Comment by PaulDavisThe1st

The renaissance and colonialism have an interesting, complex relationship with each other. As do the veneration and fetishization of dead civilizations vs. conceptions about contemporaneous ones. So sure, elements of the renaissance may have venerated "Egyptian Culture", but there were very few signs of it having any respect for contemporary Egyptian culture.

The myth is "we bought civilization to places that didn't have it". And that is absolutely a lie. There is a second myth that is particularly applicable in the Americas, which is that Europeans discovered a land that God intended them to have dominion over (essentially ignoring or belittling the existing civilization that was here). Neither of these are fictional strawmen - they are real and documented positions found through the writings of European explorers and American settlers and leaders.

It remains puzzling to me why settler colonialism (the dominant, though not only form of European expansionism) was not common in either the pre-1492 Americas or in Asia. The cultures/civilizations there certainly were expansionary but rarely seemed to feel the need to replace existing populations with their own. Whatever the reasons, the results are wildly different.