This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
|
An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) has political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, different populations have different sets of rights and are governed differently. Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor or empress; but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or are ruled by an emperor; nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians (the Central African Empire, and some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in early England being examples).
There have been "ancient and modern, centralized and decentralized, ultra-brutal and relatively benign" empires. An important distinction has been between land empires made up solely of contiguous territories, such as the Austrian Empire or the Russian Empire; and those created by sea-power, which include territories that are remote from the 'home' country of the empire, such as the Spanish Empire or the British Empire. Aside from the more formal usage, the word empire can also refer colloquially to a large-scale business enterprise (e.g. a transnational corporation), a political organization controlled by a single individual (a political boss), or a group (political bosses). The concept of empire is associated with other such concepts as imperialism, colonialism, and globalization, with imperialism referring to the creation and maintenance of unequal relationships between nations and not necessarily the policy of a state headed by an emperor or empress. Empire is often used as a term to describe overpowering situations causing displeasure.
Definition
An empire is an aggregate of many separate states or territories under a supreme ruler or oligarchy. This is in contrast to a federation, which is an extensive state voluntarily composed of autonomous states and peoples. An empire is a large polity which rules over territories outside of its original borders.
Definitions of what physically and politically constitutes an empire vary. It might be a state affecting imperial policies or a particular political structure. Empires are typically formed from diverse ethnic, national, cultural, and religious components. 'Empire' and 'colonialism' are used to refer to relationships between a powerful state or society versus a less powerful one; Michael W. Doyle has defined empire as "effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society".
Tom Nairn and Paul James define empires as polities that "extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces to extract or accrue value".Rein Taagepera has defined an empire as "any relatively large sovereign political entity whose components are not sovereign". Peter Bang characterizes empire as "composite, layered and anything but uniform in their internal organization of power," and comprising "a range of different territories and communities, subjected hierarchically in various ways to a dominant power."
The terrestrial empire's maritime analogue is the thalassocracy, an empire composed of islands and coasts which are accessible to its terrestrial homeland, such as the Athenian-dominated Delian League.
Furthermore, empires can expand by both land and sea. Stephen Howe notes that empires by land can be characterized by expansion over terrain, "extending directly outwards from the original frontier" while an empire by sea can be characterized by colonial expansion and empire building "by an increasingly powerful navy".
However, sometimes an empire is only a semantic construction, such as when a ruler assumes the title of "emperor". That polity over which the ruler reigns logically becomes an "empire", despite having no additional territory or hegemony. Examples of this form of empire are the Central African Empire, Mexican Empire, or the Korean Empire proclaimed in 1897 when Korea, far from gaining new territory, was on the verge of being annexed by the Empire of Japan, one of the last to use the name officially. Among the last states in the 20th century known as empires in this sense were the Central African Empire, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Manchukuo, Russia, Germany, and Korea.
Scholars typically distinguish empires from nation-states. In an empire, there is a hierarchy whereby one group of people (usually, the metropole) has command over other groups of people, and there is a hierarchy of rights and prestige for different groups of people.Josep Colomer distinguished between empires and states in the following way:
- Empires were vastly larger than states
- Empires lacked fixed or permanent boundaries whereas a state had fixed boundaries
- Empires had a "compound of diverse groups and territorial units with asymmetric links with the center" whereas a state had "supreme authority over a territory and population"
- Empires had multi-level, overlapping jurisdictions whereas a state sought monopoly and homogenization
Characteristics
Many empires were the result of military conquest, incorporating the vanquished states into a political union, but imperial hegemony can be established in other ways. The Athenian Empire, the Roman Empire, and the British Empire developed at least in part under elective auspices. The Empire of Brazil declared itself an empire after separating from the Portuguese Empire in 1822. France has twice transitioned from being called the French Republic to being called the French Empire while it retained an overseas empire.
Europeans began applying the designation of "empire" to non-European monarchies, such as the Qing Empire and the Mughal Empire, as well as the Maratha Confederacy, eventually leading to the looser denotations applicable to any political structure meeting their criteria of "imperium". Some monarchies styled themselves as having greater size, scope, and power than the territorial, politico-military, and economic facts support. As a consequence, some monarchs assumed the title of "emperor" (or its corresponding translation, tsar, empereur, kaiser, shah etc.) and renamed their states as "The Empire of ...". Empires were seen as an expanding power, administration, ideas and beliefs followed by cultural habits from place to place. Some empires tended to impose their culture on the subject states to strengthen the imperial structure; others opted for multicultural and cosmopolitan policies. Cultures generated by empires could have notable effects that outlasted the empire itself. Most histories of empires have been hostile, especially if the authors were promoting nationalism. Stephen Howe, although himself hostile, listed positive qualities: the guaranteed stability, security, and legal order for their subjects. They tried to minimize ethnic and religious antagonism inside the empire. The aristocracies that ruled them were often more cosmopolitan and broad-minded than their nationalistic successors.
There are two main ways to establish and maintain an imperial political structure: (i) as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control with force or (ii) as a coercive, hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power. The former method provides greater tribute and direct political control, yet limits further expansion because it absorbs military forces to fixed garrisons. The latter method provides less tribute and indirect control, but avails military forces for further expansion. Territorial empires (e.g. the Macedonian Empire and Byzantine Empire) tend to be contiguous areas. The term, on occasion, has been applied to maritime republics or thalassocracies (e.g. the Athenian and British empires) with looser structures and more scattered territories, often consisting of many islands and other forms of possessions which required the creation and maintenance of a powerful navy. Empires such as the Holy Roman Empire also came together by electing the emperor with votes from member realms through the Imperial election.
History of imperialism
Early empires
Stephen Howe writes that with the exception of the Roman, Chinese and "perhaps ancient Egyptian states", early empires seldom survived the death of their founder and were usually limited in scope to conquest and collection of tribute, having little impact on the everyday lives of their subjects.
With the exception of Rome, the periods of dissolution following imperial falls were equally short. Successor states seldom outlived their founders and disappeared in the next and often larger empire. Some empires, like the Neo-Babylonian, Median and Lydian were outright conquered by a larger empire. The historical pattern was not a simple rise-and-fall cycle; rather it was rise, fall, and greater rise, or as Raoul Naroll put it, "expanding pulsation."
Empires were limited in scope to conquest, as Howe observed, but conquest is a considerable scope. Many fought to the death to avoid it or to be liberated from it. Imperial conquests and attempts of conquest significantly contributed to the list of wars by death toll. The imperial impact on subjects can be regarded as "little," but only on those subjects who survived the imperial conquest and rule. We cannot ask the inhabitants of Carthage and Masada, for example, whether empire had little impact on their lives. We seldom hear the voices of subject peoples because history is mostly written by winners. The imperial sources tend to ignore or reduce the resistance by subdued states. But one rich primary source of the subject population is the Hebrew Prophetic books. The hatred towards the ruling empires expressed in this source makes impression of an impact more serious than estimated by Howe. A classical writer and adherent of empire, Orosius explicitly preferred to avoid the views of subject populations. And another classical Roman patriot, Lucan confessed that "words cannot express how bitterly we are hated" by subject peoples.
The earliest known empire appeared in southern Egypt sometime around 3200 BC. Southern Egypt was divided by three kingdoms each centered on a powerful city. Hierapolis conquered the other two cities over two centuries, and later grew into the country of Egypt. The Akkadian Empire, established by Sargon of Akkad (24th century BC), was an early all-Mesopotamian empire which spread into Anatolia, the Levant and Ancient Iran. This imperial achievement was repeated by Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria and Hammurabi of Babylon in the 19th and 18th centuries BC. In the 15th century BC, the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, ruled by Thutmose III, was ancient Africa's major force upon incorporating Nubia and the ancient city-states of the Levant.
c. 1500 BC in China rose the Shang Empire which was succeeded by the Zhou Empire c. 1100 BC. Both equalled or surpassed in territory their contemporary Near Eastern empires such as the Middle Assyrian Empire, Hittite Empire, Egyptian Empire and those of the Mitanni and Elamites. The Zhou Empire dissolved in 770 BC into feudal multi-state system which lasted for five and a half centuries until the universal conquest of Qin in 221 BC. The first empire comparable to Rome in organization was the Neo-Assyrian Empire (916–612 BC). The Median Empire was the first empire within the territory of Persia. By the 6th century BC, after having allied with the Babylonians, Scythians and Cimmerians to defeat the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Medes were able to establish their own empire, which was the largest of its day and lasted for about sixty years.
Classical period
The Axial Age (mid-First Millennium BC) witnessed unprecedented imperial expansion in the Indo-Mediterranean region and China. The successful and extensive Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), also known as the first Persian Empire, covered Mesopotamia, Egypt, parts of Greece, Thrace, the Middle East, much of Central Asia, and North-Western India. It is considered the first great empire in history or the first "world empire". It was overthrown and replaced by the short-lived empire of Alexander the Great. His Empire was succeeded by three Empires ruled by the Diadochi—the Seleucid, Ptolemaic, and Macedonian, which, despite being independent, are called the "Hellenistic Empire" by virtue of their similarities in culture and administration.
Meanwhile, in the western Mediterranean the Empires of Carthage and Rome began their rise. Having decisively defeated Carthage in 202 BC, Rome defeated Macedonia in 200 BC and the Seleucids in 190–189 BC to establish an all-Mediterranean Empire. The Seleucid Empire broke apart and its former eastern part was absorbed by the Parthian Empire. In 30 BC Rome annexed Ptolemaic Egypt.
In India during the Axial Age appeared the Maurya Empire—a geographically extensive and powerful empire, ruled by the Mauryan dynasty from 321 to 185 BC. The empire was founded in 322 BC by Chandragupta Maurya through the help of Chanakya, who rapidly expanded his power westward across central and western India, taking advantage of the disruptions of local powers following the withdrawal by Alexander the Great. By 320 BC, the Maurya Empire had fully occupied northwestern India as well as defeating and conquering the satraps left by Alexander. Under Emperor Ashoka the Great, the Maurya Empire became the first Indian empire to conquer the whole Indian Peninsula — an achievement repeated only twice, by the Gupta and Mughal Empires. In the reign of Ashoka Buddhism spread to become the dominant religion in many parts of the ancient India.
In 221 BC, China became an empire when the State of Qin ended the chaotic Warring States period through its conquest of the other six states, starting the Qin Empire (221–207 BC). Its sovereign adopted the new title of Huangdi (皇帝), which is translated in English as "Emperor". The Qin Empire is known for the construction of the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army, as well as the standardization of currency, weights, measures and writing system. It laid the foundation for China's first golden age, the Han dynasty (202 BC–AD 9, AD 25–220). The Han Empire expanded into Central Asia and established trade through the Silk Road. Confucianism was, for the first time, adopted as an official state ideology. During the reign of the Emperor Wu of Han, the Xiongnu were pacified. By this time, only four empires stretched between the Pacific and the Atlantic: the Han Empire of China, the Kushan Empire, the Parthian Empire of Persia, and the Roman Empire. The collapse of the Han Empire in AD 220 saw China fragmented into the Three Kingdoms, only to be unified once again by the Jin Empire (AD 266–420). The relative weakness of the Jin Empire plunged China into political disunity that would last from AD 304 to AD 589 when the Sui Empire (AD 581–618) reunited China.
The Romans were the first people to invent and embody the concept of "empire" in their two mandates: to wage war and to make and execute laws. They were the most extensive Western empire until the early modern period, and left a lasting impact on European society. Many languages, cultural values, religious institutions, political divisions, urban centers, and legal systems can trace their origins to the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire governed and rested on exploitative actions. They took slaves and money from the peripheries to support the imperial center. However, the absolute reliance on conquered peoples to carry out the empire's fortune, sustain wealth, and fight wars would ultimately lead to the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Romans were strong believers in what they called their "civilizing mission". This term was legitimized and justified by writers like Cicero who wrote that only under Roman rule could the world flourish and prosper. This ideology, that was envisioned to bring a new world order, was eventually spread across the Mediterranean world and beyond. People started to build houses like Romans, eat the same food, wear the same clothes and engage in the same games. Even rights of citizenship and authority to rule were granted to people not born within Roman territory.
The Latin word imperium derives from imperare, meaning "to command", and originally referred to a magistrate's authority (usually in a military sense). As the Roman state expanded overseas, the term began to be used to describe Rome's authority over its colonies and client states. Successful generals were often given the title imperator, an honorific roughly meaning "commander". Although historians use the terms "Republic" and "Empire" to identify the periods of Roman history before and after absolute power was assumed by Augustus, the Romans themselves continued to refer to their government as the Res publica, meaning "public affair". On the other hand, the concept of imperium Romanum, as in, the authority of the Romans, is attested since the 2nd century BC. The modern concepts of "Empire" and "Emperor" did not appear until several centuries later, long after the fall of Rome in the West. Augustus established a new de facto monarchy, but sought to maintain the appearance of a republican government. He and his early successors used the informal titles of augustus and princeps, but over time the title of imperator came to denote the office of (what is now referred to as) "emperor".
The legal systems of France and its former colonies are strongly influenced by Roman law. Similarly, the United States was founded on a model inspired by the Roman Republic, with upper and lower legislative assemblies, and executive power vested in a single individual, the president. The president, as "commander-in-chief" of the armed forces, reflects the ancient Roman titles imperator princeps. The Roman Catholic Church, founded in the early Imperial Period, spread across Europe, first by the activities of Christian evangelists, and later by official imperial promulgation.
Post-classical period
In Western Asia, the term "Persian Empire" came to denote the Iranian imperial states established at different historical periods of pre–Islamic and post–Islamic Persia.
In East Asia, various Chinese empires (or dynasties) dominated the political, economic and cultural landscapes during this era, the most powerful of which was probably the Tang Empire (618–690, 705–907). Other influential Chinese empires during the post-classical period include the Sui Empire (581–618), the Great Liao Empire, the Song Empire, the Western Xia Empire (1038–1227), the Great Jin Empire (1115–1234), the Western Liao Empire (1124–1218), the Great Yuan Empire (1271–1368), and the Great Ming Empire (1368–1644). During this period, Japan and Korea underwent voluntary Sinicization. The Sui, Tang and Song empires had the world's largest economy and were the most technologically advanced during their time; the Great Yuan Empire was the world's ninth largest empire by total land area; while the Great Ming Empire is famous for the seven maritime expeditions led by Zheng He.
The Ajuran Sultanate was a Somali empire in the medieval times that dominated the Indian Ocean trade. It was a Somali Muslim sultanate that ruled over large parts of the Horn of Africa in the Middle Ages. Through a strong centralized administration and an aggressive military stance towards invaders, the Ajuran Sultanate successfully resisted an Oromo invasion from the west and a Portuguese incursion from the east during the Gaal Madow and the Ajuran-Portuguese wars. Trading routes dating from the ancient and early medieval periods of Somali maritime enterprise were strengthened or re-established, and foreign trade and commerce in the coastal provinces flourished with ships sailing to and coming from many kingdoms and empires in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Middle East, North Africa and East Africa.
In the 7th century, Maritime Southeast Asia witnessed the rise of a Buddhist thallasocracy, the Srivijaya Empire, which thrived for 600 years and was succeeded by the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit Empire that ruled from the 13th to 15th centuries. In the Southeast Asian mainland, the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire was centered in the city of Angkor and flourished from the 9th to 13th centuries. Following the demise of the Khmer Empire, the Siamese Empire flourished alongside the Burmese and Lan Chang Empires from the 13th through the 18th centuries.
In Southeastern and Eastern Europe, during 917, the Eastern Roman Empire, sometimes called the Byzantine Empire, was forced to recognize the Imperial title of Bulgarian ruler Simeon the Great, who were then called Tsar, the first ruler to hold that precise imperial title. The Bulgarian Empire, established in the region in 680–681, remained a major power in Southeast Europe until its fall in the late 14th century. Bulgaria gradually reached its cultural and territorial apogee in the 9th century and early 10th century under Prince Boris I and Simeon I, when its early Christianization in 864 allowed it to develop into the cultural and literary center of Slavic Europe, as well as one of the largest states in Europe, thus the period is considered the Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture. Major events included the development of the Cyrillic script at the Preslav Literary School, declared official in 893, and the establishment of the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic, also called Old Bulgarian.
