by Mark Mukasa

Created on: July 24, 2009   Last Updated: July 26, 2009

Imperialism will never disappear. As long as we have large collectives of humans living together, they will attempt to subjugate in some form another group. And sometimes this involves actively attempting to conquer distant lands and repopulating them with another nationality. This is an inevitable facet of humanity. People conquer and subjugate. However a common justification of imperialist expansions is that imperialism somehow brings benefits despite the horrors it perpetrates. After the US acquisition of Panama in the 1900s, many lamented the deaths of the Panamanians and the undermining of sovereignty of another nation by the United states. However what would become a commonly used phrase to justify such interventions was uttered by Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt claims the end justified the means. However does the potential long term benefits of imperialism justify the act of invading another sovereign nation?

First of all it must be noted that all historical actions have some sort of beneficial effect. For example it could be argued that the ancient Roman expansion although bloody brought about various technological advances, despite the high cost of life. For example the Roman campaign into Gaul resulted in hundreds of thousand of deaths. However without the Romans we might not have had the luxuries of roads, aqueducts and various cultural benefit's the Romans bequeathed us with. However over a long term period most imperialist ambitions can benefit some groups of people greatly. For example the majority of the Western world rests its economic affluence on their subjugation of African nations and the slave industry. Perhaps without the slave industry and the raping of Africa we would lack the money to implement our generally decent standard of living we enjoy now.

Ultimately all imperialist campaigns benefit some groups of people. However the very essence of the campaign unanimously involves the disruption of the way of life of a society, the murder of innumerable amounts of people and the more imbedded psychological effects on a people. Homes are uprooted, orphans are formed and societies might be changed for the worst. If we examine Rwanda during the 19th Century before the arrival of the Belgians, we see a nation that although not as technologically advanced as some of its other African counterparts or European nations it has a relatively good living standard and is for the most part largely harmonious. The complex society did not recognise ethnicity

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