AP®︎ World History: Topic 6.1 Flashcards

A policy or process by which a state extends formal or informal political, military, or economic power beyond its borders

Judging other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture and treating those standards as inherently superior

Assigning supposedly permanent characteristics and unequal worth to constructed racial groups

Exercising authority over people without their consent on the claim that the ruler knows what is best for them

The pseudoscientific application of evolutionary competition to societies and supposed races, used to portray domination by powerful peoples as natural and deserved

British naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection explained biological change but did not establish racial hierarchy or justify imperial conquest

British thinker who coined “survival of the fittest” and applied evolutionary ideas broadly to human society

Discredited efforts to classify biological races and rank their intelligence, morality, or fitness for self-government using supposedly scientific methods

Loyalty to and advancement of the nation, which made colonies symbols of national greatness, prestige, and great-power status

British imperialist who argued that English racial superiority made the expansion of British control beneficial to humanity

The belief that United States expansion across North America was divinely or historically ordained and spread a supposedly superior order

The paternalistic claim that imperial powers had a moral duty to govern, educate, and Westernize supposedly backward peoples

French leader who argued in 1885 that “superior races” had a right and duty to civilize “inferior races.”

Scottish missionary and explorer associated with the formula “Christianity, commerce, and civilization” for European influence in Africa

A formula associated with David Livingstone expressing the belief that Christian missions, legitimate trade, and Western cultural change would reinforce one another in Africa

Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem urging U.S. rule of the Philippines by portraying white imperialism as a difficult but benevolent civilizing duty

British writer whose poem “The White Man’s Burden” encouraged the United States to accept colonial rule in the Philippines as a moral duty

The belief that supposed racial groups had unequal worth and abilities, with Europeans commonly presented as superior and therefore fit to rule others

The imperial rationale that expansion would spread Christianity, save souls, and replace indigenous religions portrayed as pagan or immoral