This book has been long in the making, and its history reflects the historiographical developments of the past two decades. When in the early 1990s I wrote my doctoral thesis on Weimar Germany and Latin America, transnational history was still a very new approach. In the meantime, the transnational perspective has arrived at the mainstream of the profession. I have profited from the rising production along the years, and my concept for a book on Latin America during the First World War that originated back then has changed quite radically. The result of this process is this book, which has benefited from discussions with many colleagues and students around the world.

The concept of global consciousness plays an important part in this study. In using it, I follow an approach developed in our Berlin research group “Actors of Cultural Globalization.” A further stimulating context was Freie Universität's project 1914–1918-online: The International Encyclopedia of the First World War. In order to finish this book, I was honored with a research fellowship by the Einstein Foundation. Both the Foundation and the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin that hosted me deserve gratitude for their generosity.

My thanks also go to those who have directly supported me in finishing this book, especially my former research assistant and now PhD student Karina Kriegesmann. I appreciate the advice of my teacher and friend Hans-Joachim König, who years ago prevented me from writing a chapter on the war into what had become a much-too-long doctoral dissertation. I am also very grateful to the many people in the libraries and archives in Latin America and elsewhere who helped me, and to my family, who missed me when I was there and supported me when I was back.