When the open frontier runs out, a race between capable powers turns on each other's holdings, and confidence earned beating weaker opponents meets its first equal. Ansary's ch. 27: "With virtually no unclaimed territory left to colonize, latecomers to the feast were going to have to get their colonies from someone else's plate. European powers therefore began to eye one another's holdings." "For years, both had been swatting down opponents like so many mosquitoes. With weapons like theirs, who on earth could stand up to them? The answer was obvious, of course, another power with weapons like theirs." After 1918 "the major hostile powers began rebuilding and rearming for the next big one." Clay's step (speculation): an abundance story holds only while the gains keep opening new ground; once the easy gains are taken, the same capability turns inward, so the test of an abundance story is whether it names where the new ground is.

Evidence 5 passages

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Immediately after the armistice of 1918, the major hostile powers began rebuilding and rearming for the next big one.
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All the major European social holes thus got busy improving their killing tools, and none more so than those two industrial powerhouses.
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For years, both had been swatting down opponents like so many mosquitoes. With weapons like theirs, who on earth could stand up to them? The answer was obvious, of course, another power with weapons like theirs.
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European powers therefore began to eye one another's holdings.
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With virtually no unclaimed territory left to colonize, latecomers to the feast were going to have to get their colonies from someone else's plate.

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