European Empire And Imperialism Essay

The word Empire derives from the Latin version of “imperium,” as Stephen says, which essentially means to rule. Overtime, it has morphed into a much broader phrase, eventually coming to mean “ruling over extensive, far flung territories” far beyond the original “homeland” of the rulers. To me personally, nobody has ever personified the second version of an empire better than the Europeans. They have developed advanced weaponry, ships, and navigational technologies that surpassed anyone at the period time. This allowed them to unchecked dominion over the primitive world. They traveled to distant lands, and exploited their peoples and resources. Generalizing empire and imperialism, we can define it as “any and every type of relation between a
more powerful state of society and a less powerful one”. In the specific case of European Imperialism, I would say that the central feature is summed up as the foreign, external policy that those nations utilized.
Europeans controlled populations through provincial governments in the regions. Utilizing both military strengths and political techniques. In many cases, the colonials or conquerors claimed that the people wanted their help and intervention. Great Britain for example, claimed that the natives were begging to be protected. One significant technique for European nations exerting control over populations was the gift of power to certain native intermediaries that would neutralize some of the hostility. In some cases, the countries acted as if they were adopting the culture into their own, allowing them equal rights. Anything that could be used to manipulate foreign societies into peaceful subjugation was used. A key difference was that the main population of the dominant culture was always believed to be significantly superior to the subjugate culture. Even though they may have been told they were part of the empire, they would never be more than second-hand citizens.
It is very transparent how the European nations contributed to globalization over the past 500 years.
For one you have the obvious inter-sea travel that continued to improve out of basic necessity. More Europeans were traveling to these colonies and were exchanging cultural ideas, and information even without the intention too. Technologies were shared, and copied by other less developed nations. These colonies also allowed for a whole new window of opportunity in that resources not readily available before were now easily accessed. Slaves were also a crucial factor, as they acted as a workforce in developing countries. Communication around the globe was increased exponentially as inter-sea trading lanes became common to transport massive amounts of goods. While technology and information may not have always been shared willingly, these new native populations eventually gained access to a larger array of weapons that would not have been available to them for some time to come. A vast array of new trade products both in food and other commodities opened up as the western world expanded their reach. Resources that would never have made it as far west as northwest Europe. The new settlements saw a large influx of people creating homes in the foreign countries. Which, as a result, had caused greater and greater migration, people traveling to new places, and cultural identities being exchanged and
communicated.
Essentially European Imperialism of the past can be described as their political agenda around the globe. The processes, techniques, and decisions they made to expand their dominion over less developed countries and societies in order to benefit themselves. This drives to expand their empire invariably led to greater and greater globalization as cultures clashed in a variety of ways. Trade was expanded massively, and slaves, food products, and other valuable items opened up to the west. The invasion of other cultures inevitably led to a sort of speeding up of the countries development, whether it be from exposure to better medicine, guns, ships and other technologies.