At the time, in the Medieval West, the title "empire" had a specific technical meaning that was exclusively applied to states that considered themselves the heirs and successors of the Roman Empire. Among these were the "Byzantine Empire", which was the actual continuation of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire, the Carolingian Empire, the largely Germanic Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian Empire. Yet, these states did not always fit the geographic, political, or military profiles of empires in the modern sense of the word. To legitimise their imperium, these states directly claimed the title of Empire from Rome. The sacrum Romanum imperium (Holy Roman Empire), which lasted from 800 to 1806, claimed to have exclusively comprehended Christian principalities, and was only nominally a discrete imperial state. The Holy Roman Empire was not always centrally-governed, as it had neither core nor peripheral territories, and was not governed by a central, politico-military elite. Hence, Voltaire's remark that the Holy Roman Empire "was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" is accurate to the degree that it ignores German rule over Italian, French, Provençal, Polish, Flemish, Dutch, and Bohemian populations, and the efforts of the ninth-century Holy Roman Emperors (i.e., the Ottonians) to establish central control. Voltaire's "nor an empire" observation applies to its late period.
In 1204, after the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople, the crusaders established a Latin Empire (1204–1261) in that city, while the defeated Byzantine Empire's descendants established two smaller, short-lived empires in Asia Minor: the Empire of Nicaea (1204–1261) and the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461). Constantinople was retaken in 1261 by the Byzantine successor state centered in Nicaea, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire until 1453, by which time the Turkish-Muslim Ottoman Empire (ca. 1300–1918), had conquered most of the region. The Ottoman Empire was a successor of the Abbasid Empire and it was the most powerful empire to succeed the Abbasi empires at the time, as well as one of the most powerful empires in the world. They became the successors after the Abbasid Empire fell from the Mongols (Hülegü Khan). The Ottoman Empire centered on modern day Turkey, dominated the eastern Mediterranean, overthrew the Byzantine Empire to claim Constantinople and it would start battering at Austria and Malta, which were countries that were key to central and to south-west Europe respectively — mainly for their geographical location.
The reason these occurrences of batterings were so important was because the Ottomans were Muslim, and the rest of Europe was Christian, so there was a sense of religious fighting going on. This was not just a rivalry of East and West but a rivalry between Christians and Muslims. Both the Christians and Muslims had alliances with other countries, and they had problems in them as well. The flows of trade and of cultural influences across the supposed great divide never ceased, so the countries never stopped bartering with each other. These epochal clashes between civilizations profoundly shaped many people's thinking back then, and continues to do so in the present day. Modern hatred against Muslim communities in South-Eastern Europe, mainly in Bosnia and Kosovo, has often been articulated in terms of seeing them as unwelcome residues of this imperialism: in short, as Turks. Moreover, Eastern Orthodox imperialism was not re-established until the coronation of Ivan the Terrible as Emperor of Russia in 1547. Likewise, with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), the Austrian Empire (1804–1867) emerged reconstituted as the Empire of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), having "inherited" the imperium of Central and Western Europe from the losers of said wars.
In the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan expanded the Mongol Empire to be the largest contiguous empire in the world. However, within two generations, the empire was separated into four discrete khanates under Genghis Khan's grandsons. One of them, Kublai Khan, conquered China and established the Yuan dynasty with the imperial capital at Beijing. One family ruled the whole Eurasian land mass from the Pacific to the Adriatic and Baltic Seas. The emergence of the Pax Mongolica had significantly eased trade and commerce across Asia. The Safavid Empire of Iran was also founded.
Early Modern period
The Islamic gunpowder empires started to develop from the 15th century. In the Indian subcontinent, the Delhi Sultanate conquered most of the Indian peninsula and spread Islam across it. It later disintegrated with the establishment of the Bengal, Gujarat, and Bahmani Sultanate. In the 16th century, the Mughal Empire was founded by Timur and Genghis Khan's direct descendant Babur. His successors such Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan extended the empire. In the 17th century, Aurangzeb expanded the Mughal Empire, controlling most of the South Asia through Sharia, which became the world's largest economy and leading manufacturing power with a nominal GDP that valued a quarter of world GDP, superior than the combination of Europe's GDP. It has been estimated that the Mughal emperors controlled an unprecedented one-fourth of the world's entire economy and was home to one-fourth of the world's population at the time. After the death of Aurangzeb, which marks the end of the medieval India and the beginning of European invasion in India, the empire was weakened by Nader Shah's invasion.
The Mysore Empire was soon established by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, who allied with Napoleon Bonaparte. Other independent empires were also established, such as those ruled by the Nawabs of Bengal and Nizam of Hyderabad.
In the pre-Columbian Americas, two Empires were prominent—the Azteca in Mesoamerica and Inca in Peru. Both existed for several generations before the arrival of the Europeans. Inca had gradually conquered the whole of the settled Andean world as far south as today Santiago in Chile.
In Oceania, the Tonga Empire was a lonely empire that existed from the Late Middle Ages to the Modern period.
Colonial empires
This section does not cite any sources. (April 2019) |
In the 15th century, Castile (Spain) landing in the so-called "New World" (first, the Americas, and later Australia), along with Portuguese travels around the Cape of Good Hope and along the coast of Africa bordering the southeast Indian Ocean, proved ripe opportunities for the continent's Renaissance-era monarchies to establish colonial empires like those of the ancient Romans and Greeks. In the Old World, colonial imperialism was attempted and established on the Canary Islands and Ireland. These conquered lands and people became de jure subordinates of the empire, rather than de facto imperial territories and subjects. Such subjugation often elicited "client-state" resentment that the empire unwisely ignored, leading to the collapse of the European colonial imperial system in the late 19th through the mid-20th century. Portuguese discovery of Newfoundland in the New World gave way to many expeditions led by England (later Britain), Spain, France, and the Dutch Republic. In the 18th century, the Spanish Empire was at its height because of the great mass of goods taken from conquered territory in the Americas (nowadays Mexico, parts of the United States, the Caribbean, most of Central America, and South America) and the Philippines.
Modern period
The British established their first empire (1583–1783) in North America by colonising lands that made up British America, including parts of Canada, the Caribbean and the Thirteen Colonies. In 1776, the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies declared itself independent from the British Empire, thus beginning the American Revolution. Britain turned towards Asia, the Pacific, and later Africa, with subsequent exploration and conquests leading to the rise of the Second British Empire (1783–1815), which was followed by the Industrial Revolution and Britain's Imperial Century (1815–1914). It became the largest empire in world history, encompassing one quarter of the world's land area and one fifth of its population. The impacts of this period are still prominent in the current age "including widespread use of the English language, belief in Protestant religion, economic globalization, modern precepts of law and order, and representative democracy."
The Great Qing Empire of China (1644–1912) was the fourth largest empire in world history by total land area, and laid the foundation for the modern territorial claims of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. Apart from having direct control over much of East Asia, the empire also exerted domination over other states through the Chinese tributary system. The multiethnic and multicultural nature of the Great Qing Empire was crucial to the subsequent birth of the nationalistic concept of zhonghua minzu. The empire reached its peak during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, after which the empire entered a period of prolonged decline, culminating in its collapse as a result of the Xinhai Revolution.
The Ashanti Empire (or Confederacy), also Asanteman (1701–1896), was a West African state of the Ashanti, the Akan people of the Ashanti Region, Akanland in modern-day Ghana. The Ashanti (or Asante) were a powerful, militaristic and highly disciplined people in West Africa. Their military power, which came from effective strategy and an early adoption of European firearms, created an empire that stretched from central Akanland (in modern-day Ghana) to present day Benin and Ivory Coast, bordered by the Dagomba kingdom to the north and Dahomey to the east. Due to the empire's military prowess, sophisticated hierarchy, social stratification and culture, the Ashanti empire had one of the largest historiographies of any indigenous Sub-Saharan African political entity.
The Sikh Empire (1799–1849) was established in the Punjab region of India. The empire weakened when its founder, Ranjit Singh, died in 1839, the empire fell to the British after the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849. During the same period, the Maratha Empire (also known as the Maratha Confederacy) was a Hindu state located in present-day India. It existed from 1674 to 1818, and at its peak, the empire's territories covered much of Southern Asia. The empire was founded and consolidated by Shivaji. After the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, it expanded greatly under the rule of the Peshwas. In 1761, the Maratha army lost the Third Battle of Panipat, which halted the expansion of the empire. Later, the empire was divided into a confederacy of states which, in 1818, were lost to the British during the Anglo-Maratha wars.
France was a dominant empire possessing many colonies in various locations around the world. During Louis XIV's long reign, from 1643 to 1715, France was the leading European power as Europe's most populous, richest and powerful country. The Empire of the French (1804–1814), also known as the Greater French Empire or First French Empire but more commonly known as the Napoleonic Empire, was also the dominant power of much of continental Europe. It ruled over 90 million people and was the sole power in Europe if not the world; Britain was the only main rival during the early 19th century. From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire’s total area at its peak in 1680 was over 10 million km2 (3.9 million sq mi), the second largest empire in the world at the time behind only the Spanish Empire. It had many possessions around the world, mainly in the Americas, Asia and Africa. At its peak in 1750, French India had an area of 1.5 million km2 and a total population of 100 million people and was the most populous colony under French rule. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire extended over 13.5 million km2 (5.2 million sq mi) of land at its height in the 1920s and 1930s with a totaled population of 150 million people. Including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 13.5 million km2 (5.2 million sq mi) at the time, which is 10.0% of the Earth's total land area. The total area of the French colonial empire, with the first (mainly in the Americas and Asia) and second (mainly in Africa and Asia), the French colonial empires combined, reached 24 million km2 (9.3 million sq mi), the second largest in the world (the first being the British Empire).
The Empire of Brazil (1822–1889) was the only South American modern monarchy, established by the heir of the Portuguese Empire as an independent nation eventually became an emerging international power. The new country was huge but sparsely populated and ethnically diverse. In 1889 the monarchy was overthrown in a sudden coup d'état led by a clique of military leaders whose goal was the formation of a republic.
The German Empire (1871–1918), another "heir to the Holy Roman Empire", arose in 1871.
Fall of empires
The fall of an empire is typically associated with a change in the world order, with a new hegemon replacing the former empire. There is typically a decline in soft power and hard power. During the fall, the empire typically retreats its expanded operations. Trade shrinks as the former empire shifts its priorities towards domestic policy. Living conditions may deteriorate as the economy shrinks. Balkanization or territorial divisions may occur. However, this process is not universal. Some empires are more resilient and fall gracefully while others experience complete chaos.
Roman Empire
The fall of the western half of the Roman Empire is seen as one of the most pivotal points in all of human history. This event traditionally marks the transition from classical civilization to the birth of Europe. The Roman Empire started to decline at the end of the reign of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius in 161–180 A.D. There is still a debate over the cause of the fall of one of the largest empires in history. Piganiol argues that the Roman Empire under its authority can be described as "a period of terror", holding its imperial system accountable for its failure. Another theory blames the rise of Christianity as the cause, arguing that the spread of certain Christian ideals caused internal weakness of the military and state. In his book The Fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather contends that there are many factors, including issues of money and manpower, which produce military limitations and culminate in the Roman army's inability to effectively repel invading barbarians at the frontier. The Western Roman economy was already stretched to its limit in the 4th and 5th centuries C.E. due to continual conflict and loss of territory which, in turn, generated loss of revenue from the tax base. There was also the looming presence of the Persians which, at any time, took a large percentage of the fighting force's attention. At the same time the Huns, a nomadic warrior people from the steppes of Asia, are also putting extreme pressure on the German tribes outside of the Roman frontier, which gave the German tribes no other choice, geographically, but to move into Roman territory. At this point, without increased funding, the Roman army could no longer effectively defend its borders against major waves of Germanic tribes. This inability is illustrated by the crushing defeat at Adrianople in 378 C.E. and, later, the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 C.E.
Transition from empire
In time, an empire may change from one political entity to another. For example, the Holy Roman Empire, a German re-constitution of the Roman Empire, metamorphosed into various political structures (i.e., federalism), and eventually, under Habsburg rule, re-constituted itself in 1804 as the Austrian Empire, an empire of much different politics and scope, which in turn became the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. The Roman Empire, perennially reborn, also lived on as the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) – temporarily splitting into the Latin Empire, the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond before its remaining territory and centre became part of the Ottoman Empire. A similarly persistent concept of empire saw the Mongol Empire become the Khanate of the Golden Horde, the Yuan Empire of China, and the Ilkhanate before resurrection as the Timurid Empire and as the Mughal Empire. After 1945 the Empire of Japan retained its Emperor but lost its colonial possessions and became the State of Japan. Despite the semantic reference to imperial power, Japan is a de jure constitutional monarchy, with a homogeneous population of 127 million people that is 98.5 percent ethnic Japanese, making it one of the largest nation-states.
An autocratic empire can become a republic (e.g., the Central African Empire in 1979), or it can become a republic with its imperial dominions reduced to a core territory (e.g., Weimar Germany shorn of the German colonial empire (1918–1919), or the Ottoman Empire (1918–1923)). The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after 1918 provides an example of a multi-ethnic superstate broken into constituent nation-oriented states: the republics, kingdoms, and provinces of Austria, Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czechoslovakia, Ruthenia, Galicia, et al. In the aftermath of World War I the Russian Empire also broke up and became reduced to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) before re-forming as the USSR (1922–1991) – sometimes seen as the core of a Soviet Empire. The latter also disintegrated in 1989–91.
After the Second World War (1939–1945), the deconstruction of colonial empires quickened and became commonly known as decolonisation. The British Empire evolved into a loose, multinational Commonwealth of Nations, while the French colonial empire metamorphosed to a Francophone commonwealth. The same process happened to the Portuguese Empire, which evolved into a Lusophone commonwealth, and to the former territories of the extinct Spanish Empire, which alongside the Lusophone countries of Portugal and Brazil, created an Ibero-American commonwealth. France returned the French territory of Kwang-Chou-Wan to China in 1946. The British gave Hong Kong back to China in 1997 after 150 years of rule. The Portuguese territory of Macau reverted to China in 1999. Macau and Hong Kong did not become part of the provincial structure of China; they have autonomous systems of government as Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China.
France still governs overseas territories (French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Martin, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Guadeloupe, French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF), Wallis and Futuna, Saint Barthélemy, and Mayotte), and exerts hegemony in Francafrique ("French Africa"; 29 francophone countries such as Chad, Rwanda, etc.). Fourteen British Overseas Territories remain under British sovereignty. Fifteen countries of the Commonwealth of Nations share their head of state, King Charles III, as Commonwealth realms.
Contemporary usage
United States of America
Contemporaneously, the concept of empire is politically valid, yet is not always used in the traditional sense. One of widely discussed cases is the United States. Characterizing aspects of the US in regards to its territorial expansion, foreign policy, and its international behavior as "American Empire" is common. The term "American Empire" refers to the United States' cultural ideologies and foreign policy strategies. The term is most commonly used to describe the U.S.'s status since the 20th century, but it can also be applied to the United States' world standing before the rise of nationalism in the 20th century. The US itself was at one point a colony in the British Empire. Thomas Jefferson used the term "Empire of Liberty" and argued that "no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government". Jefferson in the 1780s while awaiting the fall of the Spanish empire, said: "till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece".
Even so, the ideology that the US was founded on anti-imperialist principles has prevented many from acknowledging America's status as an empire. This active rejection of imperialist status is not limited to high-ranking government officials, as it has been ingrained in American society throughout its entire history. As David Ludden explains, "journalists, scholars, teachers, students, analysts, and politicians prefer to depict the U.S. as a nation pursuing its own interests and ideals". This often results in imperialist endeavors being presented as measures taken to enhance state security. Ludden explains this phenomenon with the concept of "ideological blinders", which he says prevent American citizens from realizing the true nature of America's current systems and strategies. These "ideological blinders" that people wear have resulted in an "invisible" American empire of which most American citizens are unaware. Besides its anti-imperialist principles, the United States is not traditionally recognized as an empire, because the U.S. adopted a different political system from those that previous empires had used.
Despite the anti-imperial ideology and systematic differences, the political objectives and strategies of the United States government have been quite similar to those of previous empires. Throughout the 19th century, the United States government attempted to expand its territory by any means necessary. Regardless of the supposed motivation for this constant expansion, all of these land acquisitions were carried out by imperialistic means. This was done by financial means in some cases, and by military force in others. Most notably, the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Texas Annexation (1845), and the Mexican Cession (1848) highlight the imperialistic goals of the United States during this "modern period" of imperialism. The U.S. government has stopped adding additional territories, where they permanently and politically take over since the early 20th century, and instead have established 800 military bases as their outposts. With this overt but subtle military control of other countries, scholars consider U.S. foreign policy strategies to be imperialistic. Academic Krishna Kumar argues that the distinct principles of nationalism and imperialism may result in common practice; that is, the pursuit of nationalism can often coincide with the pursuit of imperialism in terms of strategy and decision making. Stuart Creighton Miller posits that the public's sense of innocence about Realpolitik (politics based on practical considerations, rather than ideals) impacts popular recognition of US imperial conduct since it governed other countries via surrogates. These surrogates were domestically weak, right-wing governments that would collapse without US support.
