User:Ttocserp/sandbox: Difference between revisions – Wikipedia

The river Thames had been artificially embanked on a large scale for centuries before “the Embankment” (capitalised) was constructed under the superintendence of Sir Joseph Bazalgette,^{[1]: 1, 2 [2]: 108–9} though the contrary is sometimes suggested or implied.^[3] “Embanking the Thames is a very old practice”.^[2]: 251 In this section Bazalgette’s achievements are set in context.

At least one major embankment – in the City – can be traced back to the Roman era.^[4] The medieval embankment at the Tower of London is a tidal defence probably over 700 years old.^[5] Between Teddington in the west and Sheerness and Shoeburyness to the east there are more than 300 km of sea walls and embankments: some are private property, some are owned by the Environment Agency. They were upgraded in the 1980s, but most have medieval origins.^[5]

Before human intervention the pristine river Thames was shallow and wide.^[6] The original embankments had been made by local people who wanted to reclaim land along its marshy foreshore, including in London;^[7]: 11 hence they had built artificial banks to prevent the river overflowing their newly won lands at high tide. ^[8] At first, quite low ones sufficed, since in that era tides were modest.^[7]: 8

The reclamation process was repeated and cumulative. James Walker (engineer) thought that over the centuries the anonymous builders had gradually constrained and confined the natural river, to such an extent that it was now a fifth of its original width; the water flowing more rapidly and had scoured out a deeper channel, making it navigable by large ships.^{[9]: 543–4} Gustav Milne thought the river has been transformed into a tidal canal: at the time of the Roman invasion it was very much shallower, particularly towards the south, being 1 km wide near London.^[6][10]

Progressively higher tides were recorded in the Thames,^[11] mainly because the land is sinking relative to the sea.^[12] They started to cause serious flooding from c. 1300 onwards and therefore the artificial banks had to be raised further to match. The process was gradual, but cumulative over the centuries, so that later observers described the embankments as “mighty” and “stupendous”.^[13] It was important to keep embankments in good working order since a breach of the river wall could flood a neighbourhood. Therefore the English kings took to appointing land drainage authorities, called commissions of sewers, with power to compel owners to keep up their banks. The first of these was convened in 1280: at West Ham.^[14]: 376 Serious breaches did occur – at Bermondsey, Southwark, Greenwich, Woolwich, Plumstead, Barking and Stepney, for example.^{[14]: 372–5} By the early Victorian era, however, a high standard of integrity had been achieved and significant breaches were rare.^[9]: 543

Despite this, there were occasional freak (or surge) tides, so large that, though not breaching the embankments, they went over their tops. Therefore James Walker recommended a practice of making walls to a ‘safe’ height 4 feet above the highest normal^[15] tides. Walker’s 4 foot standard was widely accepted; Bazalgette said he adopted it himself without question as the safe line for the Victoria and Albert Embankments. Later, Bazalgette realised it was too low. For the Chelsea Embankment he increased it to 5.^[16] In the long run even this was not enough, for the trend continued. In the 1928 Thames flood so much water overflowed the Embankment that a number of Londoners were drowned in their basements

Since then the Thames walls have been raised still further, in central London most recently in 1973;^[17] and since its inauguration in 1982 the Thames Barrier, at first rarely closed, has had to be shut with increasing frequency.^[18]

A few embankments, professionally designed by architects or engineers, had been built for public purposes. One of the first was a 40-foot wide embankment road from the Tower to the Temple; it lasted for 100 years before it was choked off by illegal encroachments.^[19] It was proposed by Sir Christopher Wren as part of his plans for rebuilding London after the Great Fire. Robert Mylne, when erecting Blackfriars Bridge, had built a half-mile embankment (1767); it did not include a road, but by straightening out the river it prevented the accumulation of “extremely offensive” mud that had blocked access to the wharves.^[9]: 542

Robert Smirke had built a 1,500 foot embankment at Millbank, then one of London’s few Thames-side roads; he pioneered the use of concrete foundations. Greenwich Hospital had a 1,000 foot embankment. The Houses of Parliament had their own 1,000 embankment: by James Walker. The London dock companies had built several miles of embankments.^[20] A scheme to embank the north shore between Vauxhall and Battersea Bridges was only partly completed for lack of funds, but the embankment and roadway – now the Grosvenor Road – were formed as far as Chelsea Hospital Gardens:^[1]: 22 .

