The subtitle of this book seems to confine its survey to diplomatic relations under Carlos Antonio López and Francisco Solano López, 1841-1870. Actually Peter Schmitt has written in considerable detail of relations between Paraguay and European countries from 1811 to 1870. The book is in two parts, a first section that deals with the general problems of opening diplomatic relations to approximately 1854, and a second section that tells the story of relations with each country in turn, including the Vatican. Under the term “relations” Schmitt subsumes not merely matters of diplomatic recognition and negotiations but also immigration to Paraguay, the wanderings of European naturalists, the importation of technicians and specialists, the sending of Paraguayan agents and students abroad, and relations with commercial firms. The chapter on relations with France, for example, contains a history of the luckless attempt to settle French immigrants in a compact agricultural colony at Nuevo Burdeos on the right bank of the Paraguay River. Such a definition of relations converts the book from an account of diplomacy to study of the entrance of Europeans, their trade, and new industrial technology into a country that through decades of isolation had developed a strong central authority able to decide upon and direct investment efficiently. The policies of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia made it possible for Carlos Antonio López to initiate a series of promising industrial developments under government aegis. Indeed, if there is a hero in this work, it is the elder López with his clear vision of national needs and his unflinching insistence upon upholding Paraguayan sovereignty, as it was then regarded. Interestingly he was willing to concede foreign nationals far more than new countries would today. The chapter on relations with the Vatican contains a sketch of the efforts of the elder López and his son to secure direct dependence of the Paraguayan Church upon the Holy See, and so eliminate yet another element of subordination to a neighbor. The promise of Paraguayan development was lost, of course, in a holocaust that has direct parallel in recent European history.

Much of the story of Paraguayan diplomatic relations has been told before. Peter Schmitt’s contribution is a thoughtful, critical reexamination and amplification on the basis of very extensive research in printed materials and in the libraries and archives of Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Germany. The wealth of published materials on Paraguayan relations with the United Kingdom, France, and other western European countries makes it unlikely that any great surprises will come from archival research in those countries.