Former President G. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said: "We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic; we never have been." This was said in the context of the international opposition to the Iraq War led by the United States in manner widely regarded as imperial. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq underway, historian Sidney Lens argued that, from its inception, the US has used every means available to dominate foreign peoples and states. The same time, Eliot A. Cohen suggested: "The Age of Empire may indeed have ended, but then an age of American hegemony has begun, regardless of what one calls it." Some scholars did not bother how to call it: "When it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck."
European Union
Since the European Union was formed as a polity in 1993, it has established its own currency, its own citizenship, established discrete military forces, and exercises its limited hegemony in the Mediterranean, eastern parts of Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The big size and high development index of the EU economy often has the ability to influence global trade regulations in its favor. The political scientist Jan Zielonka suggests that this behavior is imperial because it coerces its neighbouring countries into adopting its European economic, legal, and political structures.Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP of the United Kingdom, opposed the European integration policies of the European Union by saying, "I think they're (the European Union) building an empire there, they want us (the United Kingdom) to be a part of their empire and I don't want that."
Russia
In the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea, political scientist Agnia Grigas argued that Moscow pursues the policy of "reimperialization." Two days after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, historian specializing on empires, Niall Ferguson, interpreted the policy of Putin as an attempt to bring back the tsarist Russian Empire. By this time, the "neo-imperialism," or "neo-imperial ambitions" of Russia became widely claimed. When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, says another historian of empires Timothy Snyder, he is speaking the familiar language of empire. For five hundred years, European conquerors saw themselves as actors with purpose, and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision.
Vladimir Putin himself used to state: "For Russia to survive, it must remain an empire." In June 2022, on the 350 anniversary of the birth of the 18th-century Russian tsar Peter the Great, Putin has compared himself to him associating their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands. For critics this association implied that Putin's "complaints about historical injustice, eastward NATO expansion, and other grievances with the west were all a façade for a traditional war of conquest" and imperialism. "After months of denials that Russia is driven by imperial ambitions in Ukraine, Putin appeared to embrace that mission." On the same occasion, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian government, suggested Russia's "de-imperialization," instead of Russia's official war aim of "de-Nazification" of Ukraine.
Later that year, Anne Applebaum approached the new Russian Empire as a fact and opined that this Empire must be defeated. Other pundits described the new Russian Empire as a failed attempt because Russia failed to annex the whole of Ukraine.
Timeline of empires
This section does not cite any sources. (April 2019) |
The chart below shows a timeline of polities that have been called empires. Dynastic changes are marked with a white line.
- The Roman Empire's timeline listed below includes the Western and Eastern portion.
- The Empires of Nicaea and Trebizond were Byzantine successor states.
- The Empire of Bronze Age Egypt is not included in the graph. Established by Narmer circa 3000 BC, it lasted as long as China until it was conquered by Achaemenid Persia in 525 BC.
- Japan is presented for the period of its overseas Empire (1895–1945). The original Japanese Empire of "the Eight Islands" would be third persistent after Egypt and China.
- Many Indian empires are also included, though only Mauryans, Guptas, Delhi Sultans, Mughals, Chola Empire and Marathas ruled for large periods in India.
Theoretical research
Empire versus nation state
Empires have been the dominant international organization in world history:
The fact that tribes, peoples, and nations have made empires points to a fundamental political dynamic, one that helps explain why empires cannot be confined to a particular place or era but emerged and reemerged over thousands of years and on all continents.
Empires ... can be traced as far back as the recorded history goes; indeed, most history is the history of empires ... It is the nation-state—an essentially 19th-century ideal—that is the historical novelty and that may yet prove to be the more ephemeral entity.
Our field's fixation on the Westphalian state has tended to obscure the fact that the main actors in global politics, for most of time immemorial, have been empires rather than states ... In fact, it is a very distorted view of even the Westphalian era not to recognize that it was always at least as much about empires as it was states. Almost all of the emerging European states no sooner began to consolidate than they were off on campaigns of conquest and commerce to the farthest reaches of the globe... Ironically, it was the European empires that carried the idea of the sovereign territorial state to the rest of the world ...
Empire has been the historically predominant form of order in world politics. Looking at a time frame of several millennia, there was no global anarchic system until the European explorations and subsequent imperial and colonial ventures connected disparate regional systems, doing so approximately 500 years ago. Prior to this emergence of a global-scope system, the pattern of world politics was characterized by regional systems. These regional systems were initially anarchic and marked by high levels of military competition. But almost universally, they tended to consolidate into regional empires ... Thus it was empires—not anarchic state systems—that typically dominated the regional systems in all parts of the world ... Within this global pattern of regional empires, European political order was distinctly anomalous because it persisted so long as an anarchy.
Similarly, Anthony Pagden, Eliot A. Cohen, Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper estimate that "empires have always been more frequent, more extensive political and social forms than tribal territories or nations have ever been." Many empires endured for centuries, while the age of the ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Japanese Empires is counted in millennia. "Most people throughout history have lived under imperial rule."
Empires have played a long and critical part in human history ... [Despite] efforts in words and wars to put national unity at the center of political imagination, imperial politics, imperial practices, and imperial cultures have shaped the world we live in ... Rome was evoked as a model of splendor and order into the Twentieth century and beyond... By comparison, the nation-state appears as a blip on the historical horizon, a state form that emerged recently from under imperial skies and whose hold on the world's political imagination may well prove partial or transitory... The endurance of empire challenges the notion that the nation-state is natural, necessary, and inevitable ...
Political scientist Hedley Bull wrote that "in the broad sweep of human history ... the form of states system has been the exception rather than the rule". His colleague Robert Gilpin confirmed this conclusion for the pre-modern period:
The history of interstate relations was largely that of successive great empires. The pattern of international political change during the millennia of the pre-modern era has been described as an imperial cycle ... World politics was characterized by the rise and decline of powerful empires, each of which in turn unified and ordered its respective international system. The recurrent pattern in every civilization of which we have knowledge was for one state to unify the system under its imperial domination. The propensity toward universal empire was the principal feature of pre-modern politics.
Historian Michael Doyle who undertook an extensive research on empires extended the observation into the modern era:
Empires have been the key actors in world politics for millennia. They helped create the interdependent civilizations of all the continents ... Imperial control stretches through history, many say, to the present day. Empires are as old as history itself ... They have held the leading role ever since.
The author of The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background, Hans Kohn, acknowledged that it was the opposite idea—of imperialism—that was, perhaps, the most influential single idea for two millennia, the ordering of human society through unified dominion and common civilization. Yet a century ago, most of the world was ruled by persons who proudly proclaimed themselves Emperors and were proud of their Empires. Of the great powers, only the United States and France were republics.
Universal empire
Expert on warfare Quincy Wright generalized on what he called "universal empire"—empire unifying all the contemporary system:
Balance of power systems have in the past tended, through the process of conquest of lesser states by greater states, towards reduction in the number of states involved, and towards less frequent but more devastating wars, until eventually a universal empire has been established through the conquest by one of all those remaining.
German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck finds that the macro-historic process of imperial expansion gave rise to global history in which the formations of universal empires were most significant stages. A later group of political scientists, working on the phenomenon of the current unipolarity, in 2007 edited research on several pre-modern civilizations by experts in respective fields. The overall conclusion was that the balance of power was inherently unstable order and usually soon broke in favor of imperial order. Yet before the advent of the unipolarity, world historian Arnold Toynbee and political scientist Martin Wight had drawn the same conclusion with an unambiguous implication for the modern world:
When this [imperial] pattern of political history is found in the New World as well as in the Old World, it looks as if the pattern must be intrinsic to the political history of societies of the species we call civilizations, in whatever part of the world the specimens of this species occur. If this conclusion is warranted, it illuminates our understanding of civilization itself.
Most states systems have ended in universal empire, which has swallowed all the states of the system. The examples are so abundant that we must ask two questions: Is there any states system which has not led fairly directly to the establishment of a world empire? Does the evidence rather suggest that we should expect any states system to culminate in this way? ... It might be argued that every state system can only maintain its existence on the balance of power, that the latter is inherently unstable, and that sooner or later its tensions and conflicts will be resolved into a monopoly of power.
The earliest thinker to approach the phenomenon of universal empire from a theoretical point of view was Polybius (2:3):
In previous times events in the world occurred without impinging on one another ... [Then] history became a whole, as if a single body; events in Italy and Libya came to be enmeshed with those in Asia and Greece, and everything gets directed towards one single goal.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, having witnessed the battle at Jena in 1806 when Napoleon overwhelmed Prussia, described what he perceived as a deep historical trend:
There is necessary tendency in every cultivated State to extend itself generally ... Such is the case in Ancient History ... As the States become stronger in themselves and cast off that [Papal] foreign power, the tendency towards a Universal Monarchy over the whole Christian World necessarily comes to light ... This tendency ... has shown itself successively in several States which could make pretensions to such a dominion, and since the fall of the Papacy, it has become the sole animating principle of our History ... Whether clearly or not—it may be obscurely—yet has this tendency lain at the root of the undertakings of many States in Modern Times ... Although no individual Epoch may have contemplated this purpose, yet is this the spirit which runs through all these individual Epochs, and invisibly urges them onward.
Fichte's later compatriot, Geographer Alexander von Humboldt, in the mid-Nineteenth century observed a macro-historic trend of imperial growth in both Hemispheres: "Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under influence of one idea, the purity of which was utterly unknown to them." The imperial expansion filled the world c. 1900. Two famous contemporary observers—Frederick Turner and Halford Mackinder described the event and drew implications, the former predicting American overseas expansion and the latter stressing that the world empire is now in sight.
In 1870, Argentine diplomat, jurist and political theorist Juan Bautista Alberdi described imperial consolidation. As von Humboldt, he found this trend unplanned and irrational but evident beyond doubt in the "unwritten history of events." He linked this trend to the recent Evolution theory: Nations gravitate towards the formation of a single universal society. The laws that lead the nations in that direction are the same natural laws that has formed societies and are part of evolution. These evolutionary laws exist disregarding whether men recognize them.
Similarly, Friedrich Ratzel observed that the "drive toward the building of continually larger states continues throughout the entirety of history" and is active in the present. He drew "Seven Laws of Expansionism". His seventh law stated: "The general trend toward amalgamation transmits the tendency of territorial growth from state to state and increases the tendency in the process of transmission." He commented on this law to make its meaning clear: "There is on this small planet sufficient space for only one great state."
Two other contemporaries—Kang Youwei and George Vacher de Lapouge—stressed that imperial expansion cannot indefinitely proceed on the definite surface of the globe and therefore world empire is imminent. Kang Youwei in 1885 believed that the imperial trend will culminate in the contest between Washington and Berlin and Vacher de Lapouge in 1899 estimated that the final contest will be between Russia and America in which America is likely to triumph.
The above envisaged contests indeed took place, known to us as World War I and II. Writing during the First, Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West compared two emergences of universal empires and implied for the modern world: The Chinese League of States failed as well as the Taoist idea of intellectual self-disarmament. The Chinese states defended their last independence with bitterness but in vain. Also in vain Rome attempted to avoid conquest of the Hellenistic east. Imperialism is so necessary a product of any civilization that when a strongest people refuse to assume the role of master, it is pushed into it. It is the same with us. The Hague Conference of 1907 was the prelude of World War, the Washington Conference of 1921 will have been that of other wars. Napoleon introduced the idea of military world empire different from the preceding European maritime empires. The contest "for the heritage of the whole world" will culminate "within two generations" (from 1922). The destinies of small states are "without importance to the great march of things." The strongest race will win and seize the management of the world.
Writing during the next World War, political scientists Derwent Whittlesey, Robert Strausz-Hupé and John H. Herz concluded: "Now that the earth is at last parceled out, consolidation has commenced." In "this world of fighting superstates there could be no end to war until one state had subjected all others, until world empire had been achieved by the strongest. This undoubtedly is the logical final stage in the geopolitical theory of evolution."
The world is no longer large enough to harbor several self-contained powers ... The trend toward world domination or hegemony of a single power is but the ultimate consummation of a power-system engrafted upon an otherwise integrated world.
Writing in the last year of the War, American theologian Parley Paul Wormer, German historian Ludwig Dehio, and Hungarian-born writer Emery Reves drew similar conclusions. Fluctuating but persistent movement occurred through the centuries toward ever greater unity. The forward movement toward ever larger unities continues and there is no reason to conclude that it has come to an end. More likely, the greatest convergence of all time is at hand. "Possibly this is the deeper meaning of the savage world conflicts" of the 20th century.
[T]he old European tendency toward division is now being thrust aside by the new global trend toward unification. And the onrush of this trend may not come to rest until it has asserted itself throughout our planet ... The global order still seems to be going through its birth pangs ... With the last tempest barely over, a new one is gathering.
The famous Anatomy of Peace by Reves, written and published in 1945, supposed that without the industrial power of the United States, Hitler already might have established world empire. Proposing world federalism, the book warned: Every dynamic force, every economic and technological reality, every "law of history" and logic "indicates that we are on the verge of a period of empire building," which is "the last phase of the struggle for the conquest of the world." As an elimination contest, one of the three remaining powers or a combination "will achieve by force that unified control made mandatory by the times we live in… Anyone of three, by defeating the other two, would conquer and rule the world." If we fail to institute a unified control over the world in democratic way, the "iron law of history" would compel us to wage wars until world empire is finally attained through conquest. Since the former way is improbable due human blindness, we should precipitate the unification by conquest as quickly as possible and start the restoration of human liberties within the world empire.
Atomic bomb and empire
Reves added "Postscript" to the Anatomy, opening: "A few weeks after the publication of this book, the first atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima…" This new physical fact however has changed nothing in the political situation. The world empire remains inevitable and nothing else in the book would have been said differently had it been written after August 6, 1945. Not much chance we have to establish world government before the next horrible war between the two superpowers and whoever is victorious would establish the world empire. The book sold an exceptional 800,000 copies in thirty languages, was endorsed by Albert Einstein and numerous other prominent figures, and in 1950 Reves was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The year after the War and in the first year of the nuclear age, Einstein and British philosopher Bertrand Russell, known as prominent pacifists, outlined for the near future a perspective of world empire (world government established by force). Einstein believed that, unless world government is established by agreement, an imperial world government would come by war or wars. Russell expected a third World War to result in a world government under the empire of the United States. Three years later, another prominent pacifist, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, generalized on the ancient Empires of Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Greece to imply for the modern world: "The analogy in present global terms would be the final unification of the world through the preponderant power of either America or Russia, whichever proved herself victorious in the final struggle."
Russian colleague of Russell and Niebuhr, Georgy Fedotov, wrote in 1945: All empires are but stages on the way to the sole empire which must swallow all others. The only question is who will build it and on which foundations. Universal unity is the only alternative to annihilation. Unity by conference is utopian but unity by conquest by the strongest power is not and probably the uncompleted in this War will be completed in the next. "Pax Atlantica" is the best of possible outcomes.
Originally drafted as a secret study for the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the CIA) in 1944 and published as a book three years later, The Struggle for the World... by James Burnham concludes: If either of the two Superpowers wins, the result would be a universal empire which in our case would also be a world empire. The historical stage for a world empire had already been set prior to and independently of the discovery of atomic weapons but these weapons make a world empire inevitable and imminent. "The atomic weapons ... will not permit the world to wait." Only a world empire can establish monopoly on atomic weapons and thus guarantee the survival of civilization. A world empire "is in fact the objective of the Third World War which, in its preliminary stages, has already began". The issue of a world empire "will be decided, and in our day. In the course of the decision, both of the present antagonists may, it is true, be destroyed, but one of them must be."
The next year, world historian Crane Brinton similarly supposed that the bomb may in the hands of a very skillful and lucky nation prove to be the weapon that permits that nation to unify the world by imperial conquest, to do what Napoleon and Hitler failed to do. Combined with other "wonders of science," it would permit a quick and easy conquest of the world. In 1951, Hans Morgenthau concluded that the "best" outcome of World War III would be world empire:
Today war has become an instrument of universal destruction, an instrument that destroys the victor and the vanquished ... At worst, victor and loser would be undistinguishable under the leveling impact of such a catastrophe ... At best, the destruction on one side would not be quite as great as on the other; the victor would be somewhat better off than the loser and would establish, with the aid of modern technology, his domination over the world.
