1. Age of Imperialism
Definition and Causes

2. Imperialism
Rule by a particular country over a diverse
and different set of other, often distant,
countries and peoples, generally as a result
of military conquest
“The Plum Pudding in
Danger,” James Gillray,
1805
(Napoleon and Pitt
carve up the world)

5. Why Empire?
Economic Motives:
• To make money by expanding and
controlling foreign trade
• To create new markets for products
• To acquire raw materials and cheap labor
• To export industrial technology and
transportation methods

6. Why Empire?
Political Motives:
• To gain power by expanding territory
• To compete with other European countries
• To gain ports for their navies
• To gain larger militaries by using native soldiers
• To gain prestige by winning colonies
• To boost national pride and security

7. Why Empire?
Religious/Humanitarian Motives:
• To spread Christianity
• To protect European missionaries in other
lands
• To spread European values and moral beliefs
• To educate peoples of other cultures/build
schools
• To heal the sick/build hospitals/improve
sanitation

8. Why Empire?
Exploratory Motives:
• To explore “unknown” or uncharted territory
• To conduct scientific research
• To conduct medical searches for the causes
and treatment of diseases
• To go on an adventure
• To investigate “unknown” lands and cultures

9. Why Empire?
Ideological Motives:
• Belief that the white race was superior
and other cultures were “primitive”
• Belief that Europeans should “civilize”
peoples in other parts of the world
• Belief that great nations should have
empires and only the strongest nations will
survive

10. Missionary school, Madagascar, ca. 1900

11. British cartoon
“The Rhodes
Colossus,”
showing Cecil
Rhodes’ vision
of making
Africa “all
British from
Cape to
Cairo,” 1892

12. Diamond mining in Kimberley, South Africa, 1890

13. Henry Morton Stanley on an expedition to find Dr. Livingstone, who
had disappeared in central Africa;
at the mouth of the Ruizi River, 1872

14. Advertisement
for Pears’ Soap
from the 1890s

15. The “White Man’s Burden”

16. Two Sides
• Promoters of empire - champion its merits
and the benefits it brought to the
colonizers and the colonized
• Anti-imperialists - focus on humiliating
battlefield defeats, political domination,
economic exploitation, social
disenfranchisement, and cultural alienation