David and Mia (fairly) recently mentioned the factor of racism in the European imperialist mindset. Race obviously provided a simple and conspicuous means to identify the rest of the world as 'other' and thereby facilitate the 'cognitive dissonance' (our favorite buzzword with imperialism) allowing liberalism for whites and subjugation for everyone else.
I don't think imperialism hinges on race, however, in the way David and Mia seem to assert. My case in point is the Irish. For centuries, the Irish have been seen as the savage and inferior counterparts to the English despite their superficial (and genetic) similarities with the rest of Great Britain. Anti-Irish bigots had no trouble reducing this group to the level of apes and primitive peoples, as exemplified by the cartoon above.
Even if the Congolese tribes and the Chinese had looked like Europeans, I'm confident some new means of differentiating Europe from the 'rest of the world' would have come about fairly quickly.
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