Read the following quote and respond to the discussion question below:

Belief in the superiority of the "white race" was both inspired and reinforced by the contact of European colonist-conquerors with native populations in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, and buttressed as pseudo-science by a perversion of evolutionary theory known as "social Darwinism." "Social Darwinism" postulated that human beings were not one species, but divided into several different "races" that were biologically driven to struggle against one another for living space to ensure their survival. Only those "races" with superior qualities could win this eternal struggle which was carried out by force and warfare. Social Darwinism has always been the product of bogus science: to this day, despite a century and a half of efforts by racists to find it, there is no biological science to support social Darwinist theory.

From Anti-Semitism in History: 1875-1945, (US Holocaust Memorial Museum).

Discussion question: Choose a war or imperial conflict of the 19th or 20th century. What role did Darwinian theory and Social Darwinism play in justifying the reasons behind this conflict?