Undeveloped Countries

Problems in international politics, apart from the contact between sovereign states, arise from the distinction between industrialised or highly developed states and undeveloped peoples or countries. If the surface of the habitable earth may be divided into areas like Europe and North America on the one hand, and areas on the other like tropical Africa and parts of Asia, it will be found that these latter areas give rise to some of the most important conflicts of policy between the governments of the industrialised peoples. The phrases which remind one of the problem are such as “a place in the Sun,” “the white man’s burden,” “spheres of influence” and “imperial destiny.” The realities underlying these phrases are oil-seeds, wood and wood-extracts, rubber, cheap labour and new fields for investment with quick and large returns: but policy in this matter is not wholly economic, for the peoples as well as their government are still induced to support the extension of their several national powers by a vague feeling of prestige and heightened self-importance when they can say that “we have expanded” into new territories. ¹