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That’s absurd.
Every major belief system uses guilt as its feedback mechanism. The unusual thing about white people is that we’re running a system derived from Christianity. That tells us to feel guilty about a broader circle of concern. But if all the Christian guilt in the world circa 1700 didn’t stop white people from dominating, it can’t be the deciding factor now. Something else has changed the cost/benefit analysis.
It wasn't fully expressed back then, people had ways to rationalize it 'oh these natives are savages we can do as we please' or similar. Or 'we're colonizing them for their own good' - which was often true, or at least they thought they were doing that at times. Spreading Christianity was a major part of the colonial mission, from day 1.
Back in the 1600s, back at the beginning of the colonial story in North America the native Americans managed to get several devastating sneak-attack raids off on the English because the latter stupidly decided to be friends:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_massacre_of_1622
They did the same thing again in 1644 and managed to kill another few hundred people! It took enormous amounts of experience before whites worked out that they weren't friends with the native americans, that their interests were opposed. And this was quickly unlearnt after the latter were thoroughly beaten, now there are land acknowledgements and so on.
There's no cost-benefit analysis that says men gain by giving women much more power in society (thereby losing power themselves). It can only be a moral, justice-based approach.
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IMO, what changed is anti-colonialism, enabled by increased European weakness after they got themselves into two unnecessary massive wars from which the Americans had to rescue them and into which they dragged, well, the world.
Europe basically destroyed itself, and because it became weak, it was unable to culturally or militarily resist anti-colonial actions. The US pushed that process along by endorsing anti-colonialism.
To maintain relations with the now fracturing empires, upon which they were economically dependent, Europeans were forced to become apologetic and humble. And like the Japanese after WWII, they complied with this necessity.
So then generations of European elites were raised in a milleu of anti-colonial apology, which destroyed any sense among Europeans that they were good, or moral, or valuable, or net-positive in the world, unless they were steadfastly repentant and self-abnegating.
And because American elites have always obsessed with being accepted by Europeans (who look down on them), where European elites go, American elites follow. This has only somewhat reversed with American social leftism being exported to Europe, but Europe was already fertile ground for such things and the critical and postmodern theories that enabled their rise in the academy originated in continental philosophy. People, including themselves, like to see the postmodernists as these great contrarian rebels, but really they were just providing intellectual explanations of the prevailing social winds on the continent the same way medieval theologians were providing intellectual explanations of the teachings of the Church.
I'm of the opinion that Adolf Hitler was the worst thing to happen to Europe since the plague. The death of half the population would have been less terrible than the humiliation they've undergone.
Something like that, yeah.
The Industrial Revolution gave unprecedented firepower to European empires. As it continued, that power was steadily diluted to their subjects. By WWII’s end, we’ve got the Maxim gun, but they have, too, not to mention the improvised explosives. The balance tips. Maintaining a garrison rapidly gets more expensive. Colonial policy has to tread ever more carefully. At a certain point, it’s no longer cost-effective to play at empire. Only the biggest can keep trying, and they’re usually pretty unhappy with the process.
So yeah, social pressure shies away from traditional colonialism. It’s expensive and keeps generating ugly pictures for our mass media. Every time someone bucks the trend, they take a bunch of casualties and then get accused of being fascists. Far better to find a reason to give up that imperial ambition.
Two years after the maxim gun had been developed, well before it had reached wide acceptance:
Arguably it was never cost effective.
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