What are positive motives for imperialism?

Answer 1

Positive motives for imperialismFrankly the only positive motives for Imperialism are self serving to the capitalists themselves. Since imperialism can be described as an evolution of capitalism through which one nation seeks or attempts to control the affairs of another economically or politically-motives can hardly be beneficial to the nation being subjected to the imperialist force. Imperialists seek to exploit Natural Resources, exploit the cheap labour, whilst repatriating profits to the mother country all under the guise of open market trade with hardly any benefit accruing to the inhabitants of the "host" nation or it's population.

Perhaps its also worthwhile considering the poem "The White Mans Burden" by Rudyard Kipling when answering this question.

The poem (possibly sarcastically), espoused some of the "official" motivations behind the behaviour of the British Empire of his era.

Essentially the theme is that more developed nations have a moral obligation to take control of less developed nations and show them how to created a "civilised" society.

While this motive is based on bias and arrogance, its intention is positive.

Answer 2

Nations have presented numerous reasons for colonizing foreign lands, mostly economic or military in nature.

Natural resources: the "West Indies", the modern Caribbean islands, were thought to be the source of Asian spices, while the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast (today Ghana) were named for their natural resources. The French set up trading posts across North America for hunting furs, while the Spanish mined gold in Central and South America.

Trade routes: as colonies were often far from the colonizing nation, trade had to move through many other lands. For example, the British conquered large parts of central and East Africa in order to provide a route for a trans-Africa railroad which ran from Egypt to the Cap of Good Hope, and founded colonies in Aden and Cyprus to protect ships on their way to or from India (British colonies in the Middle East were actually administered by the India Office, as they were considered only stopping points on the way to India.

A market in which to sell goods made in the home country (many empires actually wound up making little or no money selling manufactured goods in the colonies).

Labor: extracting natural resources, through mining or farming is hard work, and many empires used the local population as a workforce, either voluntarily, or, as in the Americas or the Belgian Congo, slaves.

Soldiers: Colonial troops were important parts of many empires; the British relied heavily on troops from India and Nepal, while the French still maintain the Foreign Legion. Entire campaigns during the World Wars were fought between colonial troops, with only a handful of Europeans in command.

Religion: Many colonizers brought their religion with them, intending to spread it to the natives, who they considered backwards or savages. Forceful attempts at converting colonized people were often met with resistance, but the Catholic church was largely succesful in Lain America, and Protestant churches are actually becoming more popular in parts of Africa.

Culture: Colonizers typically saw themselves as superior to the local peoples they conquered, and thought that they needed to "civilize" peoples different from themselves.

Rivalries/Prestige: For centuries, the measure of a nation was its colonies, which led to nations snapping up even fairly worthless stretches of land just for the prestige (the Germans in Africa were late to the empire game, and ended up actually losing money on their colonies). Immediately before WWII, Italy invaded Ethiopia, since Mussolini felt Italy was being left out of empire. Overconfident, the Italian military was actually beaten by the Ethiopians.

Defense: Some colonies were acquired simply to serve as "buffer states" to put some distance between more valuable colonies and a rival. The British established a buffer state in Afghanistan to keep the Russian away from India, and China long song its colonies in Korea as a buffer against Japan (Japan wanted Korea for the same reason).

Answer 3

Economic

Political

Social Darwinism.

:)