Although the vernacular embankments of the Thames impressed Victorian engineers by their sheer scale,^{[20][9]: 542, 543, 544} they had been built by local people who were not working to any general scheme or plan.^[9]: 545 They had several defects.

The banks of the Thames in London were irregular and uneven (see map). Some parts of the river were twice as wide as nearby parts. In the wide parts, mud tended to accumulate, interfering with the navigation. Partly composed of matter discharged from London’s sewers, it had a red colour, was “in a state of constant fermentation”, and considered a health hazard.^{[9]: 545–547} The map reveals a 27-acre mudbank accumulating in the vicinity of Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges:^[1]: 2 in parts it exceeds half the river’s width.

Therefore in 1840 James Walker prescribed general lines to which all future embankation works ought to conform. They were followed by Bazalgette in designing the Thames Embankment.^{[1]: 2–3, 4, 47}

Although in theory the banks of the Thames were public highways, in practice the law was ignored and the banks were treated as valuable private property. Thus with few exceptions^[22] there were no public roads alongside the river in central London.^[9]: 547

It meant that the main public highway to the north of the river was the Strand, which became highly congested.^[2]: 118 There was nowhere to build an intercepting sewer without causing major traffic disruption.

The main incentive for making good embankments and keeping them in repair was flood prevention. But in some locations it was not critical.

Some premises (e.g. boatbuilders’ yards) did not want an embankment at all: they preferred to launch their boats on a sloping shore.

In other locations the embankment might be little more than a brick wall, perhaps shoddily maintained (illustration). Generally, the embankments were made of clay, and the wash of steamboats tended to start breaks; some owners did not do enough to defend them.^{[9]: 546, 547}

The new embankments provided more than 3 miles of spacious public roadways alongside the riverfront in central London, sometimes with ornamental gardens. Their river walls, faced with granite backed with Portland cement concrete, were resistant to steamboat wash. They subsumed some of the existing embankments, straightening out numerous irregularities.^{[1]: 9, 23} A matter of civic pride, they transformed an unsightly commercial riverfront into “an architectural monument that still impresses visitors from around the world”.^[23] Of more pressing importance, the Victoria Embankment provided an opportunity to construct a much-needed intercepting sewer to deal with a growing sanitary crisis. As a bonus it enclosed the Metropolitan District Railway, London’s second underground line.

1. View of “The Adam & Eve” inn amongst terraced houses on the embankment (Walter Greaves, etching with drypoint, British Museum)
2. Walter Greaves and Alice Greaves on the Embankment (Walter Greaves, oil on canvas, Tate Britain)

Previously when Thames foreshore had been reclaimed by embankation, the newly recovered land had become the private property of the builders. The Victoria Embankment had recovered 37 acres and there had been numerous proposals to pay for the scheme by privatising the land. However “it had been left to a public body, having funds, to expend those funds for the public good”, said Sir James Bazalgette, which he thought a matter for congratulation.

The Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments require to be considered separately since these three works were built neither for a uniform purpose nor to a uniform design, as Bazalgette himself pointed out. For example the Albert Embankment contained no sewer and was not very effective for preventing floods, not having been intended for that purpose.

The most pressing problem was sewage disposal, which started to become acute around the middle of the nineteenth century, partly owing to a mistaken government policy.

London’s sewers had always discharged into the Thames but they were meant for surface runoff water only. Human excreta had to be collected in cesspits, which were periodically cleaned out by gangs of men who sold the product for agricultural fertiliser; it was illegal to dump it in the sewers. (The word sewage with an unpleasant sanitary connotation is not attested before 1834.)^[24] Thus the river Thames, though flowing past the world’s largest city, was reasonably clean, and supported a substantial fishing industry.

The cesspits stank, however; there were outbreaks of cholera; and a mistaken medical theory held the disease was spread by bad air. Householders, impelled by the smell and believing the medical theory, increasingly fitted flush toilets. The sewer companies were willing to tolerate it since they thought the flushing action helped to keep their lines clear. Hence the practice changed and after 1815 it became first permissible, then legally mandatory for public health reasons, to discharge organic waste into the London sewers. Since these had always outfallen into the Thames it came to be that 600,000 tons of raw sewage were dumped in the river daily.

Bazalgette’s Metropolitan Board of Works proposed a scheme of intercepting sewers which would discharge effluent further down the river. There was no major engineering problem south of the river

• Dale, Hylton B. (1922). “The Worshipful Company of the Woodmongers and the Coal Trade of London”. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 70 (3648): 816–823. JSTOR 41355975.

