A01=Michael Kenneth Huner
anthropology
Argentina
Author_Michael Kenneth Huner
borderland studies
Borderlands
Brazil
Category=NHK
Category=NHW
Category=NHWL
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
geography
global history
Guarani language
History
indigenous studies
Latin American history
Latin American Studies
Modern Latin America
nationalism
nineteenth-century Paraguay
Paraguayan history
Paraguayan nationhood
Paraguayan social history
political studies
postcolonial sovereignty
religion
Religion and politics
republicanism
sociology
South American history
state formation
Uruguay
violence
war and conflict
War of the Triple Alliance
Product details
- ISBN 9781496231413
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Nov 2025
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
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.
Michael Kenneth Huner is an associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University.
