The First World War and its impact continue to attract scholarly attention, but the loss of life on the battlefields of France and the outcome at the Treaty of Versailles are normally viewed through a European lens. Moreover, even studies of economic warfare rather than military conflict between 1914 and 1918 tend to concentrate on the Allied blockade of German ports. This book's focus on the commercial realities of global conflict, not at the core of the world economy or at the centre of hostilities but on the periphery, sheds a rather different light on the Great War. The republics on South America's eastern seaboard constitute Phillip Dehne's special interest, not from the standpoint of the area's limited naval engagements, but in the context of the war waged by British business interests against their German rivals. While the years 1914–18 inevitably form the centrepiece of his work, Dehne's opening discussion of the pre-war origins and extent of German economic penetration in Latin America and his concluding review of post-1918 commercial hostility broaden the book's scope. In many ways his examination of the effect of the First World War on expatriate business rivalry in South America complements the earlier work of Bill Albert, whose well-received monograph analysed the conflict's impact on the economies of the republics themselves.

Dehne's conclusion is clear: Britain lost the Great War in South America. Despite the best efforts of British diplomats on the spot, despite the intervention of the Foreign Office at home and despite the cooperation of British businessmen, the commercial war against German firms yielded few tangible results. Calls to neutral countries and their companies against using German intermediaries usually fell on deaf ears. Those German firms which dominated commodity trades like Argentine wheat and Brazilian coffee remained in place during the inter-war years. The difficulties were immense. The Latin American republics were understandably reluctant to break their commercial links with the Central Powers and their businessmen, and they also resented Allied interference with their economic sovereignty. German partners in Argentina or Brazil were permanent residents, even citizens, of the republics in which they worked, rather than temporary expatriates. British and German firms were inextricably interlinked, often cooperating with rather than working against one another. Despite their maritime rivalry, Hamburg-South America, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and Lamport & Holt were all members of the same shipping conferences; German and British mining companies in Chile had collaborated in successive nitrate combinations; banks and trading companies were similarly part of local interlocked financial and commercial networks. To remove one element might imperil the rest. Many British-based companies had employed German agents in the South American ports; British firms had hired German managers; some English managers had even married German women. There were too many ways by which companies could cloak their activities to avoid the restrictions of the Statutory List, and too many middlemen prepared to trade. Modern examples of blacklisting and sanctions, by Britain in Rhodesia during the 1960s and more recently against North Korea and Iran by the United States, for example, show just how difficult successful commercial warfare can be.

The text, as Dehne acknowledges, is concerned with British power and perceptions and British actions and attitudes. Consequently, the book is heavily dependent upon Anglocentric sources, British business archives, HM Government records, the English-language press, both in London and in South America, and the private papers of the main British protagonists in the story, which are bound to influence the author's conclusion. Businessmen and officials are much more likely to voice their dissatisfaction at the failure of measures to contain German firms than they are to record their successes. An examination of German business or official archives might yield a more nuanced conclusion about the impact of commercial warfare. Indeed, the complaints of British consular officials about British commercial inadequacy were very often echoed by their German counterparts against their own countrymen.

The book rather takes for granted the importance of Britain's commercial presence in South America as well as the exaggerated scaremongering of German penetration. While a quarter of Britain's overseas capital was invested there, the region accounted for less than 10 per cent of the nation's trade. The United States and Europe, as well as the Empire, remained her most important commercial partners. Latin America produced little that Britain could not obtain elsewhere. While it is not necessarily true, as Christopher Platt argued, that British business was already on the retreat from Latin America before 1914, nevertheless British traders were often on the back foot. British houses had never enjoyed a dominant role in Argentine wheat. The loss of ground by British coffee merchants to their German rivals is often exaggerated, but was probably inevitable given the different consumption patterns of the two metropolitan countries. In the one commodity where Britain enjoyed a decisive market share, chilled meat, the Germans were nowhere to be seen. With a few exceptions, Latin America was something of a backwater for the British. There were far more important fish to fry elsewhere. Further, the focus of attention on Anglo–German rivalry may overlook the real issues. The true commercial victor in South America during and after the Great War was the United States, whose businessmen and capitalists subsequently dominated the region's overseas trades and finance.

The book is nicely produced by the Manchester University Press. The text is user-friendly, and Dehne does his readers a further service by appending a conclusion to each chapter where he gathers the main themes together. This study of warfare without military conflict could have a wide appeal to students of the First World War, to Latin Americanists, especially those interested in expatriate economic influence in the region, and to business historians. There is also an extensive bibliography, although Mira Wilkins may not appreciate her seminal article on free-standing companies being attributed to Stanley Chapman.