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ET TY eg AY. PORT a wim 8 ant ioe ME, pe cannon RE: COUNTERORL...Ti: [ON WERK - EE AA NE was being challenged by Germany, Japan, France, other countries, began to recognize the necessity to a certain degree of exercising more formal political control over certain parts of the world in order to maintain British _ _ : (unintelligible), in order to maintain British power in competition with her new rivals. The scramble for colonies in Africa, for example, which did not begin until the late nineteenth century, can be interpreted in large part in terms of conquest among competing imperialist powers. Now the American imp’ rialist road pretended to de-emphasize the need for colonies, for formal territorial possessions. American imperialist theory, as J mentioned before, bore a striking resemblance to British policy in the early, in the mid-nineteenth century. Americans begun to think, beginning in the 1880's and the 1890's, about the possibilities of an overseas expansion, perhaps a bit prematurely, as the result of various economic crises, as a result of the filling up of the American continent. It was widely believed in many circles that opportunity for economic expansion was de- creasing in the United States itself, and again I would argue that this was probably a premature judgment at this time, but nevertheless people were beginnirg seriously to think about the necessity or the desirability Of overseas expansion. Now Americans who thought about the problem, people like Alfred J. Mahan (phonetic), the naval strategist, people like Theodore Roosevelt, tended to agree that formal territorial expansion beyond the North American continent was undesirable and unnecessary. The, xheory of expans ion that they developed was one which would eventually envisage a stable world system of theoretically equal independence and competing states open to trade and open to investment, Thejct ideas reflected strong optimism about the competitive position of American capitalists. Many Americans during this period thought about problems of overseas expansion, were confident that in many cases American capital would be able to compete successfully on equal terms with capital of other countries. Already, however, at this time American policy makers were beginning to regard Latin America, at least, as a kind of 1.31 ——~ aod Re