Mediterraneans taught europeans imperialism

[Raisa]

Every civilization had their conquests, but the western eurpoeans were the first to go over seas to colonize and conquer other continents of people on a racial kind of level.

The romans greeks and all other mediterranean countries all had chances to run the mediterranean, the greeks went into the middle east, after who knows how many times the middle eastern empires took over parts of greece but no one really messed with the white europeans untill the romans did.
ANd I theorize that the romans with their kind of imperialism which accepted those who adhered to their culture reguardless of color, taught the europeans to be imperialist on a whole new level. The europeans went off trying to be missionaries as a justificiation of taking over other places to civilize other "barbarians" just like the romans did to them on their first time being conquered themselves by a foreign power.

[Severian]

Rome was not that different from other empires of the time. More efficient, maybe.

If you want to look at what's distinctive about modern imperialism, you have to look at the rise of capitalism. A more progressive system, associated with rapid technological change, which made it possible to dominate the whole world, and profit from the world market.

The motive isn't the question. All kinds of empires woulda conquered the Americas....if they had the ability, if they'd even known the Americas were there. Heck, the Aztecs woulda conquered Spain...if they had the technology. So the question is, why did Spain have the technology to conquer Mexico and not vice versa?

Also: Rome's empire - and the other ancient empires - were primarily based on plunder, not trade. That's one of the distinctively different things about the modern European empires.

[enigma2517]

I was thinking about this earlier.

Some historians and anthropologists would say that Europe was in a very advantageous place. On one hand they had the Atlantic Ocean in their backyard, on another they had nice trade routes available with the Middle East and even certain places in Asia.

The agricultural revolution, followed closely by the industrial revolution is really what set it all off. Before the 1750's, life in Europe was pretty much the same as life anywhere else in the world. However, Europe's GDP grew to a proportion of 25:1 in the next century or two after it had industrialized.

Basically, they were the first ones to get there and from there it became harder and harder to keep up. The disparity widened (and is widening) more and more as time passed.