Pros And Cons Of Western Imperialism

As Western states industrialized and made significant scientific and technological developments, previously prominent industries of handmade goods were transformed to highly profitable industries of goods manufactured from technology as mass production put forward the economic idea of capitalism which established extreme economic prosperity for middle-class people such as factory owners and merchants. As Western states industrialized, there was an increasing need for raw materials to supply the technologies of industrialization, and thus European powers looked toward less developed countries, many of which were in non-Western areas to provide sources of raw materials and often cheap labor that could facilitate the extraction and/or processing

Because of these reasons, Europeans looked toward imperializing less developed countries and establishing political and economic influence to at least some extent in order to develop more civilized systems of government, education systems, free-trade capitalist economies, and Christianity, which was viewed as a civilized faith by Europeans in the otherwise “backward societies”. European nationalism also further invigorated the race of European powers towards imperialism as it developed competition between different countries who could now suddenly further develop their political influence and economic power through their imperial possessions and gain advantages compared to rival colonial powers. As traditional states and empires declined due to various issues such as unstable authority and nationalist movements, European imperialism was suddenly facilitated as they could take advantage of local rivalries and political fragmentations to eventually enhance their own colonial

After China’s agricultural innovations did not keep up with its massive population growth and the Qing dynasty wasn’t able to adequately control peasant impoverishment and famines, or perform other government functions such as collecting taxes, its overall level of sovereignty and influence weakened. As Britain smuggled the highly profitable opium drug into the empire, bypassing Chinese law codes, massive proliferation of addiction ensued and Commissioner Lin Zexu cracked down on the spread of the harmful opium trade. The British, with its immense military power, forcefully established the Treaty of Nanjing in response to China’s resistance to the opium trade, which established foreign ports and massive restrictions on Chinese sovereignty. Massive spheres of influence were developed in China, in which individual foreign countries established their own military bases as well as infrastructure; they also extracted local raw materials which combined with foreign