Answer:
The excuse was religion
Explanation:
All of them had the same excuse, expand religion and God´s name, but the trueyh is that all these and other countries wanted to find GOLD, SILVER SPICES and people to work for them.
could be wrong but i believe the answer is the theories of Social Darwinism were often used to justify the efforts of certain political, social, or economic views.

The word "New Right" appeared during the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater to designate "the emergence, in response to liberalism (in the American sense of the term [i.e. social liberalism]), of an uninhibited right: ultraconservative, imbued with religious values, openly populist, anti-egalitarian,