Imperialism Essay

Imperialism is a term used by historians to define the phenomenon of empire building during the 19th century. Imperialism was not a new topic because the stronger nations, such as the Great Britain and France, have been colonizing other civilizations for centuries but the concept of nation building took a new turn because of Industrial Revolution. As a result of Industrial Revolution, there was an increase need for European industrialized nations to obtain additional raw materials, and resources. Additionally, there was a need to trade these fast producing materials that were brought from the Industrialization and new trade ports were created in imperialized countries, such as China and India. The Europeans justified these actions of Imperializing to other nations and its citizens through the concept of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism was an ideology preceded from Charles Darwin and his study of evolution, which he explains in his work “`On the Origin of Species”. In the book, Darwin introduced the idea of natural selection and “Survival of the fittest”, which stated that through time only the strongest species survive. Darwin’s theory was later applied to society with the term coiled Social Darwinism, according to which it is just natural for superior groups to outcompete inferior ones. Karl Pearson supported this idea with his work “National Life from the Standpoint of Science”, in which he stated “How many centuries, how many thousand years, have the Kaffir or the Negro held large districts in Africa undisturbed by the white man? Yet their intertribal struggles have not yet produced a civilization in the least comparable with the Aryan” (527). In this excerpt, Pearson labels Africa as an inferior nation compared to the Aryans and emphasizes that Social Darwinism was destined to happen. The belief of European supremacy and the increasing need for resources and raw materials due to Industrial Revolution made Imperialism inevitable. (How repressed countries