preview

Western Civilization And Its Impact On The Wider World

Decent Essays

Western civilization has had an enormous outsize impact on the wider world in the last two centuries, primarily through spreading western ideas and assumptions about society. The source of the capability of these western civilizations to impact other regions of the world comes from their political philosophies. The two political philosophies that have allowed western civilizations to have such an impact are Leninism and liberalism. Both of these political philosophies generate immense power for a nation, albeit liberalism generates power much slower than Leninism. It was these political philosophies that allowed Europe and the United States to develop into super powers capable of establishing dominance around the globe.
Another major source of this capability of powerful European nations to dominate the globe comes from the traditional nature of the regions they colonized. While Europe was developing strong governments and institutions, much of the rest of the world was still agricultural and had little to no development in terms of government. This is particularly true in Africa; the native people were loosely associated and couldn’t form strong nations or allyships to protect themselves and each other.
Perhaps as important as the capability of domination is the motivation for it; European imperialists sought colonization for a variety of reasons, the most important being natural resources. The need for raw materials and natural resources goes hand in hand with

Get Access