An old saying went: "Nothing may grow too abundant; at the height of flourishing comes decline." On the surface, the East African economy was currently in just such a state.
If the nations of the world wished to avoid such an outcome, they could only blaze new trails and break free from the cycle. Britain, along with every maritime hegemon before it, had continually conquered other regions to shatter the limits constraining its own development.
This was why global colonialism had surged ever higher, reaching its peak from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of this one. Yet by the outbreak of World War, colonialism clearly could no longer resolve its original problems. After all, the world had already been carved up completely, leaving no new markets to open.
This was also why Britain and France, the two defenders of the old order, had displayed signs of decline in recent years. Yet judging from their economic and social development, Britain and France had not actually developed slowly. They simply could not compare with emerging industrial nations such as the United States, East Africa, and Germany.
However, it was no easy task for late-developing nations like East Africa to break through the world order established by Britain and France. Germany had been the first challenger, but in terms of sheer scale, Germany ultimately found it difficult to break the shackles imposed by Britain and France.
Yet Germany's geographic disadvantages had forced it to take a desperate gamble. Even if it had not launched a war, it would eventually have been strangled in the cradle by the surrounding great powers.
East Africa and the United States, meanwhile, had become protected by their distance from Europe, that land of turmoil, and by their vast size. Those factors had become talismans