosen him as president for ten years.

López has modernized and expanded industry and the Paraguayan Army.

The government has hired more than two hundred foreign technicians, who have installed telegraph lines and railroads to aid the expanding steel, textile, paper, ink, naval construction, weapons and gunpowder industries.

The Ybycuí foundry, completed in 1850, manufactures cannons, mortars and bullets of all caliber.

River warships are built in the shipyards of Asunción.

This industrial and military growth requires some contact with the international market, but Paraguay is a landlocked country.

Its ports are river ports, and Paraguayan and other ships must travel down the Río Paraguay and the Río Paraná to reach the estuary of the Río de la Plata (shared by Argentina and Uruguay) and the Atlantic Ocean.

López conceives of a project to obtain ports on the Atlantic Ocean: he probably intends to create a "Greater Paraguay" by capturing a slice of Brazilian territory that will link Paraguay to the Atlantic coast.