Expert on earlier civilizations, Toynbee, further developed the subject of World War III leading to world empire:
The outcome of the Third World War ... seemed likely to be the imposition of an ecumenical peace of the Roman kind by the victor whose victory would leave him with a monopoly on the control of atomic energy in his grasp ... This denouement was foreshadowed, not only by present facts, but by historical precedents, since, in the histories of other civilizations, the time of troubles had been apt to culminate in the delivery of a knock-out blow resulting in the establishment of a universal state ...
The year this volume of A Study of History was published, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced "a knock-out blow" as an official doctrine, a detailed Plan was elaborated and Fortune magazine mapped the design. Section VIII, "Atomic Armaments", of the famous National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68), approved by President Harry Truman in 1951, uses the term "blow" 17 times, mostly preceded by such adjectives as "powerful", "overwhelming", or "crippling". Another term applied by the strategists was "Sunday punch".
Having modeled the rise of the world empire on the cases of previous empires, Toynbee noted that, by contrast, the modern ultimate "blow" would be atomic. But he remains optimistic: No doubt, the modern world has far greater capacity to reconstruct than the earlier civilizations had.
A pupil of Toynbee, William McNeill, associated with the case of ancient China, which "put a quietus upon the disorders of the warring states by erecting an imperial bureaucratic structure ... The warring states of the Twentieth century seem headed for a similar resolution of their conflicts." The ancient "resolution" McNeill evoked was one of the most sweeping universal conquests in world history, performed by Qin in 230–221 BC. Chinese classic Sima Qian (d. 86 BC) described the event (6:234): "Qin raised troops on a grand scale" and "the whole world celebrated a great bacchanal". Herman Kahn of the RAND Corporation criticized an assembled group of SAC officers for their war plan (SIOP-62). He did not use the term bacchanal but he coined on the occasion an associating word: "Gentlemen, you do not have a war plan. You have a war orgasm!" History did not completely repeat itself but it passed close.
Circumscription theory
According to the circumscription theory of Robert Carneiro, "the more sharply circumscribed area, the more rapidly it will become politically unified." The Empires of Egypt, China and Japan are named the most durable political structures in human history. Correspondingly, these are the three most circumscribed civilizations in human history. The Empires of Egypt (established by Narmer c. 3000 BC) and China (established by Cheng in 221 BC) endured for over two millennia. German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck, criticizing the Western idea of progress, emphasized that China and Egypt remained at one particular stage of development for millennia. This stage was universal empire. The development of Egypt and China came to a halt once their empires "reached the limits of their natural habitat".Sinology does not recognize the Eurocentric view of the "inevitable" imperial fall; Egyptology and Japanology pose equal challenges.
Carneiro explored the Bronze Age civilizations. Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little and William Wohlforth researched the next three millennia, comparing eight civilizations. They conclude: The "rigidity of the borders" contributed importantly to hegemony in every concerned case. Hence, "when the system's borders are rigid, the probability of hegemony is high".
The circumscription theory was stressed in the comparative studies of the Roman and Chinese Empires. The circumscribed Chinese Empire recovered from all falls, while the fall of Rome, by contrast, was fatal. "What counteracted this [imperial] tendency in Europe ... was a countervailing tendency for the geographical boundaries of the system to expand." If "Europe had been a closed system, some great power would eventually have succeeded in establishing absolute supremacy over the other states in the region".
The ancient Chinese system was relatively enclosed, whereas the European system began to expand its reach to the rest of the world from the onset of system formation... In addition, overseas provided outlet for territorial competition, thereby allowing international competition on the European continent to ... trump the ongoing pressure toward convergence.
In the 1945 book, The Precarious Balance, on four centuries of the European power struggle, Ludwig Dehio explained the durability of the European states system by its overseas expansion: "Overseas expansion and the system of states were born at the same time; the vitality that burst the bounds of the Western world also destroyed its unity." In a more famous 1945 book, Reves similarly argued that the era of outward expansion is forever closed and the historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers.Edward Carr causally linked the end of the overseas outlet for imperial expansion and World Wars. In the nineteenth century, he wrote during the Second World War, imperialist wars were waged against "primitive" peoples. "It was silly for European countries to fight against one another when they could still ... maintain social cohesion by continuous expansion in Asia and Africa. Since 1900, however, this has no longer been possible: "the situation has radically changed". Now wars are between "imperial powers."Hans Morgenthau wrote that the very imperial expansion into relatively empty geographical spaces in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, in Africa, Eurasia, and western North America, deflected great power politics into the periphery of the earth, thereby reducing conflict. For example, the more attention Russia, France and the United States paid to expanding into far-flung territories in imperial fashion, the less attention they paid to one another, and the more peaceful, in a sense, the world was. But by the late nineteenth century, the consolidation of the great nation-states and empires of the West was consummated, and territorial gains could only be made at the expense of one another.John H. Herz outlined one "chief function" of the overseas expansion and the impact of its end:
[A] European balance of power could be maintained or adjusted because it was relatively easy to divert European conflicts into overseas directions and adjust them there. Thus the openness of the world contributed to the consolidation of the territorial system. The end of the 'world frontier' and the resulting closedness of an interdependent world inevitably affected the system's effectiveness.
Some later commentators[who?] drew similar conclusions:
For some commentators, the passing of the Nineteenth century seemed destined to mark the end of this long era of European empire building. The unexplored and unclaimed "blank" spaces on the world map were rapidly diminishing ... and the sense of "global closure" prompted an anxious fin-de-siècle debate about the future of the great empires ... The "closure" of the global imperial system implied ... the beginning of a new era of intensifying inter-imperial struggle along borders that now straddled the globe.
The opportunity for any system to expand in size seems almost a necessary condition for it to remain balanced, at least over the long haul. Far from being impossible or exceedingly improbable, systemic hegemony is likely under two conditions: "when the boundaries of the international system remain stable and no new major powers emerge from outside the system." With the system becoming global, further expansion is precluded. The geopolitical condition of "global closure" will remain to the end of history. Since "the contemporary international system is global, we can rule out the possibility that geographic expansion of the system will contribute to the emergence of a new balance of power, as it did so many times in the past." As Quincy Wright had put it, "this process can no longer continue without interplanetary wars."
One of leading experts on world-system theory, Christopher Chase-Dunn, noted that the circumscription theory is applicable for the global system, since the global system is circumscribed. In fact, within less than a century of its circumscribed existence the global system overcame the centuries-old balance of power and reached the unipolarity. Given "constant spatial parameters" of the global system, its unipolar structure is neither historically unusual nor theoretically surprising.
Randall Schweller theorized that a "closed international system", such as the global became a century ago, would reach "entropy" in a kind of thermodynamic law. Once the state of entropy is reached, there is no going back. The initial conditions are lost forever. Stressing the curiosity of the fact, Schweller writes that since the moment the modern world became a closed system, the process has worked in only one direction: from many poles to two poles to one pole. Thus unipolarity might represent the entropy—stable and permanent loss of variation—in the global system.
Present
Chalmers Johnson argues that the US global network of hundreds of military bases already represents a global empire in its initial form:
For a major power, prosecution of any war that is not a defense of the homeland usually requires overseas military bases for strategic reasons. After the war is over, it is tempting for the victor to retain such bases and easy to find reasons to do so. Commonly, preparedness for a possible resumption of hostilities will be invoked. Over time, if a nation's aims become imperial, the bases form the skeleton of an empire.
Simon Dalby associates the network of bases with the Roman imperial system:
Looking at these impressive facilities which reproduce substantial parts of American suburbia complete with movie theatres and restaurant chains, the parallels with Roman garrison towns built on the Rhine, or on Hadrian's wall in England, where the remains are strikingly visible on the landscape, are obvious ... Less visible is the sheer scale of the logistics to keep garrison troops in residence in the far-flung reaches of empire ... That [military] presence literally builds the cultural logic of the garrison troops into the landscape, a permanent reminder of imperial control.
Kenneth Pomeranz and Harvard Historian Niall Ferguson share the above-cited views: "With American military bases in over 120 countries, we have hardly seen the end of empire." This "vast archipelago of US military bases … far exceeds 19th-century British ambitions. Britain's imperium consisted of specific, albeit numerous, colonies and clients; the American imperial vision is much more global…"
Conventional maps of US military deployments understate the extent of America's military reach. A Defense Department map of the world, which shows the areas of responsibility of the five major regional commands, suggests that America's sphere of military influence is now literally global ... The regional combatant commanders—the 'pro-consuls' of this imperium—have responsibility for swaths of territory beyond the wildest imaginings of their Roman predecessors.
Another Harvard Historian Charles S. Maier opens his Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors with these words: "What a substratum for empire! Compared with which, the foundation of the Macedonian, the Roman and the British, sink into insignificance."
One of the most accepted distinctions between earlier empires and the American Empire is the latter's "global" or "planetary" scope. French former Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine wondered: "The situation is unprecedented: What previous empire subjugated the entire world...?" The quests for universal empire are old but the present quest outdoes the previous in "the notable respect of being the first to actually be global in its reach." Another historian Paul Kennedy, who wrote prediction talks of the imminent US "imperial overstretch," in 2002 acknowledged about the present world system:
Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power. The Pax Britannica was run on the cheap. Napoleon's France and Philip II's Spain had powerful foes and were part of a multipolar system. Charlemagne's empire was merely western European in stretch. The Roman Empire stretched further afield, but there was another great empire in Persia and a larger one in China. There is ... no comparison.
Walter Russell Mead observes that the United States attempts to recreate "globally" what the ancient empires of Egypt, China and Rome had each accomplished on a regional basis. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, Zygmunt Bauman, concludes that due to its planetary dimension, the new empire cannot be drawn on a map:
The new 'empire' is not an entity that could be drawn on a map... Drawing a map of the empire would also be a pointless exercise because the most conspicuously 'imperial' trait of the new empire's mode of being consists in viewing and treating the whole of the planet ... as a potential grazing ground...
Times Atlas of Empires numbers 70 empires in the world history. Niall Ferguson lists numerous parallels between them and the United States. He concludes: "To those who would still insist on American exceptionalism, the historian of empires can only retort: as exceptional as all the other 69 empires."Fareed Zakaria stressed one element not exceptional for the American Empire—the concept of exceptionalism. All dominant empires thought they were special.
Future
In 1945, Historian Ludwig Dehio predicted global unification due to the circumscription of the global system, although he did not use this term. Being global, the system can neither expand nor be subject to external intrusion as the European states system had been for centuries:
In all previous struggles for supremacy, attempts to unite the European peninsula in a single state have been condemned to failure primarily through the intrusion of new forces from outside the old Occident. The Occident was an open area. But the globe was not, and, for that very reason, ultimately destined to be unified... And this very process [of unification] was clearly reflected in both World Wars.
Fifteen years later, Dehio confirmed his hypothesis: The European system owed its durability to its overseas outlet. "But how can a multiple grouping of world states conceivably be supported from outside in the framework of a finite globe?"
During the same time, Quincy Wright developed a similar concept. Balance-of-power politics has aimed less at preserving peace than at preserving the independence of states and preventing the development of world empire. In the course of history, the balance of power repeatedly re-emerged, but on ever-wider scale. Eventually, the scale became global. Unless we proceed to "interplanetary wars," this pattern can no longer continue. In spite of significant reversals, the "trend towards world unity" can "scarcely be denied." World unity appears to be "the limit toward which the process of world history seems to tend."
The same "interplanetary" motif is present also in the Anatomy of Peace: The era of outward expansion is forever closed. "Until and unless we are able to communicate with another planet, the theater of human history will be limited to geographically determined, constant and known dimensions." The historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers. Multiplied by modern technology, the centripetal forces will accomplish what the greatest empires of the past failed. "For the first time in human history, one power can conquer and rule the world."
The "Father of American Anthropology," Franz Boas, known for his historical particularism and cultural relativism, outlined the "inexorable laws of history" by which political units grow larger in size and smaller in number. The process began in the earliest times and has continued almost always in the same direction. In the long run, the tendency to unification has been more powerful than of disintegration. "Thus the history of mankind shows us the grand spectacle of the grouping of man in units of ever increasing size." The progress in the direction of unification has been so regular and so marked that we must needs conclude that the same tendencies will govern our history in the future. Today the unity of the world is not less conceivable than the modern nations were in the early history. The practical difficulties that stand in the way of the formation of still larger units count for nothing before the "inexorable laws of history."
Seven later scholars—Hornell Hart,Raoul Naroll, Louis Morano,Rein Taagepera, the author of the circumscription theory Robert Carneiro and Jesse H. Ausubel & Cesare Marchetti—researched expanding imperial cycles. All argued that these cycles represent an historical trend leading to world empire. Naroll and Carneiro also found this outcome "close at hand," c. 2200 and 2300 respectively. In 2013, Marchetti and Ausubel estimated that the global empire is to rise within "a couple more generations."
The founder of the Paneuropean Union, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, writing yet in 1943, drew a more specific and immediate future imperial project: After the War America is bound "to take over the command of the skies." The danger of "the utter annihilation of all enemy towns and lands" can "only be prevented by the air superiority of a single power ... America's air role is the only alternative to intercontinental wars." Despite his outstanding anti-imperialism, Coudenhove-Kalergi detailed:
No imperialism, but technical and strategic problems of security urge America to rule the skies of the globe, just as Britain during the last century ruled the seas of the world... Pacifists and anti-imperialists will be shocked by this logic. They will try to find an escape. But they will try in vain... At the end of the war the crushing superiority of American plane production will be an established fact... The solution of the problem ... is by no means ideal, nor even satisfactory. But it is the minor evil...
Coudenhove-Kalergi envisaged a kind of Pax Americana modeled on "Pax Romana":
During the third century BC the Mediterranean world was divided on five great powers—Roma and Carthage, Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt. The balance of power led to a series of wars until Rome emerged the queen of the Mediterranean and established an incomparable era of two centuries of peace and progress, the 'Pax Romana'... It may be that America's air power could again assure our world, now much smaller than the Mediterranean at that period, two hundred years of peace...
This period would be necessary transitory stage before World State is eventually established, though he did not specify how the last transformation is expected to occur. Coudenhove-Kalergi's follower in the teleological theory of World State, Toynbee, specified two ways. One is by wars going on to a bitter end at which one surviving great power "knocks out" its last remaining competitor and establishes world empire, like the earlier empires used to on the regional scale. The other alternative is the United Nations. Having devoted his life to the study of history and international affairs, Toynbee did not bet on the United Nations. Instead, he identified symptoms of the traditional power politics leading to the world empire by a universal conquest.
Toynbee emphasized that the world is ripe for conquest: "...Hitler's eventual failure to impose peace on the world by the force of arms was due, not to any flaw in his thesis that the world was ripe for conquest, but to an accidental combination of incidental errors in his measures..." But "in falling by so narrow a margin to win the prize of world-dominion for himself, Hitler had left the prize dangling within the reach of any successor capable of pursuing the same aims of world-conquest with a little more patience, prudence, and tact." With his "revolution of destruction," Hitler has performed the "yeoman service" for "some future architect of a Pax Ecumenica... For a post-Hitlerian empire-builder, Hitler's derelict legacy was a gift of the Gods."
The next "architect of a Pax Ecumenica," known more commonly as Pax Americana, demonstrated "more patience, prudence, and tact." Consequently, as President Dwight Eisenhower put it, the NATO allies became "almost psychopathic" whenever anyone talked about a US withdrawal, and the reception of his successor John F. Kennedy in Berlin was "almost hysterical," as Chancellor Konrad Adenauer characterized it.John Ikenberry finds that the Europeans wanted a stronger, more formal and more imperial system than the United States was initially willing to provide. In the end the United States settled for this "form of empire—a Pax Americana with formal commitments to Europe." According to a much debated thesis, the United States became "empire by invitation." The period discussed in the thesis (1945–1952) ended precisely the year Toynbee theorized on "some future architect of a Pax Ecumenica."
Dissociating America from Rome, Eisenhower gave a pessimistic forecast. In 1951, before he became president, he had written on West Europe: "We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions if for no other reason than that these are not, politically, our frontiers. What we must do is to assist these [West European] peoples." Two years later, he wrote: When it was decided to deploy US divisions to Europe, no one had "for an instant" thought that they would remain there for "several decades"—that the United States could "build a sort of Roman Wall with its own troops and so protect the world."
