Response to Whigham and Potthast

I looked forward with great interest to reading Thomas Whigham's and Barbara Potthast's critique of my Demographics of Paraguay: A Reinterpretation of the Great War, 1864-70. However, as I read the comments I was extremely disappointed, since I suspect that Whigham and Potthast had missed my central approach. Paraguayan history has been plagued by impressionistic research and the lack of quantification. Thus, old issues and questions are simply rehashed with every new piece of documentation that is discovered in the archives. Because of my discovery of an unknown Paraguayan census, reevaluation of earlier censuses, and examination of growth rates and population loss related to the Great War, I was able to look at an old issue from a different perspective, with the expectation that historians would begin to rethink their traditional approaches and conclusions. Further, by cross-checking this information with comparative data and revisionist interpretations of Latin American historical demography, and using the technique of log-lineal least squares regression, I concluded that the War of the Triple Alliance cost Paraguay between 8.7 and i8.5 percent of its prewar population. Whigham and Potthast have returned the question of Paraguayan mortality in the Great War to its old framework. They agree that an estimate of 50 percent mortality is too high, but they think my proposed mortality estimate is too low. However, at no point in their critique do they propose or document a new percentage. In effect, their argument consists of stating that Paraguay is unique. Thus, they object to the use of any comparative data, and ask that I redo the census of 1846, which has ably been done by three historians whose conclusions, given the missing data, are in surprising agreement. Whigham and Potthast also demand that I give greater weight to particular impressionistic archival and travel accounts, and that I develop new arguments in support of average family size of 5.5 to 6 (although they agree with my figures). They further suggest that I obtain more adequate sources for mortality caused by disease and war. As I reviewed this critique and did some calculations based on their arguments, I concluded that although they disagree with my methodology, my sources, and my analysis, their own research will probably lead them to concur with the upper range of my mortality estimate. According to their critique, Potthast is currently engaged in research

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