Why did some Europeans come to see themselves as morally superior to the rest of humanity?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. European's view of moral superiority
1. imperialists appealed to what they called moral superiority or "higher moral
nature"
a. superiority that enabled some people to kill, dispossess, and exploit
2. "moral superiority" signified what we would now call superior morale
a. ancient ideas of virtue were still current in classically educated
minds
3. nineteenth-century Europeans and white North Americans
a. virtue still included personal strength—physical and, therefore,
military strength—as it had for the ancient Greeks and Romans
4. reaction against historic inferiority
a. Europe's with respect to Asia, Japan's with respect to China and
Korea
b. United States to most of the rest of the Americas and the world
c. civilizing mission provided a pretext for aggression
5. Western admiration for China never died out entirely, though the Opium
Wars did much to subvert it
a. China's backwardness was widely acknowledged in the West
b. China and Japan were potential rivals, who could be recruited or
resisted
c. Europeans adopted a defensive attitude to what they called "the
Yellow Peril"