Imperialism: What Started It?

Imperialism was the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies. Such a policy was instigated in the late 19th century, by European countries, yearning to gain more power. There were three basic motives behind imperialism: political growth, economical improvements and morality. If a nation were to overrule a foreign country, the first nation would be expanding their boundaries to all over the world and have more land and people to control. With respect to economical growth, taking over another country provided raw materials and a wider variety of places to sell goods. Last, but not least, morality was supposedly the main motivation which prompted nations to take control of others. In “The White Man’s Burden,” Rudyard Kipling states his opinion on imperialistic acts and he, clearly, thinks of imperialism as a positive movement. He presents the acts as burdens on white men, but also as great deeds needed to be done.

In opposition to Kipling’s views on imperialism, Edward D. Morel writes “The Black Man’s Burden” as a way of expressing his feelings on imperialism. In “The Black Man’s Burden,” Morel states that the acts of the white men in the past had merely harmed the body, and though harming the body is not seen as positive, it’s not nearly as harmful to the person in full as it is to break one’s spirit, which is exactly what imperialism did to the Africans.

The tremendous diversity just between two perspectives on such a huge era show that imperialism needed to be experienced before being judged. Just as with Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” in which he explains a time when he was in Burma and he was essentially put into a situation with absolutely no positive aspects and he experienced a piece of imperialism, on which he had an extremely negative opinion.