• Galloway, James A.; Potts, Jonathan S. (2007). “Marine Flooding in the Thames Estuary and Tidal River C. 1250-1450: Impact and Response”. Area. 39 (3): 370–379. JSTOR 40346052.

• Horner, R.W. (1979). “The Thames Barrier Project”. The Geographical Journal. 145 (2): 242–253. JSTOR 634390.

• Lavery, Sarah; Donovan, Bill (2005). “Flood Risk Management in the Thames Estuary Looking Ahead 100 Years”. Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 363 (1831, The Big Flood: North Sea storm surge). Royal Society: 1455–1474. JSTOR 30039664.

• Porter, Dale H. (1998). The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology and Society in Victorian London. Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press. ISBN 1-884836-29-1.

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n. The London Bridge area around AD 50. “Southwark was a low-lying expanse of sandy riverine islands, or eyots, interspersed with braided channels; a shifting landscape with extensive mudflats inundated at high tide”. Modern features located for comparison:

Although the Hawker Hurricane did not have the speed or climb rate of the Supermarine Spitfires or the Messerschmidt Bf 109, its lower wing loading meant that it was able to turn in a tighter circle, an important advantage in some phases of fighter combat.^[1] It has sometimes been claimed the Bf 109 could turn inside the Hurricane, a matter considered below.

Fighter aircraft have been classified into turn performance and energy performance types; the latter have higher speeds and can climb faster; but the former have better instantaneous turn, and a tighter sustained turn radius.^[2]

From the early 1930s onwards, in what aeronautical engineer Georg Hans Madelung called the “speed craze”, fighter designers prioritised maximum speeds and climb rates. Not until much later was there a general requirement for a better balance of performance, reducing wing loads to get extra agility in the turn.^[3]

In the Battle of Britain the Hurricanes were assigned to a defensive role i.e. they were encouraged to seek out enemy bombers not fighters.^[4] The bombers were escorted by fighters, often Messerschmidt Bf 109s or Bf 110s, whose task, therefore, was to attack any incoming Hurricanes. A standard fighter manouevre, taught to most fighter pilots, was to attack from astern, preferably by ambush from above. If the attacker was not seen coming in and could get close enough the result was probably a victory. If, however, he was seen in time, the basic evasive manouevre was the break, in which the defending aircraft turned hard in the direction of the attacker, if possible getting onto his tail.^[5]

Wrote Pilot Officer Geoffrey Page:

In the Hurricane we knew that the Me 109 could out-dive us, but not out-turn us. With that knowledge, one obviously used the turning manouevre rather than trying to beat the man at the game in which he was clearly superior. With a 109 sitting behind you, you’d stay in a really tight turn, and after a few turns the position would be reversed and you’d be on his tail.^[6]

An aircraft’s minimum turning radius cannot be quoted as a single number since it varies with altitude and loading. Accurate historical data are sparse because they were not published at the time, presumably for security reasons, or later for lack of archival research.^[7][8]

In May 1940 a Messerschmidt Bf 109E3 captured by French forces was tested against a Hurricane, both flown by British pilots. The pilots reported that the Messerschmidt was faster than the Hurricane, and could out-climb and out-dive it, but could not turn as well. In climbing and diving turns at high speed, although the Bf 109 was placed line astern to start with, it could not keep the Hurricane in its gunsights and the latter was able to get onto its tail in only four turns. However, these trials were restricted to below 15,000 feet owing to lack of oxygen equipment.^[9]

Likewise, a RAF Fighter Command report stated that “the Hurricane will easily out-turn the Spitfire in a simple tailchase, and bring guns to bear in two or three turns”.^[10]

However in 1967,^[11] in The Hawker Hurricane I (Profile Publications, No. 111, an 18-page booklet), aviation author Francis K. Mason wrote:^[12]

Much has been written of the relative manouevrability of the four principal Battle of Britain fighters. Published here for the first time are comparative turning radii attainable, resolved to a combat altitude of 10,000 feet—the most common area of combat chosen by the Hurricane pilots in 1940 … if and when the choice was theirs. True airspeed, 300 m.p.h.