Eisenhower assured Soviet first secretary Nikita Khrushchev on Berlin in 1959: "Clearly we did not contemplate 50 years in occupation there." It lasted, remarks Marc Trachtenberg, from July 1945 to September 1994, 10 months short of 50 years. Notably, when the US troops eventually left, they left eastward. Confirming the theory of the "empire by invitation," with their first opportunity East European states extended the "invitation."
Oswald Spengler envisaged the "Imperial Age" for the world in both senses of "empire," spatial (as a world-wide unit ruled by one center) and governmental (as ruled by Emperor). Published in 1922, The Decline of the West predicts the triumph of the strongest race in the fight for the whole world within "two generations" and of "Caesarism" over democracy "within a century." In 2022, the Spenglerian century ended short of global "Caesarism," albeit two years before its end Donald Trump had been advised to cross the Rubicon.
Chalmers Johnson regards the global military reach of the United States as empire in its "initial" form.Dimitri Simes finds that most of the world sees the United States as a "nascent" imperial power. Some scholars concerned how this empire would look in its ultimate form. The ultimate form of empire was described by Michael Doyle in his Empires. It is empire in which its two main components—the ruling core and the ruled periphery—merged to form one integrated whole. At this stage the empire as defined ceases to exist and becomes world state. Doyle exemplifies the transformation on the case of the Roman Emperor Caracalla whose edict in AD 212 extended the Roman citizenship to all inhabitants of the Mediterranean world.
Doyle's case of the Roman Empire had also been evoked by Susan Strange in her 1988 article, "The Future of the American Empire." Strange emphasized that the most persistent empires were those which best managed to integrate the ruling core and the peripheral allies. The article is partly a reply on the published a year earlier bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers which predicted imminent US "imperial overstretch." Strange found this outcome unlikely, stressing the fact that the peripheral allies have been successfully recruited into the American Empire.
Envisaging a world empire of either the United States or the Soviet Union (whoever is victorious in World War III), Bertrand Russell projected the Roman scenario too: "Like the Romans, they will, in the course of time, extend citizenship to the vanquished. There will then be a true world state, and it will be possible to forget that it will have owed its origin to conquest." International Relations scholar Alexander Wendt supposes world empire by universal conquest and subsequent consolidation, provided the conquering power recognizes all conquered members. For his example he also invokes the Roman Empire. In satirical criticism of the European pro-American stance in the wake of September 11, French Philosopher Régis Debray warned that the logical culmination of the motto "We are all Americans" would be a modernized Edict of Caracalla extending US citizenship to all the West and thus establishing the United States of the West.
To the case of Caracalla, Toynbee added the Abbasid cosmopolitan reformation of 750 AD. Both "were good auguries for the prospect that, in a post-Modern chapter of Western history, a supranational commonwealth originally based on the hegemony of a paramount power over its satellites might eventually be put on the sounder basis of a constitutional partnership in which all the people of all the partner states would have their fare share in the conduct of common affairs." To the cases of Caracalla and the Abbasid revolution, Max Ostrovsky added the Han overthrow of Qin in 206 BC and more gradual cosmopolitan reformations he finds characteristic to all persistent empires and expects in the future global empire.
Crane Brinton expected that the world empire would not be built instantly but not as slowly as Rome, for much in the modern world has been speeded up.Charles Galton Darwin, a grandson of the father of Evolution Theory, suggested that China, as an isolated and enduring civilization, seems to provide the most relevant model for the global future. As the Chinese Empire, the regions of the world, periodically albeit more rarely, will be united by force into an uneasy world-empire, which will endure for a period until it falls. Along China, Ostrovsky mentions Egypt as a model for the future but, by contrast, estimates that the intermediate periods of the global empire will be shorter and rarer.
See also
- Linguistic imperialism
- List of medieval great powers
- Military globalization
- Nomadic empire
Lists
- List of empires
- List of largest empires
- List of former sovereign states
- List of transcontinental countries
- List of Hindu empires and dynasties
Notes
References
- Citations
- Howe 2002, p. 30.
- Reus-Smit, Christian (2013). Individual Rights and the Making of the International System. Cambridge University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-521-85777-2.
- Burbank & Cooper 2010, p. 8.
- Howe 2002, p. 35.
- "Empire". Oxford Dictionary Online. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
- Howe 2002.
- "Oxford Dictionary Online". Retrieved 2020-06-30. "An extensive territory under the control of a supreme ruler (typically an emperor) or an oligarchy, often consisting of an aggregate of many separate states or territories. In later use also: an extensive group of subject territories ultimately under the rule of a single sovereign state."
- Howe 2002, p. 15.
- Doyle, Michael (5 September 2018). Empires. Cornell University Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-5017-3413-7.
I favor the behavioral definition of empire as effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society.
- James & Nairn 2006, p. xxiii.
- Taagepera, Rein (1979). "Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D.". Social Science History. 3 (3/4): 117. doi:10.2307/1170959. JSTOR 1170959.
- Bang, Peter Fibiger (2021-03-03), "Empire—A World History", The Oxford World History of Empire, Oxford University Press, pp. 1–88, doi:10.1093/oso/9780199772360.003.0002, ISBN 978-0-19-977236-0, retrieved 2024-11-30
- Howe (2002), p. 66.
- "empire". The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
any monarchy that for reasons of history, prestige, etc, has an emperor rather than a king as head of state
- "empire". Your Dictionary. LoveToKnow, Corp. 2018. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
government by an emperor or empress
- "empire". Vocabulary.com Dictionary. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
a monarchy with an emperor as head of state
- "empire". Collins English Dictionary. 2018. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
government by an emperor or empress
- Tilly, Charles (1990). Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992. Blackwell. pp. 4, 45–46.
- Colomer, Josep M. (2017). "Empires Versus States". Empires Versus States. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.608. ISBN 978-0-19-022863-7.
- Hechter, Michael; Brustein, William (1980). "Regional Modes of Production and Patterns of State Formation in Western Europe". American Journal of Sociology. 85 (5): 1061–1094. doi:10.1086/227125. ISSN 0002-9602. JSTOR 2778891. S2CID 143853058.
- Stanard, Matthew G. (2018). European Overseas Empire, 1879 - 1999: A Short History. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-1-119-13013-0.
- Burbank & Cooper 2010.
- "U-M Web Hosting" (PDF).
- Howe 2002, p. 126–127.
- Ross Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest (1994), pp. 23–24, ISBN 0-582-06829-0 (pbk)
- "Mapas Imperiales - Imperio Seleucida". usuarios.lycos.es.[permanent dead link]
- Haywood, John (1997). The Cassell Atlas of World History. et al. Andromeda Oxford Ltd. p. 2.02.
- Howe 2002, pp. 37, 39.
- Naroll, Raoul, (1967). "Imperial Cycles and World Order," Peace Research Society, 7: pp 83-101.
- Brien, Pierre (2002). From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. (tr. Daniels, Peter T. Indiana: Eisenbrauns) p 79.
- Orosius. History against the Pagans, IV:23. (tr. Fear, A. T., Liverpool University Press, 2010).
- Lucan. Civil War, 7:482. (tr. Braund, S. H., Oxford University Press, 1992).
- Stearns 2001.
- Samuel N. Eisenstadt, Axial Age Civilizations, (New York: New York State University Press, 1986)
- Friedrich Ratzel, "Territorial Growth of States", Human Geography: An Essential Anthology, (eds. Agnew, John, & Livingstone, David & Rogers, Alisdair, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p 527; and "The Laws of the Spatial Growth of States", The Structure of Political Geography, (eds. Kasperson, Roger E., & Minghi, Julian V., Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), p 18.
- Namita Sanjay Sugandhi (2008). Between the Patterns of History: Rethinking Mauryan Imperial Interaction in the Southern Deccan. pp. 88–89. ISBN 978-0-549-74441-2. Retrieved 2012-06-06.[permanent dead link]
- Burger, Michael (2008). The Shaping of Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment. University of Toronto Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-1-55111-432-3.
- Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Antony; Eidinow, Esther (2012). "Imperium". The Oxford Classical Dictionary. OUP Oxford. p. 730. ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.
- Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Antony; Eidinow, Esther (2012). "Imperator". The Oxford Classical Dictionary. OUP Oxford. p. 728. ISBN 978-0-1995-4556-8.
- Ken Pennington. "France – Legal History". Columbus School of Law and School of Canon Law, The Catholic University of America. Archived from the original on September 29, 2013. Retrieved September 23, 2013.
- Haven, Cynthia (February 19, 2010). "Stanford scholar links Rome and America in Philadelphia exhibition". Stanford Report.
- "Ancient Japan". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2018-07-31.
- "Ancient Japanese & Chinese Relations". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2018-07-31.
- "Ancient Korean & Chinese Relations". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2018-07-31.
- Bulliet & Crossley & Headrick & Hirsch & Johnson 2014, p. 264.
- Lockard, Craig (1999). "Tang Civilization and the Chinese Centuries" (PDF). Encarta Historical Essays.
- Luling, Virginia (2002). Somali Sultanate: the Geledi city-state over 150 years. Transaction Publishers. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-874209-98-0.
- Luc Cambrézy, Populations réfugiées: de l'exil au retour, p.316
- Mukhtar, Mohamed Haji (1989). "The Emergence and Role of Political Parties in the Inter-River Region of Somalia from 1947–1960". Ufahamu. 17 (2): 98. doi:10.5070/F7172016882.
- Shelley, Fred M. (2013). Nation Shapes: The Story behind the World's Borders. ABC-CLIO. p. 358. ISBN 978-1-61069-106-2.
- Dvornik, Francis (1956). The Slavs: Their Early History and Civilization. Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences. p. 179.
The Psalter and the Book of Prophets were adapted or "modernized" with special regard to their use in Bulgarian churches, and it was in this school that glagolitic writing was replaced by the so-called Cyrillic writing, which was more akin to the Greek uncial, which simplified matters considerably and is still used by the Orthodox Slavs.
- Florin Curta (2006). Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks. Cambridge University Press. pp. 221–222. ISBN 978-0-521-81539-0.
Cyrillic preslav.
- J. M. Hussey, Andrew Louth (2010). "The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire". Oxford History of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-19-161488-0.
- Voltaire, Wikiquote, citing Essai sur l'histoire generale et sur les moeurs et l'espirit des nations, Chapter 70 (1756), retrieved 2008-01-06
- Howe 2002, p. 46.
- Howe 2002, p. 47.
- Gregory G. Guzman, "Were the barbarians a negative or positive factor in ancient and medieval history?", The Historian 50 (1988), 568–570
- Thomas T. Allsen, Culture and conquest in Mongol Eurasia, 211
- Khan 2005, p. 54.
- Jackson, Roy (2010). Mawlana Mawdudi and Political Islam: Authority and the Islamic State. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-95036-0.
- Chapra, Muhammad Umer (2014). Morality and Justice in Islamic Economics and Finance. Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 62–63. ISBN 978-1-78347-572-8.
- Parthasarathi, Prasannan (2011), Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850, Cambridge University Press, pp. 39–45, ISBN 978-1-139-49889-0
- Maddison, Angus (2003): Development Centre Studies The World Economy Historical Statistics: Historical Statistics, OECD Publishing, ISBN 92-64-10414-3, pages 259–261
- Lawrence E. Harrison, Peter L. Berger (2006). Developing cultures: case studies. Routledge. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-415-95279-8.
- "An Outline of the History of Persia During the Last Two Centuries (A.D. 1722–1922)". Edward G. Browne. London: Packard Humanities Institute. p. 33. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
- Goldfarb, Michael (18 March 2007). "Napoleon, the Jews and French Muslims". The New York Times.
- "Voltaire, Rousseau and Napoleon on Prophet Muhammad". 25 June 2015. Archived from the original on 28 March 2019. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
- "Bonaparte and Islam · Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". Archived from the original on 2019-05-28. Retrieved 2019-05-31.
- Murshidabad.net (8 May 2012). "Hassan Ali Mirza's succession". Archived from the original on 2 August 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
- Ian Copland; Ian Mabbett; Asim Roy; et al. (2012). A History of State and Religion in India. Routledge. p. 161.
- Thomson, Basil (January 1901). "Note Upon the Natives of Savage Island, or Niue". The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 31: 137–145. doi:10.2307/2842790. JSTOR 2842790.
- [1] Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, Author: Roger Crowley, Publisher: Random House; 1st edition, year: 2015
- Johnston, Steve, Tea Party Culture War: A Clash of Worldviews[permanent dead link], p90, "By 1922, the British Empire presided over 458 million people—one-quarter of the world's population—and comprised more than 13 million square miles."
- Watts, Carl P. "Pax Britannica". p. 3.
it left many legacies, including widespread use of the English language, belief in Protestant religion, economic globalization, modern precepts of law and order, and representative democracy.
- Winks, Robin W. (1993). World civilization: a brief history (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Collegiate Press. p. 406. ISBN 978-0-939693-28-3.
By 1914 common law, trail by jury, the King James Authorized Version of the Bible, the English language, and the British navy had been spread around the globe.
- Pagadi, Setumadhavarao R. (1983). Shivaji. National Book Trust, India. p. 21. ISBN 978-81-237-0647-4.
- Robert Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (1996) p 304
- Melvin E. Page, ed. (2003). Colonialism: An International Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 218. ISBN 978-1-57607-335-3. Archived from the original on 19 November 2021. Retrieved 23 December 2021.
- Piganiol, André (1950). "The Causes of the Fall of the Roman Empire". The Journal of General Education. 5 (1): 62–69. JSTOR 27795332.
- Bury, John (2011). History of the Later Roman Empire. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-20398-0.
- Heather, Peter (2007). The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532541-6.
- George Hicks, Japan's hidden apartheid: the Korean Minority and the Japanese, (Aldershot, England; Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998), 3.
- Lens & Zinn 2003.
- Jefferson, Thomas (2019). The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 44: 1 July to 10 November 1804. Princeton University Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-691-19437-0.
- Lens & Zinn 2003, pp. 63–64.
- LaFeber, Walter, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (1993) 2nd edition, p. 19
- Boot, Max (May 6, 2003). "American Imperialism? No Need to Run Away from Label". Council on Foreign Relations op-ed, quoting USA Today. Archived from the original on January 23, 2009. Retrieved 2008-01-06.
- "America's Invisible Empire". Economic and Political Weekly. 39 (44). 30 October 2004. Text available here Archived 2017-01-27 at the Wayback Machine, author link here Archived 2016-11-18 at the Wayback Machine.
- Malesevic, Sinisa (2013). Nation-states and nationalisms organization, ideology and solidarity. Polity Press. ISBN 978-0-7456-7206-9.
- Immerwahr, Daniel (2019). How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Debrix, Francois; Lacy, Mark, eds. (2009). The Geopolitics of American Insecurity: Terror, Power and Foreign Policy. Routledge. pp. 129–141. ISBN 978-1-134-04540-2.
- Kumar, Krishan (2010). "Nation-states as empires, empires as nation-states: two principles, one practice?". Theory and Society. 39 (2): 119–143. doi:10.1007/s11186-009-9102-8. S2CID 144559989.
- Johnson, Chalmers, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000), pp. 72–79
- Niall Ferguson. "Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire". Archived from the original on 2011-07-15. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
- Lens & Zinn 2003, p. Back cover.
- Cohen 2004, p. 56.
- Sebastian Huhnholz, "Do All Roads Lead to Rome? Ancient Implications and Modern Transformations in the Recent US Discourse on an American Empire", Mediterraneo Antico, 13/1-2, (2010): p. 55.
- Dimitri K. Simes, "America's Imperial Dilemma", Foreign Affairs, 82/6, (2003): p 93.
- In Clyde V. Prestowitz's version it also "quacks" like a duck. Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions, (New York: Basic Books, 2004: p 25).
- Ian Black (December 20, 2002). "Living in a euro wonderland". Guardian. Retrieved 2008-01-06.
- "EU gets its military fist". BBC News. December 13, 2002. Retrieved 2008-01-06.
- Nikolaos Tzifakis (April 2007). "EU's region-building and boundary-drawing policies: the European approach to the Southern Mediterranean and the Western Balkans 1". Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans. 9 (1). informaworld: 47–64. doi:10.1080/14613190701217001. S2CID 154857668.
