Three Faces of Imperialism: British and American Approaches To Asia and Africa, 1870-1970
This is a systematic comparison of the attitudes toward empire of the elites in Britain before 1939 and in the United States after 1945. The author examines ideas of strategic power, moral obligation and economic advantage. Although the structure is somewhat mechanical, the book is a valuable addition to the considerable literature on the subject.
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As a European, and particularly as a Briton, I had the unusual good fortune to come first to Asia by way of America. The African and Indian friendships formed during college days at Oxford whetted my appetite for an understanding of the non-white world, but only when I arrived at Berkeley for a postgraduate year did I enter the life of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Filipinos, the Indonesians-who were there by the score, sharing with me the experience of being a foreign student in the United States.
American optimism about East Asia, in precious short supply only a few years earlier, was abundantly available in 1980. "The arc from Korea through Taiwan and the Philippines, at the very center of great power rivalry for much of this century, is less subject to these strains today than at any time in well over forty years," Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke declared in June. Such pronouncements by U.S. policymakers were understandable: East Asia offered far more possibilities--for diplomatic overtures, for expanding trade--than anyone dared predict during the Vietnam era. But in 1980 enough warning signals were flashing throughout the region to suggest the need for a more balanced--and less buoyant--assessment.
In the tangled international tapestry certain relationships dominate the pattern. The U.S.-Soviet struggle has colored almost all world politics for a generation. Franco-German entente has ended centuries of European warfare. One relationship which holds much potential for improving world conditions is that between Japan and the United States. This bilateral relationship, conducted within a dense multilateral web in which each nation has many other ties based on interest and sentiment, is now, and will be increasingly, central to any proper functioning of the world economy and polity.

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