MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC BASES OF EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM

Abstract

For over a century and a half, the European-centric imperial powers dominated and colonized much of the continents of Africa and Asia. Although the economic/military incentives and political/cultural forces were the principal drivers behind the colonial policies of the Old and the New European empires, alike. The European Imperialism, however, was a distinct phenomenon. It was particularly unique in its tradition to lay moral and scientific grounds for the subjugation and colonization of the Africans and Asians. In this respect, the European ethnographers first resorted to Race Theory, embodied in their mission to civilize Africans and Asians by colonizing them. This Civilization Mission of the Africans and Asians formed the bedrock of the greater part of nineteenth century European Colonialism. However, at the onset of the twentieth century, the Race Theory was superseded by an Organic Theory of Geography in which defence and territorial growth of an empire, rather than the civilizing mission of African and Asians, became raison d'etre for colonial domination and expansion. India was the first colony in modern colonial history that was not only subjected to the Racial Theory, manifested in the British mission to civilize Indians by subjugating and colonizing them but also to the Organic Theory of Political Geography, epitomized in the Great Game between the British and the Russian empires.