Acheson On British Investment In The U.S.A.

‘[I]n the Europe-oriented-and-dominated world of the nineteenth century the western hemisphere became out of bounds for colonial expansion. But not for investment.

Europe, after a few years of doubt, stood ready to invest in the American gamble.

Throughout the century the flood of “foreign aid” grew and grew until in the half century preceding 1914 Western Europe, led by Great Britain, “had invested abroad almost as much as the entire national wealth of Great Britain. . . .

If the same proportion of American resources were devoted to foreign investment as Britain devoted . . . in 1913, the flow of investment would require to be thirty times as great.

The entire Marshall Plan would have to be carried out twice a year.”’

Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.; 1969), p. 7.

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