Europe's Imperialist Powers

I really should be doing my ancient assignment due this friday, but I was once again sidetracked when my research started to mention the spanish influence in Peru (I am researching the Inca civilisation as part of my Ancient history task, in the midst of looking for historians and sources i've come across the whole Spanish influence, since they were the first country who took interest in the place, anyway). I think i'll just have do deal with the fact that the influence of imperialism is almost everywhere, which is why I thought it would be such a great topic to research.

Since becoming sidetracked from history with other not-being-assessed-on-yet history, I researched three other imperialist powers apart from Spain. This included Britain, Germany and France.

The Imperialist Power of Britian

Yes, we're talking about the British Empire. One of the only countries to conquer a big good chunk of every continent. Even Antarctica. Britain would be a fun imperialist power to research, but they've really been known for being everywhere so it would be of significant difficulty to then narrow down my results to a singular, or even a few singular countries. 

This map shows the extent of their empire. 

Looking at this map actually reminded me of a little joke I found a while back. 

I mean look at the little guy, isn't he cute? 

It's obviously a biased perspective, but looking at the map above, one cannot say it is entirely false. 

It truly was an "Empire on which the sun never sets". And I suppose a really good question to ask then, would be, is that a good thing? 

And if it is good, to what extent is it good? 

I think if I do stick with imperialism, that will be the kind of focus question I will move towards, especially since looking at the British Empire now, well... its a lot smaller. So you'd have to question, is that because people realised the so called 'exploitation' of other countries was a terrible thing, or that times had changed to the point where imperialism was no longer needed as the individual countries had reached a point of independence? Oh the things one must ponder. 

The Imperialist Power of France

I must admit that looking at France as an imperialist power would be quite interesting since unlike Britain, it wasn't a big growth and then decline, but rather a fluctuation of different territories (France got around, but it liked to focus on a particular area for a while.) I also found this map of France's empire. You can see with the different shades of blue, the fluctuation in territories. 

Now, the good thing with doing France as an imperialist power means that I could focus on the territories it held over a specific time period. For example, I could do the Napoleonic Empire (WOO!), which would actually give me the ability to focus on a concept but also speak about Napoleon Bonaparte. The thing with France is that they always had an interesting looking empire. So yes, i'm definitely thinking about looking at their imperialist influence. 

The Imperialist Power of Germany

I think this Empire says enough for itself. 

Though, in the defence of Germany, they were a bunch of states which weren't completely united until after the Franco-Prussian war which ended in 1870. That also meant that they didn't begin building imperialist power until that time, so they were a little late in their quest for territories (clearly). 

But yet again, whilst researching this topic, Bismark has come up once again. 

If I was to do Germany as an imperialist power, I would definitely focus on Bismark and his policies, however, since they were so late to build up this imperialism, I don't think I would focus on 'the German Empire', rather an entire continent, like Africa, in which they would be included. 

The Imperialist Power of Spain

Spain has always fascinated me. They had a huge influence in South and Latin America, and an even bigger influence on the native peoples of those places. Whilst basically all those countries have now declared independence, doing readings on the actual initial conquering of Latin and South America, the Inca's, Aztecs etc were actually quite welcoming to the Spanish (this story goes a while back, but they essentially believed that the Spanish were gods, and treated them accordingly). But any who, their empire looked a bit like this:

As you can see, a very significant influence on the Americas. Doing research on the Spanish influence in the Americas could be an ideal topic as there is an automatic scope placed on it and I am rather interested to learn more about the ways in which the spanish interacted with the native people in the Americas.

Overall, whilst I do understand that I still haven't actually started to focus on a specific area, I feel that putting these ideas down and then contemplating them will help me in finally choosing what I wish to do. At this point, none of the ideas i've suggested to myself really make it for me as a topic of interest, I really hope whilst wallowing in this research, I find a good focus area that I feel passionate about.

Unfortunately, I'm still looking. Fortunately, it's only been three days, and I still have a good long while.