- Stephen R. Hurt (2003). "Co-operation and coercion? The Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and acp states and the end of the Lomé Convention" (PDF). Third World Quarterly. 24. informaworld: 161–176. doi:10.1080/713701373. S2CID 153354532. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 7, 2023. Retrieved 2007-01-06.
- Bruno Coppieters; Michael Emerson; Michel Huysseune; Tamara Kovziridze; Nathalie Tocci; Gergana Noutcheva; Marius Vahl. "Europeanisation and Conflict Resolution: Case Studies from the European Periphery" (PDF). Belgian Science Policy. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-12-02. Retrieved 2008-01-06.
- Jan Zielonka (2006). Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (PDF). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929221-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-12-02. Retrieved 2008-01-06.
- Tony Benn (25 March 2013). European Union. Oxford Union. Archived from the original on 2021-11-04.
- Agnia Grigas, Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire, Yale University Press, 2015, pp 16, 22.
- Ferguson, Niall (February 24, 2022). "Vlad the Invader: Putin is looking to rebuild Russia's empire". The Spectator.
- Phillips, David L. (February 25, 2022). "Contending With the New Russian Empire". The National Interest.
- Berriault, Lea (May 6, 2022). "Russia's attempt to build a Third Empire".
- Snyder, Timothy (April 28, 2022). "The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War". The New Yorker – via www.newyorker.com.
- Nathan Hodge, "Restoration of empire is the endgame for Russia's Vladimir Putin," CNN, June 11, 2022.
- Roth, Andrew (June 10, 2022). "Putin compares himself to Peter the Great in quest to take back Russian lands". The Guardian.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/13/putin-imperial-russia-empire-ukraine/ [bare URL]
- Applebaum, Anne (November 14, 2022). "The Russian Empire Must Die". The Atlantic.
- "The Wikipedia Library". wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org.
- Niall Ferguson, "The Unconscious Colossus: Limits of (Alternatives to) American Empire", Daedalus, 134/2, (2005): p 24.
- Yale H. Ferguson & Richard W. Mansbach, "Superpower, Hegemony, Empire," San Diego: Annual Meeting paper, The International Studies Association, March 22–26, (2006: 9) Archived 2016-11-24 at the Wayback Machine
- Daniel Deudney & G. John Ikenberry, "America's Impact: The End of Empire and the Globalization of the Westphalian System", working paper, Princeton University, 2015, pp. 7–8 [permanent dead link]
- Pagden, Anthony (2005). "Imperialism, Liberalism & the Quest for Perpetual Peace". Daedalus. 134 (2): 47. doi:10.1162/0011526053887301. S2CID 57564158.
- Cohen 2004, p. 50.
- Burbank & Cooper 2010, pp. 2–3.
- The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, London: Macmillan, 1977, p. 21).
- Gilpin War and Change in World Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 110–116).
- Empires, (London: Cornell University Press, 1986, pp. 12, 51, 137).
- Kohn, Hans, (1942). World Order in Historical Perspective, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), p 113
- Pines, Yuri & Biran, Michal & Rüpke, Jörg (2011) The Limits of Universal Rule: Eurasian Empires Compared, (New York: Cambridge University Press), p 2, https://books.google.com/books?id=eyoNEAAAQBAJ
- Wright, Quincy (August 1, 1948). "On the Application of Intelligence to World Affairs". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 4 (8): 250. Bibcode:1948BuAtS...4h.249W. doi:10.1080/00963402.1948.11460234.
- Tenbruck, Friedrich (1994). "Internal History of Society or Universal History?". Theory, Culture & Society (11). Translated by J. Bleicher: 87.
- William Wohlforth, & Stuart J. Kaufman, & Richard Little, Balance of Power in World History, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
- Garcilaso de la Vega (1966). "Foreword". Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru. University of Texas Press. pp. X–XI. ISBN 978-0-292-73358-9.
- System of States, (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977, pp. 43–44).
- Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1975) [1806]. "Characteristics of the Present Age". In Wright, Moorhead (ed.). Theory and Practice of the Balance of Power, 1486–1914: Selected European Writings. pp. 87–89. ISBN 978-0-460-10196-7.
- Cosmos: a sketch of a physical description of the universe by Alexander von Humboldt; translated from German by E. C. Otté. Vol. I. 1866. p. 359.
- ""50 Centuries in 10 Minutes", (2014)". YouTube.
- ""History of the World: Every Year", (2015)". YouTube. 16 December 2015.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson (1920). The Frontier in American History.
- Halford J. Mackinder, The Geographical Pivot of History, J. Murray, London, 1904.
- "In Spanish. Alberdi, Juan Bautista, (1870). Chapter VIII, "Analogia biologica," El crimen de la guerra" (PDF).
- Fridriech Ratzel, "The Laws of the Spatial Growth of States", The Structure of Political Geography, (eds. Kasperson, Roger E., & Minghi, Julian V., Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), p 28.
- Cited in Robert Strausz-Hupé, Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1942), p 30-31.
- K'ang Yu-wei, The One World Philosophy, (tr. Thompson, Lawrence G., London, 1958), pp. 79–80, 85.
- George Vacher de Lapouge, L'Aryen: Son Rôle Social, (Nantes: 1899), chapter "L'Avenir des Aryens".
- Spengler, Oswald (1922). The Decline of the West: Perspectives on World-History, (tr. Atkinson, Charles Francis, (London: George Allen & Unwin LTD), vol II, p 422, 428-432, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.264078/mode/2up?view=theater
- Derwent Whittlesey, German Strategy of World Conquest, (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942), p 74.
- Robert Strausz-Hupé, Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1942), p XI.
- John H. Herz, "Power Politics and World Organization,"' The American Political Science Review, 36/6, (1942): p 1041.
- Wormer, Parley Paul, (1945). Citizenship and the New Day, (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press), p 206.
- Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle, 1945, (tr. Fullman, Charles, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 266–267.
- Reves, Emery (1945). The Anatomy of Peace, (1 ed. New York & London: Harper & Brothers Publishers), pp 265-266, 268-270.
- Reves 1945: pp 277-278, 287.
- Einstein, Albert (27 September 2011). Atomic War or Peace", 1945, Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, (New York: Philosophical Library/Open Road), 2016. Open Road Media. ISBN 978-1-4532-0459-7.
- ""Atomic Weapon and the Prevention of War", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2/7-8, October 1: p. 20". October 1946.
- ""The Illusion of World Government", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 5/10: (October 1, 1949): p. 291". October 1949.
- Георгий П. Федотов, (1945). "Новое Отечество," Новый Град, Нью Йорк: Издательство Чехова, 1952, p 98, 102, 107.
- Stagnation, John Bellamy FosterTopics: Imperialism Political Economy (January 1, 2006). "Monthly Review | The New Geopolitics of Empire". Archived from the original on September 29, 2018.
- James Burnham, Struggle for the World, (New York: The John Day Company, 1947), pp. 33, 50, 53, 55; 134–135, 143.
- Brinton, Crane, (1948). From Many, One: The Process of Political Integration, the Problem of World Government, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1971), pp 88-89, 94.
- In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), p 58.
- A Study of History, (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), vol. IX, p. 524.
- "Max Gschwind, "Massive Retaliatory Power", map, Fortune, 51, May 1954: p. 105". Archived from the original on March 12, 2017.
- Michio Kaku, & Daniel Axelrod, To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon Secret War Plans, (Boston: South End Press, 1987), p. 195.
- Toynbee, Arnold, (1948). Civilization on Trial, (New York: Oxford University Press), p 133-134, https://archive.org/details/civilizationontr00toyn/page/126/mode/2up?view=theater
- The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 807.
- Emphasis added, cited in Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991, pp. 223, https://books.google.fr/books?id=RSwVBgAAQBAJ&printsec=copyright&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=gentlemen&f=false.
- Robert Carneiro, "The Circumscription Theory: Challenge and Response", American Behavioral Scientist, 31/4, (1988): p 499.
- O'Connor, D. B. & Silverman, D. P., Ancient Egyptian Kingship, (Leiden & New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), p XXI.
- Amelie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East circa 3000–330 BC, (London & New York: Routledge, 1995), vol. I, pp. 123–124.
- Yuri Pines & Moreno Garcia, Juan Carlos, "Maat and Tianxia: Building world orders in ancient Egypt and China," Journal of Egyptian History, vol 13 (2020): p 227, http://yuri-pines-sinology.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Moreno-Pines-Maat-and-Tianxia-final.pdf
- Yuri Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), pp. 8–9.
- Since 1979, the only country preserving its Emperor as head of state. Pines, Yuri & Biran, Michal & Rüpke, Jörg (2011). The Limits of Universal Rule: Eurasian Empires Compared, (New York: Cambridge University Press), p 2, https://books.google.com/books?id=eyoNEAAAQBAJ
- Tenbruck 1994, pp. 84, 86–87.
- Yuri Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009).
- Yuri Pines, The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2012).
- D. B. O'Connor & D. P. Silverman, Ancient Egyptian Kingship, (Leiden & New York: E. J. Brill, 1995).
- Aidan Dodson, Monarchs of the Nile, (London: The Rubicon Press, 1995).
- Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, The Balance of Power in World History, (London: Palgrave, 2007), p. 237.
- Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, "Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History", European Journal of International Relations, 13/2, (2007): p. 178.
- Stuart J. Kaufman & William C. Wohlforth & Richard Little, The Balance of Power in World History, (London: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 45–46.
- Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in China and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 141.
- (tr. Fullman, Charles, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 50, 90, 279.
- Reves 1945: pp 267-268.
- Conditions of Peace, (London: Macmillan, 1943), p 113-114.
- Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 1948, (New York: McGraw Hill, revised 2006 edition), p 354–357.
- John H. Herz, "Rise and Demise of the Territorial State", World Politics, 9, (1957): p. 482.
- Michael Heffernan, "The Politics of the Map in the Early Twentieth Century", Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 29/3, (2002): p. 207.
- Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, The Balance of Power in World History, (London: Palgrave, 2007), p 229, 237; Idem., "Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History", European Journal of International Relations, 13/2, (2007): p 159.
- Gerry Kearns, "Fin de Siècle Geopolitics: Mackinder, Hobson and Theories of Global Closure", Political Geography of the Twentieth Century: A Global Analysis, (ed. Peter J. Taylor, London: Belhaven Press, 1993).
- Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, The Balance of Power in World History, p 21.
- Quincy Wright, A Study of War, (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1964), p 92-93.
- ""World State Formation: Historical Processes and Emergent Necessity", Political Geography Quarterly, 9/2, (1990)". pp. 108–130.
- "Robert Carneiro, "Are We Circumscribed Now?" 2012". YouTube. 5 October 2012.
- Kaufman & Little & Wohlforth, "Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History", European Journal of International Relations, 13/2, (2007): p. 179.
- Randall L. Schweller, "Entropy and the Trajectory of World Politics: Why Polarity Has Become Less Meaningful", Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 23/1, (2010): pp. 149–151.
- The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, New York: Henry Hobt and Company, (2004), p 187.
- Simon Dalby, "Imperialism, Domination, Culture: The Continued Relevance of Critical Geopolitics," Geopolitics, 13/3, (2008): p 425.
- Kenneth Pomeranz, "Empire & 'Civilizing' Missions, Past & Present, Daedalus, 134/2, (2005): p 43, 45.
- Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), p 17.
- (Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press, 2006), p 1.
- Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, (Berkeley & Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2003), p XIII.
- Hubert Vedrine & Dominique Moisi, France in an Age of Globalization, (tr. Gordon, Philip H., Washington: Brookings Institutions Press, 2001), p 2.
- "David C. Hendrickson, "The Curious Case of American Hegemony: Imperial Aspirations and National Decline," World Policy Journal, 22/2, (2005): p 5" (PDF).
- ""The Greatest Superpower Ever," New Perspectives Quarterly, 19/2, (2002)". Archived from the original on 2016-04-14. Retrieved 2016-12-16.
- "America's Sticky Power," Foreign Policy, 141, (March – April 2004): p 48.
- Europe: An Unfinished Adventure, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p 55-56.
- "The Unconscious Colossus: Limits of (Alternatives to) American Empire," Daedalus, 134/2, (2005): p 20-21.
- ""The Arrogant Empire," Newsweek. (March 24, 2003)". Newsweek. 23 March 2003.
- Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle, 1945, (tr. Fullman, Charles, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), p 234.
- Ludwig Dehio, "Epilogue," The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle, 1960, (tr. Fullman, Charles, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), p 279.
- Quincy Wright, A Study of War, (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1964), p 92-93, 228, 234.
- Boas, Franz, (posthumous publication). Race and Democratic Society, (New York: Biblo ad Tannen, 1969), pp 99-100.
- "The Logistic Growth of Political Areas," Social Forces, 26, (1948): p 396-408.
- "Imperial Cycles and World Order," Peace Research Society, 7, (1967): p 83-101.
- "A Macrohistoric Trend towards World Government", Behavior Science Notes, 8, (1973): p 35-40.
- "Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia." International Studies Quarterly, 41/3, (1997): 475–504.
- "Political Expansion as an Expression of the Principle of Competitive Exclusion", Studying War: Anthropological Perspective, (eds. Reyna, Stephen P. & Dawns, Richard Erskine, Gordon and Breach, New Hampshire, 1994).
- "The Political Unification of the World", Cross Cultural Survey, 38/2, (2004), p 162-177.
- Marchetti, Cesare, & Ausubel, Jesse H. (2013). "Quantitative dynamics of human empires," p 2, 49, https://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/empires_booklet.pdf Adapted from idem (2012). International Journal of Anthropology, vol 27 (1–2): p 1–62
- Marchetti, Cesare & Ausubel, Jesse H. (2013). "Quantitative dynamics of human empires," p 2, https://phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/empires_booklet.pdf Adapted from idem (2012). International Journal of Anthropology, vol 27 (1–2): p 1–62.
- von Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard (1943). Crusade for Pan-Europe. G. P. Putnam's Sons. pp. 297–298.
- von Coudenhove-Kalergi 1943, p. 299.
- Toynbee, Arnold J. (1954). A Study of History. Vol. IX: Contacts between Civilizations in Time (Renaissances), Law and Freedom in History, The Prospects of the Western Civilization. London: Oxford University Press. p. 502.
- Trachtenberg, Marc (1999). A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 152–153, 394.
- Ikenberry, John G. (1989). "Rethinking the Origins of American Hegemony". Political Science Quarterly. 104 (3): 399. doi:10.2307/2151270. JSTOR 2151270.
- Lundestad, Geir (1986). "Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952". Journal of Peace Research. 23 (3): 263–267. doi:10.1177/002234338602300305. S2CID 73345898.
- Trachtenberg 1999, pp. 147–148.
- Trachtenberg 1999, p. 401.
- Lundestad, Geir (2005). The United States and Western Europe since 1945: From 'Empire' by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift. Oxford University Press. p. 3.
- Spengler, Oswald (1922). The Decline of the West: Perspectives on World-History, (tr. Atkinson, Charles Francis, (London: George Allen & Unwin LTD), vol II, p 416, 428-432, 464-465, 506-507, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.264078/mode/2up?view=theater
- Lemon, Jason, (December 20, 2020). "Arizona GOP Chair calls for Trump to 'cross the Rubicon' in tweet shared by Michael Flynn," Newsweek, https://www.newsweek.com/arizona-gop-chair-calls-trump-cross-rubicon-tweet-shared-michael-flynn-1556232
- The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, (New York: Henry Hobt and Company, 2004), p 187.
- Simes, Dimitri (2003). "America's Imperial Dilemma". Foreign Affairs. 82 (6): 91–102. doi:10.2307/20033759. JSTOR 20033759.
- Doyle, Michael (1986). Empires. London: Cornell University Press. p. 12.
- Strange, Susan (1988). "The Future of the American Empire". Journal of International Affairs. 42 (1): 9, 11.
- Russell, Bertrand (April 1951). "The Future of Man". Atlantic Monthly.
- Wendt, Alexander, (2003). "Why the World State is Inevitable: Teleology and the Logic of Anarchy," European Journal of International Relations. 9 (4): pp 54–56, https://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/03wendt.pdf
- Wendt, Alexander (2005). "Agency, Teleology and the World State: A Reply to Shannon". European Journal of International Relations. 11 (4): p 595.
- In French, Debray, Régis (2002). L'édit de Caracalla ou plaidoyer pour des Etats-Unis d'occident, (Paris: Fayard), p 40, 64, https://archive.org/details/leditdecaracalla0000xavi/page/40/mode/2up?view=theater
- Toynbee 1954, p. 554-555.
