Imperialism Essay The dictionary definition of Imperialism is, “a policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force.” A country may choose to do this for political, social, or economic reasons. A major part of Imperialism occured in the 19th and 20th centuries. Imperialisms cone seem to have outweigh the pros with the mother country having most of the benefits. Imperialism remained to be detrimental to developing nations by causing an economic decline, weaker governments and discrimination. Imperialism brought economic decline to developing nations. During the time of imperialism there was plenty of trade going on between the countries. Around the time of the Meiji rule, Japan was having a trade deficit because they were importing more than exporting, meaning that they had been losing money. Another example occured in Hong Kong during the treaty of nanjing which caused a loss of resources, money, people, land, and a trade deficit. This all brought economic decline to the nation and made it difficult to rebound. Therefor, imperialism had been detrimental at the time to the economy of china. …show more content…
An example of this occured when China's government was destroyed because of the Taiping wars when shared power was caused upon the nation, ultimately causing the loss of China's authority. This created instability among the country and caused more rebellions. Another example of the weakening of governments because of Imperialism was the opium wars. The British traded opium to the Chinese and refused to stop when Chinese became addicted and insisted on on the right of free trade. This weakened China's gov they didn't seem to be able to control what was being imported into their country. Then when Chinese warships clash with british warships, the opium war was triggered and the Chinese were easily defeated and ultimately destroyed the