852 Ch. 21 • The Age of European Imperialism
imperialists negotiated new cultural identities across East and West, for
example by collecting (or accepting or extorting as gifts from princes or
merchants) Hindu sculptures in India or various artifacts in Egypt, which
to them represented the East. In doing so, they at least in some ways
became part of two worlds. At the same time, Bengali patricians collected
items that represented to them the European “other.” Cross-cultural inter
action revealed more fluid boundaries between imperialists and the colo
nized, a process of negotiation, learning, and exchange. In acquiring objects
that represented the colonized, imperialists helped transform their own
identities. Some of what they collected, of course, now fills museums in
London and Paris. Objects from the colonies became part of the material
culture of imperialism, increasingly common in middle-class homes.
Assessing the Goals of European Imperialism
Someone once summed up the reasons for which the European powers
expanded their horizons as “God, gold, and glory,” or as the geographer,
missionary, and explorer David Livingstone put it, “Christianity, Com
merce, and Civilization.” Which, if any, can be singled out as the dominant
impulse behind the “new imperialism”?The “Civilizing Mission’’
Most colonists insisted that God was on their side. Lord Curzon once
gushed that the British Empire was “under Providence, the greatest instru
ment for good that the world has seen.” A South African offered a more real
istic perspective when he commented, “When you came here we owned the
land and you had the Bible; now we have the Bible and you own the land.”
The “civilizing” impulse still animated some European missionaries during
the age of the “new imperialism.” Thousands of Catholic and Protestant mis
sionaries went to Africa, India, and Asia in the name of God to win converts.
In 1900, about 18,000 Protestant missionaries lived in colonial settlements
around the world. French missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant,
increasingly saw themselves as bringing the benefits of the French “civilizing
mission” to indigenous people. Despite several decades of hostile relations
with officials representing the secularized French Republic, French mission
aries gradually accommodated themselves to the imperial project their work
helped sustain. Some British officials considered Anglican and Methodist
missionaries to be nuisances. Most Dutch, Belgian, and Italian clergy made
little pretense of bringing indigenous peoples “civilization,” tending primar
ily to the spiritual needs of their troops and settlers.
One aspect of the “civilizing mission” continued to be the attempt of
some reformers to limit or end abuses of indigenous peoples. In some
places, the clergy helped force Europeans to end or at least temper abuses