Draw on the primary source documents, especially the section entitled “Motives and Attitudes,” to explain the arguments European elites gave for their imperial projects at the end of the nineteenth century.
Purpose: The last major wave of imperial expansion in world history developed in earnest after 1875. It came to an end, more or less, with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The rationale for empire was, as we saw in Unit 6, diverse. Economic motivations for markets, labor, and raw materials, evangelical religion, […]