A good book if you are interested in European Imperialism

Rating:

As much of the books in the Problems in European Civilization Series, this book is great for people who have gone through history classes wishing to understand a period, aspect or event in history better.

This book deals with many of the major theories on the cause of european imperialism and why it is that it ultimately failed (there are even writings from Lenin and Ghandi in this book on the subject of imperialism). One of the most interesting things I learned about European imperialism is that the europeans taught their colonial subjects about their own struggles for independence, rights and representative government, inadvertantly planting and watering the seeds of colonial independence. They even have a section where a native of the dutch colony of indonesia (who was interested in Indonesian independence) wrote to and lectured the Dutch colonial authorities about this very thing.

Seeing Lenin's view of imperialism was interesting, although it was easy to see how misguided the man was thinking there would be a transition from european imperialism to world-wide communism. It was also interesting to read Ghandi's view on imperialism (he thought european imperialism was successful in great measure because the people of Indian wanted the wealth, goods and technology the British had to offer and would be independent as soon as India as a nation wanted independence... and then there were Ghandi's own luddite views on technology and independence.

All and all this book is work buying and going over repeatedly.