Social Darwinism And Imperialism

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Social Darwinism played a very important part in Imperialism. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and his idea of “survival of the fittest” (755) was applied to the concept of natural selection of human beings and, in this case, nations. Social Darwinism stated that the strongest figure would survive and advance. Those that were too weak would be eliminated. During this time, European nations were beginning to take over countries, such as Africa and India, as Europe were the stronger, more dominant figure. As Herbert Spencer put it “human society progresses through competition” (755), which is what was happen during the age of Imperialism as the European nations were taking over smaller and weaker countries. An example of this