Essay 5

Imperialism certainly contained elements of cultural/racial arrogance, for without them there would be great difficulty for a European nation, or any nation, for that matter, in forcing its will upon another people. By applying the rationalization that European peoples, values, and technologies were superior to African or Asian values and technologies, one could make the argument that the exploitation of the inferior latter by the superior former is perfectly acceptable, even desirable, in that the African or the Asian people thus subjugated would then benefit from exposure to a superior people and a preferable way of life. Such an idea, or at least the vague rationale behind it, can be seen to some degree in the Indian Wars that stretched throughout much of the nineteenth century in American history, where justifications were given in an effort to make the case that it was acceptable for white settlers to take land formerly in the possession of indigenous peoples.
This may stray beyond the scope of this course, but an idea similar to the one put forward by this essay assignment could easily be applied to Nazi Germany and other twentieth century powers and the conflicts which ensued when one group of people put forward their own racial/cultural superiority as a rationalization to conquer/eliminate another group of people. That certainly isn‘t to say that European colonialism was blanket genocide, only that colonialism was and did require a certain kind of self superior mindset in order for the arrangement to be carried forward at all. In this case, regions of Africa were made to be subservient to European nations based simply upon the ideas Europeans had about their own superior culture, as well as the more practical reality that nineteenth century European nations were technologically and military superior, and that few, if any of the colonial subject nations were in positions to realistically mount a prolonged and competitive resistance sufficient enough to ward off colonial occupations for anything more than a brief respite. Regardless, the same attitude prevails.