Question

What does it mean to grab territory

Answer 1

“Grabbing territory” in this context means colonization. Colonization is when a mother country (a country who controls other countries, such as Great Britain) creates a colony in a different settlement for reasons like imperialism. Imperialism is the ideology of spreading your power to other nations to control, so you can increase territory, resources, military presence & strategies, etc. So to answer your question in the picture, the Scramble for Africa (through the Berlin Conference) was ultimately not worth it because...
1) Human rights were violated as a result with events like the Moroccan Crisis, etc. The slave trade was started as a result creating slavery (“white mans burden”).
2) Indigenous groups to different regions were not consulted during the Berlin Conference, which divided up African territories for colonization. As a result indigenous regions and tribal areas were broken up without the consult of those involved.
3) In present day most of the colonies have broken up into independent countries, making the conflicts that occurred irrelevant.
4) Ethnocentric views changed the culture and diversity in the effected regions where colonies were developed.

However you could also argue it was worth it if you had ethnocentric views...

For example
1) This allowed the expansion of colonial empires to gain wealth for the economy in the mother countries economy, as well as expand resources and trade needed at this time.

Hope that helps!!

Answer: Economically speaking the expansion costed countries large sums because of war and conflict caused like the Moroccan Crisis. This caused tensions between countries effecting national trade, however countries expanded their natural resources with expansion to Africa.

:)