Well, we talked last episode about the expansion of the British Empire during the 1800’s, but there were a lot of other countries that were trying to build their empires as well. No one is going to be as good at it as the British, but a lot of other countries did try to get in on the imperialism action.
So I should maybe take a moment to explain what imperialism is, first. Most countries have something like natural borders. Or there are sort of geographic limits to where people from one language or ethnic group live. For example, most of the Germans live in Germany. If you go west a bit from where the Germans live, you get to a whole other group of people, the Dutch. Or southwest, you get the French. Different languages, different tribal backgrounds, different cultures.
Imperialism is the idea that the people in one ethnic or language group should basically attack and conquer some other group in another area, and take over that area and make it their own, part of their empire. So when you think about Napoleon, who called himself an emperor - it was his goal to take over most of Europe and make it all kind of French. Or at least, controlled by the French. That would mean that the German people would be controlled by the French, and the Polish people would be controlled by the French, and the Russian people, - well, we know how that turned out. It didn’t end well for Napoleon.
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