The Paraguayan War or The War of the Triple Alliance can not be properly understood outside the world context of its time. It is obvious that it is not possible to reconstruct each and every element from the past and, since it is impossible to do so, it makes not sense to try. The world context, however, it is crucial and has to be reconstructed, at last, in its main and universal elements. Those will be the frame for the phenomena that the historian, as social scientist, studies in a given moment. For the purposes of the present work the context will be determined by a critical review of the historical meaning of Pax Britannica, Free Trade and imperialism under England's hegemony.