	CL	1⁄2 ρ v2	Wing loading at half-fuel weight	“Available g”	Turning Radius
Hurricane I	1.0	170	22 lb./sq. ft.	7.5	800 feet
Spitfire I	1.0	170	24 lb./sq. ft.	7.0	880 feet
Bf 109E	1.0	170	25 lb./sq. ft.	8.1	750 feet
Bf 110C	1.0	170	32 lb./sq. ft.	5.2	1,210 feet

Mason did not state his sources. His numbers were repeated in Len Deighton‘s 1977 book Fighter,^[13] achieving wider publicity.^[14] They were criticised by Ackroyd and Lamont of the Aerospace department of Manchester University, who said Mason had arrived at them by calculation, which calculations were flawed.

According to them, to arrive at those values Mason had assumed the aircraft were flown at 300 m.p.h. while in a sustained angle of bank so steep – about 80° – that the g forces would have been “beyond the limits of any pilot at that time and most probably beyond the structural limits of the aircraft”. Further, none of the aircraft engines could have delivered the required thrust, since far more power is required to overcome aircraft drag in a very steep turn.^[15]

Recalculating for speeds actually achievable with those engines, and assuming the aircraft were flown at maximum power as near to the stall as possible, again at 10,000 feet, Ackroyd and Lamont arrived at the following among other parameter values:

	n (≅”available g”)[16]	Angle of bank	Turning radius
Hurricane I (Late)	2.80	69.1°	202 m (663 ft)
Spitfire IA	2.74	68.6°	209 m (686 ft)
Messerschmidt Bf109E-3	2.67	68.0°	260 m (853 ft)
Messerschmidt Bf 110C-4	2.64	67.8°	256 m (840) ft)

They accepted those were still only estimates, but believed them to provide a reasonable assessment. They tended to be confirmed by a contemporaneous flight report on a captured Bf109 E-3.^[17]

• Ackroyd, J.A.D.; Lamont, P.J. (2000). “A comparison of turning radii for four Battle of Britain fighter aircraft”. The Aeronautical Journal. 104 (1032): 53–8. doi:10.1017/S0001924000017784.

• Caygill, Peter (2005). Flying to the Limit: Testing World War II Single-Engined Fighter Aircraft. Pen and Sword Books. ISBN 9781783409358.

• Deighton, Len (1977). Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-01422-6.

• Delve, Ken (2024). The Story of the Spitfire: An Operational and Combat History. Yorkshire and Philadelphia: Air World. ISBN 978-1-03615–004-4.

• Dibbs, John; Holmes, Tony; Riley, Gordon (2017). Hurricane: Hawker’s Fighting Legend. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781472822963.

• Madelung, G.O. (1978). “Characteristics of Fighter Aircraft”. Journal of Aircraft. 15 (3): 129–133. doi:10.2514/3.58329.

• Mason, Francis K. (n.d.). The Hawker Hurricane I. Vol. 111. Leatherhead, Surrey: Profile Publications.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: year (link)

• Rigby, David J. (1990). “Hawker’s Wonderful Hurricane”. Air Power History. 37 (2): 26–28. JSTOR 26271114.

• Spick, Mike (2021). Luftwaffe Fighter Aces: The Exploits and Tactics of Germany’s Greatest Pilots. New York: Frontline Books. ISBN 978-1-5107-5436-2.

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A Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the system under which sewage was discharged into the Thames by the MBW, and whether any evil effects resulted therefrom. The Commission reported (February 1884) that although the sewerage works were highly creditable and had been of great benefit to the metropolis, there were a number of problems. Sewage from the northern outfall was being partly discharged over the foreshore and not through submerged pipes as originally intended. Crude sewage was being discharged throughout the year without attempting to separate the solids. The tide was carrying effluent a long way up from the outfalls, almost as high as Teddington, oscillating back and forth for a long period before getting out finally to sea. In hot and dry weather there was a serious nuisance, the smell being very offensive. For 15 miles below the outfalls, fish had disappeared.

Royal Commission (1884). “Metropolitan Sewage Discharge”. The British Medical Journal. 1 (1207): 333–4. JSTOR 25265644.

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Carnot’s Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824) is a short book addressed to practical engineers; it is written in popular language. Yet, as taught in physics courses today, some students have trouble intuiting his ideas. The following is a non-technical explanation.^[19]

Carnot’s engine is of fundamental importance in the history and reasoning of science. According to Nobel laureate Richard Feynmann, “The science of thermodynamics began with an analysis, by the great engineer Sadi Carnot, of the problem of how to build the best and most efficient engine”.

