This fine monograph deals largely with Anglo-Spanish imperial relations in Spanish America during the eighteenth century following the signature of the asiento (an agreement granting the British South Sea Company – hereafter SSC – a monopoly on the slave trade in the Spanish Atlantic), a topic already well covered by previous monographs, PhD theses and articles. This book, rather than providing a general account of the SSC's operations, focuses on the tensions that emerged between the two (competing) empires while the asiento was in operation, highlighting contradictions, complications, but also collaboration between Britain and Spain. The major novelty of the book is that it explores in depth individual interactions between members of the British and Spanish empires once the asiento was in operation, when, for the first time, Britons were allowed to reside legally, and for long periods, in Spanish America, albeit in low numbers. And indeed, Finucane claims that the greatest contribution of the book is to argue that ‘the real importance of the South Sea Company's presence in the Americas lay in its bringing together of the Spanish and British imperial projects at the level of individual actors’.

This brief book is structured in four chapters, preceded by a Prologue (‘Before the Asiento’) and ending with an Epilogue (‘Beyond the Asiento’). The first chapter is called ‘Britain Hopes for the “Riches of America”, 1713–1716’, which deals with the beginning of the British asiento contract, its implementation and its modus operandi, but also with the political reactions from all actors potentially affected by this arrangement, and the early troubles that emerged soon after its creation, which led to the signature of a renegotiated treaty in 1716. The second chapter, ‘The Stuttering Success of the Early Trade, 1717–1728’, despite the title, deals with a wide range of topics during turbulent years when peace and trade were disrupted, including the impact of the War of the Quadruple Alliance on the SSC's operations. Particularly interesting in this chapter is the position taken by Britons resident in Jamaica and their conflicts with the SSC, as well as the nature of the personal connections established between British subjects and the Spaniards resident near the asiento’s factories. The penultimate chapter is titled ‘“Unjust Depredations” and Growing Tensions, 1729–1738’, which deals with increasing tensions between imperial powers in the Americas (in the West Indies in particular). As highlighted in the chapter, among the main reasons for heightening tensions was contraband trade, of both slaves and goods, but also religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, and, connected to these, slave rebellions (in particular tensions with the Maroons of Jamaica). All these factors greatly contributed to the deterioration of cooperation in the trade of the SSC. The last chapter, ‘The End of the British asiento, 1739–1748’, shows exactly how this worsening of relations between the British and the Spanish in the Spanish American empire led, eventually, to the end of the British asiento.

The principal positive features of the book that I would highlight are: first, it is well written, a real pleasure to read, and the most novelistic history book that I have read for a while. By bringing individual interactions between British and Spanish people to life, Finucane has mastered the art of redaction to the great benefit of the reader. Second, the author is very effective in showing many interesting dimensions of the simultaneous possibility of profit and danger for all involved in the asiento. Finally, the book contains plenty of colourful anecdotes, missing in the usual accounts of the SSC's activities.

On the negative side, the author's claims to be breaking new ground are less convincing. Readers are informed that ‘rather than being entirely at odds with one another, empires [British and Spanish empires in the Americas] were interlinked, reliant on one another for trade and settlement …’; or that while ‘many historians have considered the Spanish and British empires entirely separately, a close consideration of the whole of the early modern Americas reveals a region that is best considered as a site of interaction and overlap’; these claims are already present in previous works, such as those of Adrian Pearce, which are not mentioned, although it is true that Pearce is largely concerned with the period immediately after the asiento. Likewise, the complementary character of legal and illegal British trade in Spanish America will also be familiar to scholars. Finally, the author missed the opportunity to engage more with the available theory on international long-distance trade during the pre-industrial era, which would have helped to avoid unnecessary repetition throughout the book. For instance in Chapter 1, agency theory would have been a good theoretical framework with which to explain the problems faced by the directors of the South Sea Company in controlling factors. The works of Avner Greif, for instance, could have been used as a starting point. Likewise, in the material relating to Buenos Aires, although Alex Borucki is mentioned in the acknowledgements section, his works are not, which is a pity. The author also missed the chance to compare the problems faced by the SSC with those faced by similar companies such as the East Indian Company (EIC) or the Royal African Company (for this latter case there is only a brief comparison in a footnote). Indeed, many of the problems faced by the SSC, described in several sections of the book, were quite similar to the challenges met by the EIC in Asia, from which more general conclusions could be drawn.

All in all, this book is a good addition to the existing literature on the South Sea Company and the asiento, although the reader may not find anything that surprising.