ABSTRACT
Study of the historical origins of the Cold War and the 'National Security State' has remained largely an American enterprise proceeding without much reference to the classic theories. The editor of a recent attempt to present all varieties of contemporary Marxist theories of imperialism confesses that he can find no theoretical framework capable of comprehending both dependency theory and Cold War theory. Study of the old colonial empires and their economic policies has continued but has tended to be concentrated in the period between World War I and the onset of decolonisation. There were many reasons for Frank's celebrity. He provided historical case studies to counter the Rostow thesis. He gave ammunition to those who expected the worst from bourgeois decolonisation in Asia and Africa by delineating the results of an analogous process in nineteenth-century Latin America. Much of the academic left eagerly embraced Frank's works as important contributions together as the Marxist theory of Imperialism'.
