Question

4. “When human societies were agricultural in nature, they were more peaceful. The stage of industrialization brought more chaos in the world”. Analyze the statements in context of European Imperialism.

Answer 1

Answer:

The phrase has a certain degree of truth. Man, from the beginning of humanity, tended to settle down sedentarily and organize himself into hunter-gatherer groups made up of a few families. Later, with the arrival of the first great kingdoms and civilizations, these groups expanded, but food production in essence did not change, being purely agricultural and livestock production, that is, animal husbandry and planting of different agricultural products. This situation was maintained during the Middle Ages, in which the different states and nations produced raw materials and exchanged them among themselves. Thus, territorial issues between different nations were matters of honor, not productive or natural resource issues.

However, the arrival of the Age of Discovery began to promote the territorial expansion of the European kingdoms, who began to look for new territories to annex to their domains. There the first territorial disputes began to take shape based on what those lands could produce.

This situation, with the development of industrialization, only increased. From the beginning of this process, the European nations began to fervently look for territories to colonize, in order to exploit their raw materials and use them for industrial production in their factories. This was how the partition of Africa and the colonization of Southeast Asia occurred, which produced great massacres and other calamities for the peoples who lived there, as well as direct confrontations between the powers that disputed these territories.