Imperialism

Imperialism Defined

•a policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force

•the building of an empire

Why would any country want to do

this?

•What would motivate them?

•Brainstorm some ideas

•There were many reasons, or motives, for Imperialism.

•The Economic Motives were usually the most important.

Motives Behind 18th C. Imperialism

THE ECONOMIC MOTIVE

Economic Economic StageStage ExplanationExplanation

Simplest Lust for loot or tribute

More Developed

Search for raw materials and markets

Most Refined

Mutual economic benefits for colony and parent

country.

Simplest Stage•The earliest

Spanish explorations provide an example of the simplest stage. The Spaniards hoped to find gold and silver in the new world.

More Developed Stage• Britain’s economic

interest in the new world reflects the more developed stage.

•Once southern plantations began to thrive, raw cotton was shipped to England, made into clothing, and resold to the colonists at a profit.

Most Refined Stage

•Britain’s promotion of the tea industry in India illustrates the most refined economic stage.

•The growth of tea on a mass scale provided widespread employment for Indians, a cheap and popular drink for English people, a product that the British could sell in Europe for a profit.

The Strategic Motive•Strategic motives often

became as important as economic ones

•The acquisition of territory to protect the mother country, her colonies, and their lines of communication.

Britain in Egypt in the late 19th C.

•motivated mainly by the desire to protect her trade routes to her most important colony, India,

• opening and controlling the Suez Canal.

COLONIZING MOTIVE

•During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the colonizing motive was also very important, though it became less important as time went on.

THE COLONIZING MOTIVE

• A nation’s need to provide space for its surplus, dissident, or criminal population.

Freedom from Oppression

•British settlers who came to the New World included poor people in search of a better life, religious dissenters, such as the puritans, and criminals such as the ones who established the colony in Georgia in 1732.

Lesser Motives

•Three other motives, the less important of the ones we have already discussed, were complimentary to imperialist expansion.

The desire for revenge, excitement, power or prestige; the urge to trample weaker peoples and to advertise strength.

Aggressive motive:

Missionary motive•The desire to convert other peoples to a

religion, culture, or way of life.

Leadership motive

•A country’s conviction of its superior ability to provide orderly government, either as a permanent proprietor or as a temporary trustee.

•aka “White Man’s Burden” (a poem by Rudyard Kipling)

Examine These late 19th Century

Cartoons

Three Main Motives

•Most of Europe’s imperialist expansion was based on the economic, strategic, and colonizing motives, with other motives playing a lesser part.