Historical Imperialism

For those thinking I was not being reasonable in my assessment of evolution and slavery, do not forget that my very assertion was one of the main arguments for Imperialism in America in the mid– to late 1800s.

Immediately upon Darwin’s convergent scientific release, Imperialists seized upon it as such an elementary and obvious understanding of class, and, therefore, of inherent value, position and rights. Well, that should actually be in reverse order: they recognized it as such an elementary and obvious understanding of inherent value, that it gave weight to their bigoted system of position, rights and class structure.

What was that time like?

• The Civil War had just ended; Lincoln was still the BMOC, but VP Johnson was about to get a raise
• Reconstruction had begun; it was the president’s job to put the country back together and start the healing process between the north and south
• Darwin released his evolutionary theory in 1859
• Only 25% of the south owned slaves; early in my life I was led to believe it was almost 100%
• Only 8% of the south had more than two slaves
• When the slaves were freed, their numbers totaled between 4 and 4.5 million; definitely a lot of people, but still less than half of all the losses and murders of WWII
• Blacks and whites were not segregated until between 1810 and 1830; therefore . . .
• Slavery was not originally an issue of race, but an issue of economics; many whites were slaves
• Many who were anti-slavery (and fought to end it) were still not pro-equality

As slavery transitioned from an economic impetus to an ethnic impetus among the general population, Imperialism provided the necessary tools (yeah, um, that would be “prejudice”) to apply inherent value to certain groups and not to others.