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American Imperialism In The 1800s

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Imperialism first emerged in the 15th century with the exploration and colonisation of parts of the world, including the Spanish empire in the Americas and French colonisation of North America (Mason, 2011). However, by the 1880’s only Indochina, China, the Pacific Islands and Africa remained free from European control and towards the end of the 19th century, Six European powers engaged in the aggressive struggle to increase influence and control. Until the Age of Imperialism in the 1880’s, Africa remained predominantly unexplored by Europeans and indigenous people possessed 90% of the continent (Mason, 2011). However, the contest between the European powers for control in Africa was specifically intense, resulting in the Scramble for Africa …show more content…

Political and economic frameworks reinforced colonialism and capitalism in the 19th century and were based on the ideas of social Darwinism introduced by Herbert Spencer (Lang, 2014). Spencer drew upon on the idea of evolution from the works of Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamark to create a doctrine of political and economic competitiveness that supported the free hand approach to society, which countered efforts for social reform and supported colonialism and capitalism (Lang, 2014). The atmosphere of intellectual thinking dominated by Social Darwinism in the 1890’s provided the ideological support and racial justification for colonialism in Africa and slavery in North America (Pinder, 2002). Exploitative and derogatory attitudes towards non-white races in the European dominance of Africa and America were reinforced by the idea of the fittest will survive. Social Darwinism provided a mechanism for the “scientific and natural” domination of nature and non-Europeans that propagated the …show more content…

Ever-present advocates of polygenism like Sir Arthur Keith believed that racism was the main driver for the competition amongst races and a requirement of evolution (Wolpoff, M. and Caspari, R. 1997). Keith described Adolf Hitler as an “evolutionist” and was a strong proponent that the Jews were an individual biological race (Wolpoff, M. and Caspari, R. 1997D). German Biopolicy between 1930-1950 was formed on the basis of Darwinism interpreted by biologists like Ernest Haeckel to mean the interracial struggle for survival and dominance (Wolpoff, M. and Caspari, R. 1997). It is clear that the ideology and beliefs of anthropologists like Keith interlaced features of racism and evolution that attributed to the crimes carried out by the Nazi’s against the gypsies and Jews under racial premises (Coon, 2005). At the same time black people were persecuted and lynched in America and Coon (2005) suggests that racism was driven by links to ideas of evolutionary progress, racial differences and once again polygenism dominated the racial

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