The title of Timothy Paul Grady's book reminds one of J. Leitch Wright Jr.'s Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in North America (1971). In fact, Grady's introduction states that this work shares more with Wright's forty-year-old study than with many other histories published since 1972. Grady narrows his focus geographically and temporally – to the southeast and to the years from 1650 to 1725.

Grady focusses on the fear experienced by the Spanish in Florida and the English in South Carolina generated by their mutual proximity. In five chapters, he outlines the European origin of the competition in the southeast; shows that the competition played out mainly in dual quests for Indian alliances; provides a “more personal picture between the Spanish and English” (8) during the decade of relative peace in the 1690s; describes the English attacks on the Spanish in the early 1700s and details the end of Spanish power in the southeast; and discusses the settlement of the French in the region and the resistance by Indians to domination by any one European power. Studies of southeastern Indians published over the last two decades by researchers such as Charles Hudson, Amy Turner Bushnell, Alan Gallay and John Worth enable Grady to bring the Indians into the interaction in a way that Wright could not. Grady describes contentions in the southeast as a three-sided struggle, among the Spanish, the English and the Indians.

Grady assesses the decisions and decrees sent to Florida and Carolina from their European capitals as hindrances to the survival of their respective colonies. The struggle between Florida and Carolina often played out in ways to make European concerns secondary to local problems. It has long been said that Spanish colonial officials throughout the Americas invoked the stance “I obey, but do not comply” to directives from Spain. Here Grady illustrates that the English in Carolina practised this stance more fully than did Spanish Floridians. In the 1670s and 1680s England wanted friendly relations with Spain, and Carolina's lord proprietors intended to avoid conflict with Spanish Florida. But in the southeast, traders and settlers of Carolina did not share imperial concerns, and placed first their own safety and potential profit. Carolina traders saw Spanish presence in the southeast as an obstacle which blocked the lucrative Indian trade. Meanwhile, Florida's governor encouraged raids on Carolina settlements and offered refuge to bound laborers who escaped from Carolina.

But the colonists of Carolina and of Florida did not experience the same relationship with their respective imperial capitals. The military hierarchy dominated the capital of St. Augustine. Florida depended on funding by the empire to pay the soldier colonists and to provide their supplies and weapons. Although Florida's governor equivocated on royal decrees, soldiers seldom openly defied orders as Carolina's colonists could choose to do. The Roman Catholic Church was a major force for community and unity in Florida, despite the power struggles between governors and friars. Grady almost overlooks this aspect of Florida which had no counterpart in Carolina. Carolina's residents and proprietors were in the southeast for the promise of profit. Indian traders and local tradesmen were often at odds with their own proprietors and the proprietors' conciliatory actions to appease England's king.

Grady's perspective is more local than imperial and he sees the colonist–residents of Florida and Carolina as alike in their respective responses to London and Madrid in a sort of core–periphery dynamic. Readers will not find much new information in this book, rather its value lies in offering another perspective on Spanish–English rivalry.