ABSTRACT
Expansion of the peoples of the middle latitudes into the low latitudes of Africa, America, and Asia has brought almost every part of the tropics at one time or another under foreign political control. This expansion, which was made possible by a great development of material culture, began some five centuries ago in Western Europe, but it did not remain the prerogative of Western Europe. The United States, Japan, and other countries such as Australia and New Zealand, too, entered the scramble for political control of the tropics. China, on the other hand—due to political weakness—did not stake any claims in the tropics, despite the fact that millions of its peoples settled in tropical countries.
