Cultural Imperialism Essay

Cultural Imperialism

To understand cultural imperialism is to understand the diaspora of man across the globe along with the socially darwinistic interactions that follow. Modern homo-sapiens left the plains of Africa a mere sixty-thousand years ago. Today mankind populates six continents hundreds of islands with a seemingly endless ethnic diversity. But what comes of a culture that is antiquated on a global scale that comes to interact with a more advanced civilization. The Americas prior to 1492 where home to millions of indigenous people with wide spread and diverse cultures speaking over two-thousand languages. With western colonization of the Americas came disease and enslavement of the indigenous peoples. The enslavement, genocide and oppression the natives faced under the Europeans lasted for over five hundred years. Even the birth of civilized nations did little to stop the oppression as the United States military famously marched millions of natives to reserves in Oklahoma in what became known as the trail of tears. The innate nature of mankind is rather troublesome and largely counter-productive. We are extremely social animals yet instead of

As early as the era of cavemen if not earlier we’ve been encroaching on others’ land and attempting to prevent the encroachment of our own. It is animal nature to acquire and protect land and food and this drive serves as the main motivation for imperialist expansion. With more land and more access to food, a particular culture can have that much more of an opportunity to expand and thrive. Once a different land is conquered, sometimes the coexistence of the indigenous people and the conquerors does not seem likely or possible which leads to even deeper cultural rifts, which, depending on how much power or diplomatic influence can end in genocide for the culture with less