Businessmen and bankers had excess capital to invest, and foreign investments offered the incentive of greater profits, despite the risks. The need for cheap labor and a steady supply of raw materials, such as oil, rubber, and manganese for steel, required that the industrial nations maintain firm control over these unexplored areas. Only by directly controlling these regions, which meant setting up colonies under their direct control, could the industrial economy work effectively—or so the imperialists thought. The economic gains of the new imperialism were limited, however, because the new colonies were too poor to spend money on European …show more content…
Darwin claimed that all life had evolved into the present state over millions of years. To explain the long slow process of evolution, Darwin put forth the theory of natural selection. Natural forces selected those with physical traits best adapted to their environment. Darwin never promoted any social ideas. The process of natural selection came to be known as survival of the fittest. The Englishman Herbert Spencer was the first to apply “survival of the fittest” to human societies and nations. Social Darwinism fostered imperialistic expansion by proposing that some people were more fit (advanced) than others. The Europeans believed that they, as the white race, were dominant and that it was only natural for them to conquer the “inferior” people as nature’s way of improving mankind. Thus, the conquest of inferior people was just, and the destruction of the weaker races was nature’s natural law.
Superior technology and improved medical knowledge helped to foster imperialism. Quinine enabled Europeans to survive tropical diseases and venture into the mosquito-infested interiors of Africa and Asia. The combination of the steamboat and the telegraph enabled the Western powers to increase their mobility and to quickly respond to any situations that threatened their dominance. The rapid-fire machine gun also gave them a military advantage and was helpful in convincing Africans and Asians to accept Western