No, the British and French, Belgians, Dutch and Germans who went off to find wealth in the colonies were poor-er than their elder brothers who joined the landed aristocracy or the Church, but they were nothing like the Irish or Chinese who were deported or forced out by starvation. They went to the colonies with full rights - beyond the rights they had at home - to do whatever they liked. And in Africa especially, mostly what they did was rape, drink and degenerate. Which was what they would have done back home; that's why they were given one-way boat rides. That and the fact that the empires had so much money, there was no way to spend it in the home country. And so many sons there weren't enough places for them all in the bureaucracy.

But no, it's not expecting too much of people to think they might retain their civilization when they willingly and gleefully go take up ownership of a plantation in a colony. Frankly, the Irish and Chinese in America were far more civilized than the Boers ever were, because they had to be. The Boers just showed up somewhere they could act like petty gods over black people and they did, until they forgot civilization completely.