- Ostrovsky, Max, (2007). The Hyperbola of the World Order, (Lanham: University Press of America), p 350, https://archive.org/details/yarctgxhyperbola0000ostr/page/350/mode/2up?view=theater
- Brinton, Crane, (1948). From Many, One: The Process of Political Integration, the Problem of World Government, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1971), p 95.
- Darwin, Charles Galton, (1950). "The Next Million Years," The Fate of Man. (New York: G. Braziller, 1961), pp 499, 501.
- Ostrovsky 2007: pp 352, 362, 367.
Cited sources and further reading
- Brown, Peter (24 September 2020). "No Barbarians Needed". The New York Review of Books. LXVII (14): 61–62.
Warlordism, not any great movement of peoples, was the political virus that brought down the Roman empire in the West. [...] 'In less than a generation, provinces [became] kingdoms.' [Due to Europe's] state of perpetual war [amid] the persistent polycentrism made possible by the disappearance of Rome, [b]y the time of the Reformation the 'competitive fragmentation of power' ensured that Europe was studded with safety zones that protected beleaguered dissidents. [...] The best thing that Rome ever did for Europe was to die and not return.
, review of Kulikowski, Michael. The Tragedy of Empire: From Constantine to the Destruction of Roman Italy.; Scheidel, Walter. Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity.; Nelson, Janet L. King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne. - Burbank, Jane; Cooper, Frederick (2010). Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12708-8.
- Cohen, Eliot A. (July–August 2004). "History and the Hyperpower". Foreign Affairs. 83 (4): 49–63. doi:10.2307/20034046. JSTOR 20034046. Retrieved 26 December 2017.
- Colomer, Josep (2016). The European Empire. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1-5233-1890-2.
- Colomer, Josep (2007). Great Empires, Small Nations. The uncertain future of the sovereign state. London: Routledge.
- Crooks, Peter; Parsons, Timothy H., eds. (2016). Empires and bureaucracy in world history: from late antiquity to the twentieth century. Cambridge University Press.
- Darwin, John (2008). After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405. London: Bloomsbury Press.
- Elliott, J.H. (2006). Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Findlay, Ronald; O'Rourke, Kevin H. (2007). Power and Plenty: Trade, Power, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Galtung, Johan (January 1996). "The Decline and Fall of Empires: A Theory of De-Development". Honolulu. Archived from the original on 2007-10-13. Retrieved 2008-01-06. Written for the United Nations Research Institute on Development, UNRISD, Geneva.
- Geiss, Imanuel (1983). War and Empire in the Twentieth Century. Aberdeen University Press. ISBN 978-0-08-030387-1.
- Gilpin, Robert (1981). War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 110–116. ISBN 978-0-521-27376-3.
- Howe, Stephen (2002). Empire: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280223-1.
- Innis, Harold (1950). Empire and Communications (1972 revision ed.). Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press., Rev. by Mary Q. Innis; foreword by Marshall McLuhan.
- James, Paul; Nairn, Tom (2006). Globalization and Violence. Vol. 1: Globalizing Empires, Old and New. London: Sage Publications.
- Khan, Iqtidar Alam (March–April 2005). "Gunpowder and Empire: Indian Case". Social Scientist. 33 (3/4): 54–65. JSTOR 3518112.
- Kamen, Henry (2003). Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763. New York: HarperCollins.
- Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House 1987.
- Kumar, Krishan (2019). Visions of empire: How five imperial regimes shaped the world. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-19280-2., examines the Roman, Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian, British and French empires.
- Lens, Sidney; Zinn, Howard (2003). The Forging of the American Empire: From the Revolution to Vietnam: A History of American Imperialism. Pluto Press. p. 464. ISBN 978-0-7453-2100-4.
- Pagden, Anthony (2001). Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest from Greece to the Present. New York: Modern Library.
- Stearns, Peter, ed. (2001). The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged (6th ed.). Houghton Mifflin. p. passim. ISBN 978-0-395-65237-4.
- Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (1993). The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700. London: Longman.
- Tracy, James D., ed. (1990). The Rise of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750. New York: Cambridge University Press.
External links
![image]()
Definitions from Wiktionary![image]()
Media from Commons![image]()
Quotations from Wikiquote![image]()
Texts from Wikisource![image]()
Data from Wikidata
- Bryce, James (1878). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. VIII (9th ed.). pp. 181–182.
- Index of Colonies and Possessions
This article has multiple issues Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page Learn how and when to remove these messages The neutrality of this article is disputed Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met June 2023 Learn how and when to remove this message This article s tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia See Wikipedia s guide to writing better articles for suggestions June 2023 Learn how and when to remove this message Learn how and when to remove this message An empire is a political unit made up of several territories military outposts and peoples usually created by conquest and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries The center of the empire sometimes referred to as the metropole has political control over the peripheries Within an empire different populations have different sets of rights and are governed differently Narrowly defined an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor or empress but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or are ruled by an emperor nor have all self described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians the Central African Empire and some Anglo Saxon kingdoms in early England being examples Roman Empire at its greatest territorial extent in 117 AD the time of Trajan s death Roman vassal states There have been ancient and modern centralized and decentralized ultra brutal and relatively benign empires An important distinction has been between land empires made up solely of contiguous territories such as the Austrian Empire or the Russian Empire and those created by sea power which include territories that are remote from the home country of the empire such as the Spanish Empire or the British Empire Aside from the more formal usage the word empire can also refer colloquially to a large scale business enterprise e g a transnational corporation a political organization controlled by a single individual a political boss or a group political bosses The concept of empire is associated with other such concepts as imperialism colonialism and globalization with imperialism referring to the creation and maintenance of unequal relationships between nations and not necessarily the policy of a state headed by an emperor or empress Empire is often used as a term to describe overpowering situations causing displeasure DefinitionAn empire is an aggregate of many separate states or territories under a supreme ruler or oligarchy This is in contrast to a federation which is an extensive state voluntarily composed of autonomous states and peoples An empire is a large polity which rules over territories outside of its original borders Definitions of what physically and politically constitutes an empire vary It might be a state affecting imperial policies or a particular political structure Empires are typically formed from diverse ethnic national cultural and religious components Empire and colonialism are used to refer to relationships between a powerful state or society versus a less powerful one Michael W Doyle has defined empire as effective control whether formal or informal of a subordinated society by an imperial society Tom Nairn and Paul James define empires as polities that extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty and where in one or more of the domains of economics politics and culture they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces to extract or accrue value Rein Taagepera has defined an empire as any relatively large sovereign political entity whose components are not sovereign Peter Bang characterizes empire as composite layered and anything but uniform in their internal organization of power and comprising a range of different territories and communities subjected hierarchically in various ways to a dominant power The terrestrial empire s maritime analogue is the thalassocracy an empire composed of islands and coasts which are accessible to its terrestrial homeland such as the Athenian dominated Delian League Furthermore empires can expand by both land and sea Stephen Howe notes that empires by land can be characterized by expansion over terrain extending directly outwards from the original frontier while an empire by sea can be characterized by colonial expansion and empire building by an increasingly powerful navy However sometimes an empire is only a semantic construction such as when a ruler assumes the title of emperor That polity over which the ruler reigns logically becomes an empire despite having no additional territory or hegemony Examples of this form of empire are the Central African Empire Mexican Empire or the Korean Empire proclaimed in 1897 when Korea far from gaining new territory was on the verge of being annexed by the Empire of Japan one of the last to use the name officially Among the last states in the 20th century known as empires in this sense were the Central African Empire Ethiopia Vietnam Manchukuo Russia Germany and Korea Scholars typically distinguish empires from nation states In an empire there is a hierarchy whereby one group of people usually the metropole has command over other groups of people and there is a hierarchy of rights and prestige for different groups of people Josep Colomer distinguished between empires and states in the following way Empires were vastly larger than states Empires lacked fixed or permanent boundaries whereas a state had fixed boundaries Empires had a compound of diverse groups and territorial units with asymmetric links with the center whereas a state had supreme authority over a territory and population Empires had multi level overlapping jurisdictions whereas a state sought monopoly and homogenizationCharacteristicsMany empires were the result of military conquest incorporating the vanquished states into a political union but imperial hegemony can be established in other ways The Athenian Empire the Roman Empire and the British Empire developed at least in part under elective auspices The Empire of Brazil declared itself an empire after separating from the Portuguese Empire in 1822 France has twice transitioned from being called the French Republic to being called the French Empire while it retained an overseas empire Europeans began applying the designation of empire to non European monarchies such as the Qing Empire and the Mughal Empire as well as the Maratha Confederacy eventually leading to the looser denotations applicable to any political structure meeting their criteria of imperium Some monarchies styled themselves as having greater size scope and power than the territorial politico military and economic facts support As a consequence some monarchs assumed the title of emperor or its corresponding translation tsar empereur kaiser shah etc and renamed their states as The Empire of Empires were seen as an expanding power administration ideas and beliefs followed by cultural habits from place to place Some empires tended to impose their culture on the subject states to strengthen the imperial structure others opted for multicultural and cosmopolitan policies Cultures generated by empires could have notable effects that outlasted the empire itself Most histories of empires have been hostile especially if the authors were promoting nationalism Stephen Howe although himself hostile listed positive qualities the guaranteed stability security and legal order for their subjects They tried to minimize ethnic and religious antagonism inside the empire The aristocracies that ruled them were often more cosmopolitan and broad minded than their nationalistic successors There are two main ways to establish and maintain an imperial political structure i as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control with force or ii as a coercive hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power The former method provides greater tribute and direct political control yet limits further expansion because it absorbs military forces to fixed garrisons The latter method provides less tribute and indirect control but avails military forces for further expansion Territorial empires e g the Macedonian Empire and Byzantine Empire tend to be contiguous areas The term on occasion has been applied to maritime republics or thalassocracies e g the Athenian and British empires with looser structures and more scattered territories often consisting of many islands and other forms of possessions which required the creation and maintenance of a powerful navy Empires such as the Holy Roman Empire also came together by electing the emperor with votes from member realms through the Imperial election History of imperialismEarly empires Early empiresAchaemenid Empire of Persia at its zenithSeleucid Empire and Mauryan Empire in 200 BCE The Seleucid Empire reached its peaked under Antiochus III Stephen Howe writes that with the exception of the Roman Chinese and perhaps ancient Egyptian states early empires seldom survived the death of their founder and were usually limited in scope to conquest and collection of tribute having little impact on the everyday lives of their subjects With the exception of Rome the periods of dissolution following imperial falls were equally short Successor states seldom outlived their founders and disappeared in the next and often larger empire Some empires like the Neo Babylonian Median and Lydian were outright conquered by a larger empire The historical pattern was not a simple rise and fall cycle rather it was rise fall and greater rise or as Raoul Naroll put it expanding pulsation Empires were limited in scope to conquest as Howe observed but conquest is a considerable scope Many fought to the death to avoid it or to be liberated from it Imperial conquests and attempts of conquest significantly contributed to the list of wars by death toll The imperial impact on subjects can be regarded as little but only on those subjects who survived the imperial conquest and rule We cannot ask the inhabitants of Carthage and Masada for example whether empire had little impact on their lives We seldom hear the voices of subject peoples because history is mostly written by winners The imperial sources tend to ignore or reduce the resistance by subdued states But one rich primary source of the subject population is the Hebrew Prophetic books The hatred towards the ruling empires expressed in this source makes impression of an impact more serious than estimated by Howe A classical writer and adherent of empire Orosius explicitly preferred to avoid the views of subject populations And another classical Roman patriot Lucan confessed that words cannot express how bitterly we are hated by subject peoples The earliest known empire appeared in southern Egypt sometime around 3200 BC Southern Egypt was divided by three kingdoms each centered on a powerful city Hierapolis conquered the other two cities over two centuries and later grew into the country of Egypt The Akkadian Empire established by Sargon of Akkad 24th century BC was an early all Mesopotamian empire which spread into Anatolia the Levant and Ancient Iran This imperial achievement was repeated by Shamshi Adad I of Assyria and Hammurabi of Babylon in the 19th and 18th centuries BC In the 15th century BC the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt ruled by Thutmose III was ancient Africa s major force upon incorporating Nubia and the ancient city states of the Levant c 1500 BC in China rose the Shang Empire which was succeeded by the Zhou Empire c 1100 BC Both equalled or surpassed in territory their contemporary Near Eastern empires such as the Middle Assyrian Empire Hittite Empire Egyptian Empire and those of the Mitanni and Elamites The Zhou Empire dissolved in 770 BC into feudal multi state system which lasted for five and a half centuries until the universal conquest of Qin in 221 BC The first empire comparable to Rome in organization was the Neo Assyrian Empire 916 612 BC The Median Empire was the first empire within the territory of Persia By the 6th century BC after having allied with the Babylonians Scythians and Cimmerians to defeat the Neo Assyrian Empire the Medes were able to establish their own empire which was the largest of its day and lasted for about sixty years Classical period Empires of the Classical periodRoman Empire under Trajan 98 117 This would be the peak of the empire s territorial extent Han Empire of China in 2 AD The Axial Age mid First Millennium BC witnessed unprecedented imperial expansion in the Indo Mediterranean region and China The successful and extensive Achaemenid Empire 550 330 BC also known as the first Persian Empire covered Mesopotamia Egypt parts of Greece Thrace the Middle East much of Central Asia and North Western India It is considered the first great empire in history or the first world empire It was overthrown and replaced by the short lived empire of Alexander the Great His Empire was succeeded by three Empires ruled by the Diadochi the Seleucid Ptolemaic and Macedonian which despite being independent are called the Hellenistic Empire by virtue of their similarities in culture and administration Meanwhile in the western Mediterranean the Empires of Carthage and Rome began their rise Having decisively defeated Carthage in 202 BC Rome defeated Macedonia in 200 BC and the Seleucids in 190 189 BC to establish an all Mediterranean Empire The Seleucid Empire broke apart and its former eastern part was absorbed by the Parthian Empire In 30 BC Rome annexed Ptolemaic Egypt In India during the Axial Age appeared the Maurya Empire a geographically extensive and powerful empire ruled by the Mauryan dynasty from 321 to 185 BC The empire was founded in 322 BC by Chandragupta Maurya through the help of Chanakya who rapidly expanded his power westward across central and western India taking advantage of the disruptions of local powers following the withdrawal by Alexander the Great By 320 BC the Maurya Empire had fully occupied northwestern India as well as defeating and conquering the satraps left by Alexander Under Emperor Ashoka the Great the Maurya Empire became the first Indian empire to conquer the whole Indian Peninsula an achievement repeated only twice by the Gupta and Mughal Empires In the reign of Ashoka Buddhism spread to become the dominant religion in many parts of the ancient India In 221 BC China became an empire when the State of Qin ended the chaotic Warring States period through its conquest of the other six states starting the Qin Empire 221 207 BC Its sovereign adopted the new title of Huangdi 皇帝 which is translated in English as Emperor The Qin Empire is known for the construction of the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army as well as the standardization of currency weights measures and writing system It laid the foundation for China s first golden age the Han dynasty 202 BC AD 9 AD 25 220 The Han Empire expanded into Central Asia and established trade through the Silk Road Confucianism was for the first time adopted as an official state ideology During the reign of the Emperor Wu of Han the Xiongnu were pacified By this time only four empires stretched between the Pacific and the Atlantic the Han Empire of China the Kushan Empire the Parthian Empire of Persia and the Roman Empire The collapse of the Han Empire in AD 220 saw China fragmented into the Three Kingdoms only to be unified once again by the Jin Empire AD 266 420 The relative weakness of the Jin Empire plunged China into political disunity that would last from AD 304 to AD 589 when the Sui Empire AD 581 618 reunited China Map showing the four empires of Eurasia in the 2nd century AD The Romans were the first people to invent and embody the concept of empire in their two mandates to wage war and to make and execute laws They were the most extensive Western empire until the early modern period and left a lasting impact on European society Many languages cultural values religious institutions political divisions urban centers and legal systems can trace their origins to the Roman Empire The Roman Empire governed and rested on exploitative actions They took slaves and money from the peripheries to support the imperial center However the absolute reliance on conquered peoples to carry out the empire s fortune sustain wealth and fight wars would ultimately lead to the collapse of the Roman Empire The Romans were strong believers in what they called their civilizing mission This term was legitimized and justified by writers like Cicero who wrote that only under Roman rule could the world flourish and prosper This ideology that was envisioned to bring a new world order was eventually spread across