Why Is Imperialism Necessary

What is imperialism? Why was it so widespread? Was imperialism evil? To answer these questions we must find out from three popular documents written during the time of imperialism what impact it made. Also how did it effect things politically, economically, and religiously? First, what is imperialism? By definition according to the Mariam-Webster dictionary is, “a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through diplomacy or military force”. Mainly imperialism is each country wanting to conquer other countries for things such as their materials, strategic use, or the common resources that land has. Now, why was imperialism so widespread? Imperialism was so widespread because all the countries wanted to be as powerful as possible.

The story “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell shows a perspective on this. A particular part of this story has the British policeman, who was never respected, he even said in the story, “I was hated by large numbers of people”. So in the story he comes face to face with shooting the elephant. He had a large crowd of Burmese people around him. Burmese is actually in Asia, so the British looked to control a part of Asia, but the people did not respect them. The policeman knew he had to kill the elephant to let the people know that he wasn’t weak. So if we compare this part of the story with what George Orwell saw imperialism as it seems that he associated the British people by using imperialism on the people in Burma. Mark Twain according to historywiz. Com says, “I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel.” Mark Twain before this quote is saying he did not really understand why America cooperated in the spread of imperialism. His thoughts about imperialism were mixed. One thing was true though, he thought America should have kept the countries we were trying to take advantage of as our allies. We should not have been using them to make ourselves better. Other countries were under tyrannies, and we should have been helping them instead. Economically this hurt the countries America took advantage of. So it seems that George Orwell and Mark Twain saw them as evil. What did Rudyard Kipling think though? He wrote

Politically it can actually do some good. When a nation conquers or takes more from another country it actually can make the people in that country feel more patriotic. Because they are so powerful the people feel better. What does it do economically? As you can assume it will boost the country’s economy tremendously but that is only for the countries that are using imperialism. If your country is on the other side of it, your economy is in bad shape. What does it do to religion? A lot of missionaries came out of this time. It would be safe for people to travel to other countries that were being conquered by their countries. They could not only spread the Gospel, but they also spread their culture on these people as well. Altogether, imperialism had some good things, and bad things that came out of it. As you can see from the sources they had an impact on what people thought of their countries. Also if imperialism never happened a lot of the countries would not be as powerful as they would today. They also would not be as advanced without the spread of