In Carnot’s day, engines were fairly typically employed for pumping water out of mines. Customers had a practical question: how much the fuel was going to cost them.^[20] The “most efficient” engine was the one that, burning a standard quantity of fuel, could hoist a given load to the greatest height.

“Every one knows that heat can produce motion”, began Carnot. The heat engines of his era were mostly steam engines. Indispensable to the Industrial Revolution, they had been greatly improved by British engineers, said Carnot, without anyone really understanding the theory of what they were doing. Other working fluids had been tried instead of steam, for instance, air. Carnot pointed out that anything that exerts a force when heated and cooled might be used, even a solid metallic bar.

Regardless of such secondary details, his question was: Can heat engines be improved indefinitely? Or shall we run up against a fundamental limit beyond which it is impossible to go?

Carnot proved that even the ideal engine – assuming one could be built and operated – cannot convert all of the heat into mechanical work.

This key finding suggests there is a fundamental law of nature that forbids it to go all the way. There can be such a thing as unavailable heat.^[21]

He also showed that, for an engine to be ideal, it must, if run backwards, behave as the ideal refrigerator. Further, the efficiency of an ideal engine is limited by the temperatures of its coolest and hottest working parts (specifically, the ratio of the one to the other), and nothing else. It turns out to be a major limitation.

Carnot reasoned as follows.

Carnot showed, first, that heat by itself can never produce motion: it must also have a cooler place to go to. The common steam engine had a hot place (the furnace) and a cool place (the condenser); but he showed it must be true for all heat engines that could possibly be devised. He did it by imagining an engine with no cool place at all i.e. engine and surroundings are uniformly hot. Then the working fluid (steam, or whatever) can never cool down; the piston cannot retract; such an engine can deliver no power. “It is necessary that there should also be cold; without it, the heat would be useless”.

Carnot supplied an analogy: to get power from a water-wheel, water, by itself, is useless: it must be able to `’fall`’ to a lower place.

That heat engines derive their power by exploiting the difference in temperature between a hot place and a cool place was not so obvious.^[22] The insight was afterwards used to formulate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.^[23]

Next, Carnot reasoned that – like the water-wheel – the heat engine can be made to work in reverse. Instead of exploiting the “fall” to get useful mechanical effort, we could expend the identical effort to drive the fluid “upwards”.

Specifically, by forcing the engine backwards, we can make heat go from the cool place to the hot place, contrary to what naturally happens. The cool place will be made even cooler^[24] (as in a refrigerator) and the hot place will be made hotter. In effect, Carnot had invented the heat pump.

(This insight – that to convey heat from a cool to a warm place requires the expenditure of mechanical effort, lies at the heart of another way of stating the Second Law of Thermodynamics.)^[25]

Carnot’s next insight was to appreciate that, for the engine to be truly ideal – i.e. impossible to improve – it must be capable of running in both directions with equal facility. As a motor, it will transfer a certain amount of heat while lifting a weight a certain distance. Run backwards as a refrigerator, it will exactly restore the status quo.

Lastly, Carnot devised an engine cycle which would minimise heat waste. Furthermore, he proved that no better engine cycle can be devised for that purpose.

His principle is this: never allow the temperature of the working fluid in the cylinder to change, unless it is caused by a change of volume (expansion or compression). Otherwise, it will only allow heat to escape without doing any work for us.

The details of the ideal cycle are shown in the diagram elsewhere in this article. For the non-technical reader they matter least. There are four steps.

• Step 1. Convert heat entirely into work, keep the temperature steady. (Called “isothermal expansion”).
• Step 2.

Feed heat from the hot reservoir to the fluid in the cylinder; it will make the fluid expand against the piston. But keep the temperature steady. (This is called isothermal expansion. All of the heat is turned into useful work; none is wasted pointlessly heating up the fluid.)

• Step 2. Stop transferring heat and allow the fluid to go on expanding against the piston from the heat it already contains (this is called adiabatic expansion). It will make the fluid cool down.
• Step 3. Mechanically move the piston to compress the fluid. This will generate some heat. Allow this to escape to the cool reservoir without raising the fluid’s temperature. (This step, called isothermal compression, will cost us some mechanical work, but not as much as we gained by steps 1 and 2.)
• Step 4. Disconnect the cool reservoir and continue to compress the fluid with the piston. This will restore its original high temperature.

