One of the main reasons Christianity is now so popular is because European imperial nations spread it through their conquests, with it being a main justification for many of their ventures. This was the case in both the colonialism seen prior to the Napoleonic wars and the scramble for Africa in the late 1800s. The religion was forced on native peoples who had to abandon their traditional religions, many times for fear of death at the hands of Europeans. The result is several populous non-European nations having majority Christian populations to this day.