'Why liberal capitalism opposed imperialism and colonialism'

“The whole Idea of colonial policy was to take advantage of the military superiority of the white race over the members of other races. The Europeans set out, equipped with all the weapons and contrivances that their civilisation placed at their disposal, to subjugate weaker peoples, to rob them of their property, and to enslave them . . . If, as we believe, European civilisation really is superior to that of the primitive tribes of Africa or to the civilisations of Asia – estimable though the latter may be in their own way – it should be able to prove its superiority by inspiring these peoples to adopt it of its own accord. Could there be a more doleful proof of the sterility of European civilisation than that it can be spread by no other means than fire and sword?
    “No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid to waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified. The dominion of Europeans in Africa and in important parts of Asia [was] absolute. It stands in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism and democracy....”

~ Ludwig Von Mises from, his 1927 book Liberalism. Hat tip Stephen Hicks, who points out (in his post 'Why liberal capitalism opposed imperialism and colonialism') that while "imperialism and colonialism are older than human history, and across the centuries virtually every culture in every part of the world practiced it," it was the culture of the Enlightenment that ended it — movements arising to abolish slavery and the second- or third-class status of women. "Keep in mind," he says, "that 200 years is a blink of an eye in human-historical terms. It normally takes many centuries to change cultural mindsets and long-established practices. The Enlightenment’s liberalism and capitalism relatively quickly undercut and did away with millennia of conquest-and-control baked into human traditions."