One idea in the advertisement is that white people have a duty to teach the “virtues of cleanliness.” This idea shows that white people are clean and therefore superior, while other people are dirty and therefore inferior. The advertisement also presents the idea that the colonies are the “dark corners of the earth,” which must be brightened. This idea implies that Europeans must improve less developed regions such as Africa and South Asia with their advanced culture. Both of these racist ideas suggest that European nations are like soap. They scrub out what is bad in their colonies and replace it with something superior. In this way, the advertisement uses racism to promote imperialism.
