Inspiration provided by the radically diverse societies and cultures of the colonial empires

The colonial powers of Europe were exposed to different types of societies and cultures in the colonial empires. Their exposure to such diversities in societies and cultures provided an intellectual of these distant peoples raised fresh questions about society: Why some societies were more advance than others? What lessons could be the European countries learn from comparisons of various societies? Why the rate of social change was not the same everywhere? The new science of society called "Sociology" had emerged as an independent science in an attempt to find convincing answers to these questions.