Causes Of Colonial Imperialism

720 Words3 Pages
Colonial Imperialism from the Europeans have caused millions and millions of deaths throughout the world till date. These innocent people were killed in battles while defending their homelands, in death camps and many other horrible ways. Throughout the 19th century European scientists, philosophers and writers developed many theories and ideas to prove the superiority of the white man to justify this mass murder of millions in the age of empire. In the early 1900’s a group led by Samuel George Morton in the American School of Race Sciences started collecting the skulls of different races. According to those scientists back then, as the skull contained the most important organ in the body the brain, so the bigger the skull the smarter the person/race. This was not true, in fact the Neanderthals had a 15% bigger brain than us Homo Homo Sapiens. A writer justified the mass extermination of these many people just as the, “melting of the snow before the advancing of the sun”. In this comparison the “melting snow” referred to the “unfit” races that were being exterminated by the “advancing rays of the sun” the Europeans. However the theory that had the most impact came from Charles Darwin 's theory on “natural selection” and the survival of the fittest”. He taught that if evolution had changed other species why hadn’t it done the same to the human race. This helped justified the expansion of the Great British race across the world. The other races being exterminated on the