@AnimeaddictionIV
You are falling pray to the same fallacious thinking as someone who thinks a medieval doctor is stupid because they know germ theory and the medieval doctor does not. Judging a character against a moral framework they do not live in makes no sense. If someone from PETA shows up while you're eating a hamburger and declares you to be an evil monster, would you agree? What if they then decided you should die for the part you played in that cows murder? Of course you would reject their declarations and judgment, because you don't exist within that moral frame.
Quick asides on morality/religion:
All morality comes from religion, with God as the ultimate arbiter of moral truth. Without religion there is no morality, only power dynamics.
If you got rid of all religions you would quickly see a new religion spring up from the group assuming the mantel of moral arbiters.
Only an amoral psychopath can exist without religion.
"Gunboat diplomacy is just a show of force at its core"
True, and there's nothing substantively different in the type of diplomacy by Imperial European powers and those in the past. The only difference was the disparity of technology. The Imperial Western powers weren't the first to do it, they were the last.