Modern European Empires

Modern European empires are certainly a contentious topic, now and during their growth. Philosophers and academics wrote extensively on their legitimacy; Whether Europeans had any right to partake in imperialism. There was some opposition to it, as shown in some of Vitoria and others' work. There was however, also substantial work on the justification of it, which won out, as evidenced by the historical actuality of European Empires, and our modern concepts of social hierarchy, which I will be exploring in more depth later.

In response to the Spanish in South America, but also the Dutch in Indonesia, the British in India, and all three in North America, intellectuals such as Grotius, Vitoria, and Locke proposed justifications based on evangelisation,

This renewed and further enforced the belief in English cultural superiority over the Irish. It is this idea that increasingly became central in justification of Empire. Catholics, half-castes, and Hindus came to be seen as irremediably degenerate: their religions as a corruption to both political structures and morality. Ideas of 'civilising missions' and ethnic supremacism were widespread in nineteenth-century Britain, and Empire came to mean the protection and glorification of the Crown, church, and culture. Lord Palmerston, twice British Prime Minister (1855 – 1858 and 1859-1865), and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1830 – 1834, 1835- 1841, and 1846 – 1851), among other positions, claimed that “Britain stood at the head of moral, social, and political civilization. Our task is to lead the way and direct the march of other nations”7. Thus the emergence of Rudyard Kipling's 'white man's

In taking possession by occupying and cultivating land, the English had the right to possession where the indigenous never had. This argument would come to be the most important justification for colonialism by the British, even over evangelisation and trusteeship. Again, highlighting my point that the use of rights in the justification of empire had far more to do with assuaging guilt in some philosophical terms in order to continue the plunder and conquest than actually creating legitimate humanitarian