1. Imperialism

2. Imperialism Defined
a policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force
the building of an empire

3. Why would any country want to do this?
What would motivate them?
Brainstorm some ideas

4. Motives Behind 18th C. Imperialism
There were many reasons, or motives, for Imperialism.
The Economic Motives were usually the most important.

5. THE ECONOMIC MOTIVE Economic Stage Explanation Simplest
Lust for loot or tribute
More Developed
Search for raw materials and markets
Most Refined
Mutual economic benefits for colony and parent country.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

12. 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.

13. THE COLONIZING MOTIVE
A nation’s need to provide space for its surplus, dissident, or criminal population.

14. 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.

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

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

17. Missionary motive
The desire to convert other peoples to a religion, culture, or way of life.

19. 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)

20. Examine These late 19th Century Cartoons

23. 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.