Colonialists and their sponsors certainly paid lip service to those principles, and some no doubt believed it to one degree or another. But the genuine motivation behind colonialism was quite certainly the fleets of cargo ships filled with: raw materials; precious metals for specie; textiles; minerals; elephant tusks; spices; you name it. Spreading culture was a secondary motivation at best. Without the loads of exploited goods, they would not have left their home shores. One could argue that missionaries had less malicious intentions than economic colonialists. But, in the end, their motivations were also rooted in a superiority complex.