AP EUROPEAN HISTORY: IMPERIALISM

PRACTICE ESSAY QUESTION 1. Analyze the various motives for the “New Imperialism” and their relative importance. First, what does the question want to know? Why did the European world impose its economic, social, and political institutions on virtually the entire non-Western world from the last three decades of the 19th century to the beginning of World War I? Second, What do you know about it? Was it the search for new markets or religious missionary fervor? Was it ethnocentrism or the need for military and naval bases? Was it to “keep up with the Jones”? If it was all of these and more, which had the greatest pull and why? Third, how would you put it into words? Remember that “to analyze” is “to examine in detail” and “to determine relationships.