Quotes About Imperialism

It felt like betrayal, but in truth it was simply Muhammed Bruce's lament for the passing of an era. A time when Europeans had roamed the earth in pursuit of adventure, largely oblivious to the lives and laws of the people in the countries they picked through like cherries. Spitting out the pits. Just like my parents. They had stomped on the world like the Burtons of their era, only worse somehow because they did not think that their shoes left marks.

General Robert Baden-Powell, later founder of the Boy Scouts, drastically cut African rations in an attempt to spare not just his own men but any white civilians trapped in the town with them. His plan was to starve the native population until they were forced to break out of the besieged city in search of food, thus reducing the number of mouths to feed.

Ironically Britain claimed the whole continent simply in order to claim a few isolated harbours astride trade routes. It was like a speculator who, buying a huge wasteland flanking a highway because it had a few fine sites for road cafes and filling stations, found later that much of the land was fertile and productive.

In 1858, when the emperor had two missionaries executed, France sent a fleet to seize the port of Danang. French naval forces took Saigon the following year and then forced the emperor to cede the three surrounding provinces to them. Over the four decades that followed, French forces captured Hue and Hanoi and steadily extended their power and influence until the French colonial government could officially declare in 1900 that the "pacification of Indochina" was complete.

In sharp contradiction to Kipling, Mark Twain had no wish to succeed the British in any imperial role. He abhorred what his country had done to the people of the Philippines as much as what the British had done to the Boers, and so he finished introducing his English guest with the playfully reproachful words: 'We are kin. And now that we are kin in sin, there is nothing more to be desired.

Pero su meta no era ganar. Ni siquiera estaba claro qué significaba ganar. Su meta era sólo perturbar al mundo musulmán y ponerlo en contra de sí mismo, para que no emergiera un imperio islámico.

Back in 1943, Prince Mikasa Takahito, the youngest brother of Emperor Hirohito, spent a year as a staff officer at the Nanking headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Army's expeditionary force in China, where he heard a young officer speak of using Chinese prisoners for live bayonet practice in order to train new recruits. "It helps them acquire guts," the officer told the prince.

USA. The land of the free; where you accent didn't matter. But he supposed everybody related to it; movies, TV, fat-food, outlets, you grew up with it. Cultural imperialism. Yet no wonder everybody increasingly hated it: it was stupid, self-serving and so in-your-face that it was setting itself up to be despised

Nobody likes bullies. Even other bullies - often especially - feel obliged to at least profess a hatred of them. Yet we've all been bullied and bullied others. It's in all of us, with nations we call it imperialism. You start to wonder about yourself.

Desde el punto de vista sociológico, es como si, cuando el viejo Imperio empezó a descomponerse en sus bordes, la ciencia les hubiese fallado a los mundos periféricos. Para que volvieran a aceptarla, tenía que aparecer disfrazada de otra cosa... Y eso es justo lo que ha pasado. Y ha funcionado a las mil maravillas.

Zimbabwe is an unusual case study in African colonialism in that it was invaded by a private company under Royal Charter.

But if Russia is to be part of this larger zone of peace it cannot bring into it its imperial baggage. It cannot bring into it a policy of genocide against the Chechens, and cannot kill journalists, and it cannot repress the mass media.

fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

The history of Chechnya is one of imperialism gone terribly wrong. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Chechens were among the few peoples to fend off Mongol conquerors, but at a terrible cost. Turks, Persians, and Russians sought to seize Chechnya, and it was finally absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1859.

We are marching against the law of the jungle that the United States and its acolytes old and new want to impose on the world.

Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs!

We should keep [the Panama Canal]. After all, we stole it fair and square.

During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places.

The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.

Americans ... have wrought a country that has after more than two centuries yet to evidence a single year during which it was not making war upon someone, somewhere, for some reason.

If we don't stop behaving like the British Empire, we will end up like the British Empire.

Not just in China, but everywhere in the world without exception, one either leans to the side of imperialism or the side of socialism. Neutrality is mere camouflage; a third road does not exist.

In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments.

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.