While exports to the Ottoman Empire grew, East Africa's exports to other countries were equally impressive. Apart from the Balkan Peninsula, there was no shortage of nations around the world actively preparing for war. Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, the United States, Japan, and East Africa itself—all had been actively expanding their armaments since entering the twentieth century.
Beyond the large-scale arms race among the great powers, the imperialist frenzy to carve up the world, which had begun in the late 1890s, had also spurred non-great-power nations to invest in military affairs.
Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, signs of war could be seen everywhere. The dark clouds of a war that might sweep across the world had been silently gathering for nearly twenty years, and the eye of the storm was Europe.
Among the great powers, only the United States, East Africa, and Japan could sit firmly on the fishing platform. These three countries had virtually no powerful enemies nearby, but Japan had clearly embarked upon a path of military expansion entirely different from that of the United States and East Africa, rather than devoting all its energy to economic development.
While East Africa shipped strategic supplies to the Ottoman Empire, orders from other regions were also quite brisk. Many of the resources needed by Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russia had to be imported from East Africa, concentrated in such areas as non-ferrous metals, internal-combustion-engine vehicles, electricity, communications, tropical agricultural products, and more.
Britain and France, meanwhile, could obtain many vital war supplies from their own colonies, such as cotton, rubber, and sugar. They were comparatively less dependent on East Africa, importing mainly industrial products such as internal-combustion-engine vehicles and electrical equipment from East Africa.
In East Africa's foreign trade, Germany and Russia ranked first and