Abstract
This essay examines an American expansionist vision that featured finance capital. Charles Conant, an influential promoter of American economic imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century, contested the idea that the “overproduction crisis” fueled American imperialism by countering that “surplus capital” was the major dilemma that America faced, and that it could only be solved by investing abroad. A version of Conant’s thesis was articulated in American periodical literature about U.S. foreign investment in Porfirian Mexico.