Toward Ecosophy

This isn't exactly a magical question but a follow up on questions of what kinds of empires different cultures have. Was discussing this very question with a friend and my take was that US conquered and destroyed (for the most part) the Indians because most of this section of N. America was seen as suitable for settlement and cultivation of the European type--grain farming, cattle and sheep herding. Incompatible with hunting cultures or with those who were farming their own way. The British and other Europeans in tropical Africa and Asia were interested in exploiting rather than settling because the tropical climate and diseases were hard on the whites. So send in enough soldiers to keep order and enforce the taxes, suppress unacceptable native practices such as polygamy, suttee, cannibalism, etc. but with the whites usually intending to take the money and go home. Need the natives to work the plantations, mines, lumbering, so you don't kill them. Both forms of empire were based on a Christian idea that the earth and its products belonged to the righteous. Does this make sense?

Rita