conflicts are most acute.

A third motive for imperial expansion, which must not be
overlooked, is the zeal for propaganda: the eagerness of virile
peoples to propagate the religious and political ideas which they
have adopted. But this is only another way of saying that nations
are impelled upon the imperial career by the desire to extend the
influence of their conception of civilisation, their Kultur. In
one form or another this motive has always been present. At first
it took the form of religious zeal. The spirit of the Crusaders
was inherited by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, whose whole
history had been one long crusade against the Moors. When the
Portuguese started upon the exploration of the African coast, they
could scarcely have sustained to the end that long and arduous
task if they had been allured by no other prospect than the
distant hope of finding a new route to the East. They were buoyed
up also by the desire to strike a blow for Christianity. They
expected to find the mythical Christian empire of Prester John,
and to join hands with him in overthrowing the infidel. When
Columbus persuaded Queen Isabella of Castile to supply the means
for his madcap adventure, it was by a double inducement that he
won her assent: she was to gain access to the wealth of the
Indies, but she was also to be the means of converting the heathen
to a knowledge of Christianity; and this double motive continually
recurs in the early history of the Spanish Empire. France could
scarcely, perhaps, have persisted in maintaining her far from
profitable settlements on the barren shores of the St. Lawrence if
the missionary motive had not existed alongside of the motives of
national pride and the desire for profits: her great work of
exploration in the region of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi