Cultural Superiority Quotes



This was in response to English Emissaries who wanted to establish trading businesses in China. The Emperor would not even meet personally with Lord McCartney, the first British envoy because McCartney would not kow-tow to the Emperor. The “hongs” were special businesses set up by Chinese businessmen who had paid the Proper fee, for the purposes of being traders with foreigners. Canton, now Guangzhou, is 150 years later still the major international trading center in China although there are no longer restrictions. At the time, the British paid for their Chinese good with Opium that they had purchased in their Indian Colony. English cloth and other goods would be sent to India, traded for opium, which was brought to China and traded for tea, silks and porcelain which were returned to England and turned into cash than was worth much more than their original purchase and the cost of the voyage.


The question has always been of adherents of this viewpoint, “How do we decide which side is the more civilized. The Nazi Germans thought they were the most civilized people in the world and killed more than 22 million people demonstrating their civilization which most others looked upon as savagery.


The title of this controversial poem became a rallying cry for imperialists and anti-imperialists both. The imperialists saw it as a justification for expansionism and colonialism—that the white had a moral responsibility to bring civilization to the other races. To the anti-imperialists it was a racist justification for imposing Christian values on the rest of the world which didn’t want them. In the quotation example here, the poem was used to state a dilemma of foreign aid and trying to bring democracy and freedom to the world.


Albert succeeded his dead uncle, Leopold, whose Belgian Congo colonization was particularly rapacious. His statement was a signal that the colonial abuses were to stop.