War, diplomacy and informal empire

"Essentially an update on John Frank Cady's now-classic Foreign Intervention in the Río de la Plata, 1838-50 (1929). Challenges utility of the 'informal empire' concept in explaining Britain's sloppy handling of its Platine interests in the mid-19th century. McClean is more comfortable with English-language materials (which includes an array of documents from the PRO), than he is with those sources written in Spanish"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.