The story of nineteenth-century Paraguay is the story of the dawn of modern nationhood in the world-and a devastating war is the culmination of this tale. The War of the Triple Alliance (1864–70), considered the bloodiest interstate conflict in the history of the Americas, pitted Paraguay against the combined forces of imperial Brazil and the republics of Argentina and Uruguay. By the end of the war, Paraguay was defeated and occupied, losing more than half its total population. Why, then, did everyday people in nineteenth-century Paraguay join and endure the violence and trauma associated with postcolonial sovereignty?

In Parishioners of Sovereignty Michael Kenneth Huner answers this question. He explores how modern nationhood became a living, breathing reality among everyday people in Paraguay even as such bonds of sovereignty remained fluid and contingent in the years leading up to and during the war. Although conventional history still portrays Paraguay’s experience in the conflict as the result of a precocious cultural and ethnolinguistic-based nationalism, Huner argues in contrast that religion and republicanism rendered modern nationhood a moral imperative for which everyday Paraguayans worked, died, killed, and subverted. By tracing the complex interplay of religion, republicanism, and local social history that created the Paraguayan nation and state, and utilizing sources in the GuaranÍ language, Parishioners of Sovereignty casts crucial new light on the social history of early nation-building throughout the Americas.