Imperialism Dbq

During the 19th and 20th century, a new way to gain land began to develop. It was known as Imperialism. Imperialism is when a country takes another country by force and makes it into colonies for its main country. Even though it proved to be effective, there were still the positive and negatives of this new type of way to gain land. The positive and negative effects of imperialism are that it changed the lives of the people in these colonies, affected their wealth, and changed the lands of those colonies.

First of all, it changed the lives of the people in those colonies. Based on Document 1 and 2, you can see how imperialism affected them for the worst. They were forced into slavery to do hard labor. Plus, because of imperialism, people began to see them differently as individuals. It’s stated in Document 2 that they were stripped of all their responsibilities and were thought to be useless people. In a certain view, it’s the European’s fault because they were the ones who took their own jobs away in the first place.

Secondly, it affected the wealth of the country and its colonies.

Many countries aim for nations that are rich in goods. However, according to Document 3, once they get to that nation and take it over, they then strip that nation of their riches, leaving the people there in poverty. However, that doesn’t mean that the nations don’t get affected. According to Document 7, the countries have to spend over $1,100 million just to gain a new territory. I kind of find that hard to believe for a nation that they would spend that much money on that territory just to gain more land when they could have used it to fix that land they have

now.

Finally, the lands that were controlled went through changes as well. According to Document 5, the people of the colonies had religion forced upon them as well as their land taken away from them. However, according to Document 4, positive changes can be seen. Security was provided to the people and it helped to increase their colony’s wealth. Plus, according to outside information, it also help a colony to become more industrialized. The nations would build roads, railroads and canals for transportation. They would also help to advance their medical treatments agricultural ways, and overall improve their way of living.

As you can see, imperialism has a lot of characteristics to it. It changed the living ways of people, increased and decreased wealth, and changed the overall function of the land. Even though imperialism had a lot more negatives that positives, in the end, it helped a lot of countries to grow more.