An engine that works on this cycle is today called a Carnot engine. A simple thought experiment showed that no engine can be more efficient than this. For, if one existed, it could drive the Carnot engine backwards, and

Kerker 1960

Jovita Feitosa turned up an opportune moment for the war effort, since recruitment was faltering. It has been argued that she was made a tool of recruitment propaganda and used to manipulate public opinion (though she herself had not intended this). Here was a country girl from a remote part of the Empire who had disguised herself as a man in order to enlist: an example to encourage timorous male volunteers^[26]: 196 and shame draft-dodgers. That was why she was fêted and accompanied by newspaper reporters everywhere she went – her tour through the northern provinces has been described as a “veritable circus” – and granted an audience by the Emperor Pedro II himself.^[27]

She began to divide public opinion, however; there were many discordant voices, and some even questioned her motives for joining, saying she did it to follow a lover. It was asked how she had been made a sergeant, quite a difficult promotion for male soldiers and one never granted to raw recruits. There was anyway a proper role for women in war but it did not include combat. The author and soldier Alfredo D’Escragnolle Taunay wrote that “she should have remembered that for a woman it is more noble to heal wounds than to open them”. On 16 September 1865 the war department ruled that to allow her to be a combatant was contrary to military regulations, though it did not forbid her to go to the theatre of war in some other role, e.g. nursing, which was a longstanding Brazilian tradition. (According to historian Francisco Doratioto, she did become a nurse;^[28] some sources say she did go to Paraguay in that role, between August and December 1865.^[26]: 196) Upon ceasing to be useful to the authorities she was allowed to drop out of the news; hence her subsequent history is obscure. Returning to her home province, she was not well received by her father. Her suicide was reported in the local newspaper on 16 November 1867. She received a pauper’s funeral.^[27] Some said she returned to Rio de Janeiro, where she was abandoned by her lover, an English engineer; others, that she died in a house fire.^[26]: 196

The figure of Jovita can also be seen as an archetype that recurs in Western^[29] culture, namely the warrior-maiden; she has been called the Brazilian Joan of Arc.^[26]

Carvalho, José Murilo de (2022). Jovita Alves Feitosa: Voluntária da pátria, Voluntaria da morte (in Portuguese). São Paulo: Chão. ISBN 978-6580341009.

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The question is not what the war is called in this or that South American republic, but what it is called in the English language, this being En:Wikipedia. A subsidiary question is which name is most useful for an English encyclopedia.

As to that:

1. “Paraguayan War” is the preferred usage in the English language, certainly in serious scholarly writing.

The JSTOR library is a database of nearly all recent high-quality scholarly articles in the English language. The facts speak for themselves:

Articles in JSTOR database that mention the phrase at least once:

	“paraguayan war”	“war of the triple alliance”	“triple alliance war”
in title	49	7	2
anywhere in article	1,069	450	2

(Source: JSTOR, interrogation of search engine provided, 29 April 2024, all articles.)

The larger (albeit lower quality) Google Scholar database paints a broadly similar picture:

Google Scholar hits

“paraguayan war”	“war of the triple alliance”	“triple alliance war”
3,880	2,610	814

Likewise, there are clearly more books with “Paraguayan War” in the title, than “War of the Triple Alliance.
(Source: Google Books, interrogate intitle:field.)

2. “War of the Triple Alliance” is parochial.

Outside South America there have been many triple alliances, so “War of the Triple Alliance” lacks context.

The 1864-1870 war is little known outside South America.^[36] By itself, the title “War of the Triple Alliance” doesn’t tell the international reader anything. Which triple alliance? There have been quite a few in human history. To suppose “Triple Alliance”, without context, must mean the South American one, is parochial. “Paraguayan War” at least points the reader to the right continent.

3. “War of the Triple Alliance” is less accurate. The Paraguayan War began in 1864; there was no Triple Alliance until 1865.

4. The title “War of the Triple Alliance” can be ideologically loaded. It was increasingly hijacked by the revisionists of the 1970s, with their conspiracy theories of an invisible plot to “get” Paraguay. But it was the war that caused the triple alliance, not the other way round. The war actually began and developed in 1864, between Paraguay and Brazil alone; there was no triple alliance then, just a Paraguayan army sacking the Mato Grosso’s capital. Not until after Argentina’s province of Corrientes was invaded in April 1865 did Argentina make an alliance with Brazil – its traditional enemy.^{[37]: 260, 358}