Geography in the 19th Century

Through our Risk game and the reading, obtaining a lot of land was very popular because of the benefits of this. When countries obtained new land, they not only gained wealth through exporting goods, but they also helped unite their country.

Imperialism in Europe during the 19th century could be viewed as a game just like our class game of Risk. There were rivalries between nations and some nations like Italy and Germany were allies. Most nations were conquered for the resources there, but there were some useless land masses which were conquered anyway to show that the country that conquered that was superior to the other European countries. As Nicole said in her post, it was like two little children comparing the size of their pile or rocks. Both in our game and in the 19th century, quantity was important not quality. For example, Alaska is the largest state in the USA. But there really aren't that many people there, nor are there any many jobs. New York has a lot more people because the quality of life is better here than Alaska, but is a lot smaller than Alaska. In the 19th century, the countries would have rather conquered Alaska than New York. Having more land than a rival country gave a sense of national pride to the citizens.

Also, European countries conquered smaller and weaker nations and exerted their superiority not only in wealth, but they felt they were better because of their race, religion, and skin color. This also increased the pride of the European people.