Imperialism DBQ

Imperialism DBQ The rise of industrialization and nationalism pushed European and American nations to explore the uncharted regions of Africa, East, Asia, and Southeast Asia in mid-1800s. The result was a significant change in the social, political, and economic structures not only of the colonized nations, but also those of the colonizing nations. The progressive nations bring to the people of those garden spots the foodstuffs and manufactures they need. [Progressive nations] develop the territory by building roads, canals, railways, and telegraphs. They can establish schools and newspaper for the colonies [and] give these people the benefit of other blessings of civilization, which they have not the means of creating them (Document 1). Every improvement of methods of production, every concentration of ownership and control, seems to accentuate the tendency. As
one nation after another enters the machine economy and adopts advanced industrial methods, it becomes more difficult for its manufacturers, merchants, and financiers to dispose profitably of their economic resources, and they are tempted more and more to use Governments in order to secure for their particular use some distant un developed country by annexation and protection. Everywhere appear excessive powers of production, excessive capital in search of investment. It is admitted by all business men that the powers of production in their country exceeds the growth in consumption, that more goods can be produced than can be sold at a profit, and that more capital exists than can find remunerative investment (Document 5). To begin with, there are the exporters and manufacturers of certain goods used in the colonies.
The makers of cotton and iron goods have been very much interested in imperialism. Banks make loans to colonies and backward countries for building railways and steamship lines. They also make loans to colonial plantation owners, importers, and exporters. Military and naval leaders believe strongly in extending the white man’s rule over the ‘inferior races,’ to this company may be added another element, the missionary. Missionaries went forth to preach a kingdom beyond this world (Document 2). For an example, there was a lot of extent of colonialism. The largest in area in square miles is France with 212,600; the smallest is Belgium with 11,800. The largest in population is Germany with 67,500,00, the smallest Belgium with 8,300,000. The largest in area of colonies is Great Britain with 13,100,000; the smallest Netherlands 790,000. The largest in population of colonies is Great Britain with 470,000,000; the smallest is Belgium with 13,000,000 and Germany with 13,000,000 (Document
6) When the whites came to our country, we had the land and they had the Bible, now we have the Bible and they have the land (Document 3). It seems to me that God, with Infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in world’s future . . . The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken . . . Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history – the final competition races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled . . Then this race of equaled energy . . . the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization . . . will spread itself over the earth . . . And can one doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the “survival of the fittest”? Document 4 is basically a speech by Reverend Josiah Strong, an American Protestant missionary leader, 1885.