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Racism and Social Darwinism in Regards to Imperialism

Uploaded by fatherflem on Mar 26, 2004

Imperialism: Social Darwinism and Racism

"Take up the White Man's burden —
Send forth the best ye breed —
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild —
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child."
(Rudyard Kipling “The Whiteman’s Burden”)

The desire to increase ones country’s land holdings, and ultimately its power, is not new. The reasons for justifying a war of conquest though, do change. As humanity progresses, the reasons get more and more convoluted. The domination of a foreign culture by an imperial power became a more and more common throughout the early 19th century. This imperialism was done predominantly done by white people, over non-white indigenous peoples. The justification was that white people are simply culturally, genetically, and technologically superior to the non-white peoples. It was the Whiteman’s burden to civilize the savages, and he was going to do just that.

“Social Darwinism” It is the idea that there are such things as inferior races. Social Darwinism is the application of evolution to society. The person who coined the term “Social Darwinism” was Herbert Spencer. Supporters of Social Darwinism thought the idea that there are different sub-species of Man, and that some are better then others. Imperialists were not conquering defenseless people, they were civilizing them! Social Darwinism asserted that White was right. “The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history—the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. This race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it—the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization—having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress it institutions across the Earth.” (Our Country, Josiah Strong). Imperialism’s ultimate aim was to have a homogenous population, that was covered the whole entire earth.

Imperialists of this time were justified on so many levels in their thinking. Social Darwinism was a construct that welded biological science (evolution) with social science. A philosopher of the 19th century, Herbert Spencer said, "this law of organic progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface,...

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Uploaded by:   fatherflem

Date:   03/26/2004

Category:   European

Length:   6 pages (1,322 words)

Views:   13895

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