> The Romans, Mongols and Aztecs voraciously conquered new lands in search of power and wealth - not of knowledge.
The romans conquered greece and nearly adopted ancient greek knowledge and culture wholesale. The mongols were reknown for invading china, persia, etc and taking their best scholars with them. The mongol empire is responsible for much of the cross-eurasian transfer of knowledge. Along with the preservation of much knowledge and culture as they were multireligious and multiculturalists. It's why people in china still speak chinese and arabs still worship as they do. The mongols didn't wipe out entire cultures like 'european imperialists'.
> In contrast, European imperialists set out to distant shores in the hope of obtaining new knowledge along with new territories."
So wiping out entire continents of people ( their histories, language, culture, knowledge ) was in hopes of obtaining new knowledge. We can't even ascertain the etymology of many of the names of towns, cities, lakes, etc because we killed off entire native language families.
The romans conquered greece and nearly adopted ancient greek knowledge and culture wholesale. The mongols were reknown for invading china, persia, etc and taking their best scholars with them. The mongol empire is responsible for much of the cross-eurasian transfer of knowledge. Along with the preservation of much knowledge and culture as they were multireligious and multiculturalists. It's why people in china still speak chinese and arabs still worship as they do. The mongols didn't wipe out entire cultures like 'european imperialists'.
> In contrast, European imperialists set out to distant shores in the hope of obtaining new knowledge along with new territories."
So wiping out entire continents of people ( their histories, language, culture, knowledge ) was in hopes of obtaining new knowledge. We can't even ascertain the etymology of many of the names of towns, cities, lakes, etc because we killed off entire native language families.