What I learned, questions, something i'm curious about investigating further

There are many thing's I learned today above all else i learned what Imperialism is, which is basically a place of higher power taking over another place to take there resources and eventually take over. I also learned about Afghanistan and when t was colonized and why any other nations would want to colonize it. A question I have is why these places never tried to fight back, because I'm sure a few of them knew what was going on. Though the people taking over were larger then the people they were taking over a issue i believe would still be raised and why wasn't it until later on. Something I am curious about is if the people were making money from zoo's and using it to make there colony bigger and why they would keep humans in the zoo.