The stream pauses over the motives rulers gave for imperial expansion. In this interpretation, religious language often supplied a respectable public justification for territorial ambition and greed. The point concerns the political use of belief and does not claim that religion caused every conquest. It separates the reasons announced for expansion from the material or dynastic interests that may have driven it.
Notable Point · 1:11:40-1:12:41
Religious justification and imperial ambition
A brief historiographical aside separates rulers' public religious justifications from the territorial ambition that may have driven imperial expansion.