the Mediterranean world and beyond People started to build houses like Romans eat the same food wear the same clothes and engage in the same games Even rights of citizenship and authority to rule were granted to people not born within Roman territory The Latin word imperium derives from imperare meaning to command and originally referred to a magistrate s authority usually in a military sense As the Roman state expanded overseas the term began to be used to describe Rome s authority over its colonies and client states Successful generals were often given the title imperator an honorific roughly meaning commander Although historians use the terms Republic and Empire to identify the periods of Roman history before and after absolute power was assumed by Augustus the Romans themselves continued to refer to their government as the Res publica meaning public affair On the other hand the concept of imperium Romanum as in the authority of the Romans is attested since the 2nd century BC The modern concepts of Empire and Emperor did not appear until several centuries later long after the fall of Rome in the West Augustus established a new de facto monarchy but sought to maintain the appearance of a republican government He and his early successors used the informal titles of augustus and princeps but over time the title of imperator came to denote the office of what is now referred to as emperor The legal systems of France and its former colonies are strongly influenced by Roman law Similarly the United States was founded on a model inspired by the Roman Republic with upper and lower legislative assemblies and executive power vested in a single individual the president The president as commander in chief of the armed forces reflects the ancient Roman titles imperator princeps The Roman Catholic Church founded in the early Imperial Period spread across Europe first by the activities of Christian evangelists and later by official imperial promulgation Post classical period Empires of the Post classical periodEastern Roman Empire in 555The Sasanian Empire at its greatest extent in c 620 under Khosrow IIThe extent of the Umayyad Caliphate in 740The territory directly held by the Tang Empire of China in 700 ADChola Empire c 1030Mongol Empire in the 13th centuryThe Delhi Sultanate in the Indian subcontinent at its greatest extent in 1335Serbian Empire in 1350 In Western Asia the term Persian Empire came to denote the Iranian imperial states established at different historical periods of pre Islamic and post Islamic Persia In East Asia various Chinese empires or dynasties dominated the political economic and cultural landscapes during this era the most powerful of which was probably the Tang Empire 618 690 705 907 Other influential Chinese empires during the post classical period include the Sui Empire 581 618 the Great Liao Empire the Song Empire the Western Xia Empire 1038 1227 the Great Jin Empire 1115 1234 the Western Liao Empire 1124 1218 the Great Yuan Empire 1271 1368 and the Great Ming Empire 1368 1644 During this period Japan and Korea underwent voluntary Sinicization The Sui Tang and Song empires had the world s largest economy and were the most technologically advanced during their time the Great Yuan Empire was the world s ninth largest empire by total land area while the Great Ming Empire is famous for the seven maritime expeditions led by Zheng He The Ajuran Sultanate was a Somali empire in the medieval times that dominated the Indian Ocean trade It was a Somali Muslim sultanate that ruled over large parts of the Horn of Africa in the Middle Ages Through a strong centralized administration and an aggressive military stance towards invaders the Ajuran Sultanate successfully resisted an Oromo invasion from the west and a Portuguese incursion from the east during the Gaal Madow and the Ajuran Portuguese wars Trading routes dating from the ancient and early medieval periods of Somali maritime enterprise were strengthened or re established and foreign trade and commerce in the coastal provinces flourished with ships sailing to and coming from many kingdoms and empires in East Asia South Asia Southeast Asia Europe Middle East North Africa and East Africa In the 7th century Maritime Southeast Asia witnessed the rise of a Buddhist thallasocracy the Srivijaya Empire which thrived for 600 years and was succeeded by the Hindu Buddhist Majapahit Empire that ruled from the 13th to 15th centuries In the Southeast Asian mainland the Hindu Buddhist Khmer Empire was centered in the city of Angkor and flourished from the 9th to 13th centuries Following the demise of the Khmer Empire the Siamese Empire flourished alongside the Burmese and Lan Chang Empires from the 13th through the 18th centuries In Southeastern and Eastern Europe during 917 the Eastern Roman Empire sometimes called the Byzantine Empire was forced to recognize the Imperial title of Bulgarian ruler Simeon the Great who were then called Tsar the first ruler to hold that precise imperial title The Bulgarian Empire established in the region in 680 681 remained a major power in Southeast Europe until its fall in the late 14th century Bulgaria gradually reached its cultural and territorial apogee in the 9th century and early 10th century under Prince Boris I and Simeon I when its early Christianization in 864 allowed it to develop into the cultural and literary center of Slavic Europe as well as one of the largest states in Europe thus the period is considered the Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture Major events included the development of the Cyrillic script at the Preslav Literary School declared official in 893 and the establishment of the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic also called Old Bulgarian At the time in the Medieval West the title empire had a specific technical meaning that was exclusively applied to states that considered themselves the heirs and successors of the Roman Empire Among these were the Byzantine Empire which was the actual continuation of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire the Carolingian Empire the largely Germanic Holy Roman Empire and the Russian Empire Yet these states did not always fit the geographic political or military profiles of empires in the modern sense of the word To legitimise their imperium these states directly claimed the title of Empire from Rome The sacrum Romanum imperium Holy Roman Empire which lasted from 800 to 1806 claimed to have exclusively comprehended Christian principalities and was only nominally a discrete imperial state The Holy Roman Empire was not always centrally governed as it had neither core nor peripheral territories and was not governed by a central politico military elite Hence Voltaire s remark that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire is accurate to the degree that it ignores German rule over Italian French Provencal Polish Flemish Dutch and Bohemian populations and the efforts of the ninth century Holy Roman Emperors i e the Ottonians to establish central control Voltaire s nor an empire observation applies to its late period In 1204 after the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople the crusaders established a Latin Empire 1204 1261 in that city while the defeated Byzantine Empire s descendants established two smaller short lived empires in Asia Minor the Empire of Nicaea 1204 1261 and the Empire of Trebizond 1204 1461 Constantinople was retaken in 1261 by the Byzantine successor state centered in Nicaea re establishing the Byzantine Empire until 1453 by which time the Turkish Muslim Ottoman Empire ca 1300 1918 had conquered most of the region The Ottoman Empire was a successor of the Abbasid Empire and it was the most powerful empire to succeed the Abbasi empires at the time as well as one of the most powerful empires in the world They became the successors after the Abbasid Empire fell from the Mongols Hulegu Khan The Ottoman Empire centered on modern day Turkey dominated the eastern Mediterranean overthrew the Byzantine Empire to claim Constantinople and it would start battering at Austria and Malta which were countries that were key to central and to south west Europe respectively mainly for their geographical location The reason these occurrences of batterings were so important was because the Ottomans were Muslim and the rest of Europe was Christian so there was a sense of religious fighting going on This was not just a rivalry of East and West but a rivalry between Christians and Muslims Both the Christians and Muslims had alliances with other countries and they had problems in them as well The flows of trade and of cultural influences across the supposed great divide never ceased so the countries never stopped bartering with each other These epochal clashes between civilizations profoundly shaped many people s thinking back then and continues to do so in the present day Modern hatred against Muslim communities in South Eastern Europe mainly in Bosnia and Kosovo has often been articulated in terms of seeing them as unwelcome residues of this imperialism in short as Turks Moreover Eastern Orthodox imperialism was not re established until the coronation of Ivan the Terrible as Emperor of Russia in 1547 Likewise with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars 1803 1815 the Austrian Empire 1804 1867 emerged reconstituted as the Empire of Austria Hungary 1867 1918 having inherited the imperium of Central and Western Europe from the losers of said wars In the thirteenth century Genghis Khan expanded the Mongol Empire to be the largest contiguous empire in the world However within two generations the empire was separated into four discrete khanates under Genghis Khan s grandsons One of them Kublai Khan conquered China and established the Yuan dynasty with the imperial capital at Beijing One family ruled the whole Eurasian land mass from the Pacific to the Adriatic and Baltic Seas The emergence of the Pax Mongolica had significantly eased trade and commerce across Asia The Safavid Empire of Iran was also founded Early Modern period Early Modern EmpiresThe three Muslim Gunpowder empires Mughals Safavids and Ottomans in 18th centuryThe Ming Empire of China in 1550 The Islamic gunpowder empires started to develop from the 15th century In the Indian subcontinent the Delhi Sultanate conquered most of the Indian peninsula and spread Islam across it It later disintegrated with the establishment of the Bengal Gujarat and Bahmani Sultanate In the 16th century the Mughal Empire was founded by Timur and Genghis Khan s direct descendant Babur His successors such Humayun Akbar Jahangir and Shah Jahan extended the empire In the 17th century Aurangzeb expanded the Mughal Empire controlling most of the South Asia through Sharia which became the world s largest economy and leading manufacturing power with a nominal GDP that valued a quarter of world GDP superior than the combination of Europe s GDP It has been estimated that the Mughal emperors controlled an unprecedented one fourth of the world s entire economy and was home to one fourth of the world s population at the time After the death of Aurangzeb which marks the end of the medieval India and the beginning of European invasion in India the empire was weakened by Nader Shah s invasion The Mysore Empire was soon established by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan who allied with Napoleon Bonaparte Other independent empires were also established such as those ruled by the Nawabs of Bengal and Nizam of Hyderabad In the pre Columbian Americas two Empires were prominent the Azteca in Mesoamerica and Inca in Peru Both existed for several generations before the arrival of the Europeans Inca had gradually conquered the whole of the settled Andean world as far south as today Santiago in Chile In Oceania the Tonga Empire was a lonely empire that existed from the Late Middle Ages to the Modern period Colonial empires All areas of the world that were once part of the Portuguese Empire The Portuguese established in the early 16th century together with the Spanish Empire the first global empire and trade network This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed April 2019 Learn how and when to remove this message In the 15th century Castile Spain landing in the so called New World first the Americas and later Australia along with Portuguese travels around the Cape of Good Hope and along the coast of Africa bordering the southeast Indian Ocean proved ripe opportunities for the continent s Renaissance era monarchies to establish colonial empires like those of the ancient Romans and Greeks In the Old World colonial imperialism was attempted and established on the Canary Islands and Ireland These conquered lands and people became de jure subordinates of the empire rather than de facto imperial territories and subjects Such subjugation often elicited client state resentment that the empire unwisely ignored leading to the collapse of the European colonial imperial system in the late 19th through the mid 20th century Portuguese discovery of Newfoundland in the New World gave way to many expeditions led by England later Britain Spain France and the Dutch Republic In the 18th century the Spanish Empire was at its height because of the great mass of goods taken from conquered territory in the Americas nowadays Mexico parts of the United States the Caribbean most of Central America and South America and the Philippines Modern period Diachronic map of the main empires of the modern era 1492 1945 Empires of the Modern periodRed shows self governing North American British colonies and pink shows claimed and largely indirectly controlled territories in 1775 Ottoman Empire at its greatest extentSpanish Portuguese Empire of the Iberian Union 1580 1640 was the first global imperial entity The map includes all Spanish territories but only territories Portugal had during the Iberian Union The map includes Napoleon s First French empire with its colonial ownership in 1812 Napoleon s rule over Europe led to massive changes not only in Europe but across the world Russian Empire in 1866 became the second largest contiguous empire to have ever existed The Russian Federation is currently the largest state on the planet In 1920 the British Empire was the largest empire in history Evolution of the French Empire in the 16th to the 20th century In 1920 the French colonial empire was the second largest empire in the world Italian Empire in 1942China s Qing Empire in 176019th to 20th century Japanese Empire at its maximum extent 1942 The British established their first empire 1583 1783 in North America by colonising lands that made up British America including parts of Canada the Caribbean and the Thirteen Colonies In 1776 the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies declared itself independent from the British Empire thus beginning the American Revolution Britain turned towards Asia the Pacific and later Africa with subsequent exploration and conquests leading to the rise of the Second British Empire 1783 1815 which was followed by the Industrial Revolution and Britain s Imperial Century 1815 1914 It became the largest empire in world history encompassing one quarter of the world s land area and one fifth of its population The impacts of this period are still prominent in the current age including widespread use of the English language belief in Protestant religion economic globalization modern precepts of law and order and representative democracy The Great Qing Empire of China 1644 1912 was the fourth largest empire in world history by total land area and laid the foundation for the modern territorial claims of both the People s Republic of China and the Republic of China Apart from having direct control over much of East Asia the empire also exerted domination over other states through the Chinese tributary system The multiethnic and multicultural nature of the Great Qing Empire was crucial to the subsequent birth of the nationalistic concept of zhonghua minzu The empire reached its peak during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor after which the empire entered a period of prolonged decline culminating in its collapse as a result of the Xinhai Revolution The Ashanti Empire or Confederacy also Asanteman 1701 1896 was a West African state of the Ashanti the Akan people of the Ashanti Region Akanland in modern day Ghana The Ashanti or Asante were a powerful militaristic and highly disciplined people in West Africa Their military power which came from effective strategy and an early adoption of European firearms created an empire that stretched from central Akanland in modern day Ghana to present day Benin and Ivory Coast bordered by the Dagomba kingdom to the north and Dahomey to the east Due to the empire s military prowess sophisticated hierarchy social stratification and culture the Ashanti empire had one of the largest historiographies of any indigenous Sub Saharan African political entity The Sikh Empire 1799 1849 was established in the Punjab region of India The empire weakened when its founder Ranjit Singh died in 1839 the empire fell to the British after the Second Anglo Sikh War in 1849 During the same period the Maratha Empire also known as the Maratha Confederacy was a Hindu state located in present day India It existed from 1674 to 1818 and at its peak the empire s territories covered much of Southern Asia The empire was founded and consolidated by Shivaji After the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb it expanded greatly under the rule of the Peshwas In 1761 the Maratha army lost the Third Battle of Panipat which halted the expansion of the empire Later the empire was divided into a confederacy of states which in 1818 were lost to the British during the Anglo Maratha wars France was a dominant empire possessing many colonies in various locations around the world During Louis XIV s long reign from 1643 to 1715 France was the leading European power as Europe s most populous richest and powerful country The Empire of the French 1804 1814 also known as the Greater French Empire or First French Empire but more commonly known as the Napoleonic Empire was also the dominant power of much of continental Europe It ruled over 90 million people and was the sole power in Europe if not the world Britain was the only main rival during the early 19th century From the 16th to the 17th centuries the First French colonial empire s total area at its peak in 1680 was over 10 million km2 3 9 million sq mi the second largest empire in the world at the time behind only the Spanish Empire It had many possessions around the world mainly in the Americas Asia and Africa At its peak in 1750 French India had an area of 1 5 million km2 and a total population of 100 million people and was the most populous colony under French rule In the 19th and 20th centuries the colonial empire of France was the second largest in the world behind the British Empire The French colonial empire extended over 13 5 million km2 5 2 million sq mi of land at its height in the 1920s and 1930s with a totaled population of 150 million people Including metropolitan France the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 13 5 million km2 5 2 million sq mi at the time which is 10 0 of the Earth s total land area The total area of the French colonial empire with the first mainly in the Americas and Asia and second mainly in Africa and Asia the French colonial empires combined reached 24 million km2 9 3 million sq mi the second largest in the world the first being the British Empire The Empire of Brazil 1822 1889 was the only South American modern monarchy established by the heir of the Portuguese Empire as an independent nation eventually became an emerging international power The new country was huge but sparsely populated and ethnically diverse In 1889 the monarchy was overthrown in a sudden coup d etat led by a clique of military leaders whose goal was the formation of a republic The German Empire 1871 1918 another heir to the Holy Roman Empire arose in 1871 Fall of empiresThe fall of an empire is typically associated with a change in the world order with a new hegemon replacing the former empire There is typically a decline in soft power and hard power During the fall the empire typically retreats its expanded operations Trade shrinks as the former empire shifts its priorities towards domestic policy Living conditions may deteriorate as the economy shrinks Balkanization or territorial divisions may occur However this process is not universal Some empires are more resilient and fall gracefully while others experience complete chaos Roman Empire The fall of the western half of the Roman Empire is seen as one of the most pivotal points in all of human history This event traditionally marks the transition from classical civilization to the birth of Europe The Roman Empire started to decline at the end of the reign of the last of the Five Good Emperors Marcus Aurelius in 161 180 A D There is still a debate over the cause of the fall of one of the largest empires in history Piganiol argues that the Roman Empire under its authority can be described as a period of terror holding its imperial system accountable for its failure Another theory blames the rise of Christianity as the cause arguing that the spread of certain Christian ideals caused internal weakness of the military and state In his book The Fall of the Roman Empire Peter Heather contends that there are many factors including issues of money and manpower which produce military limitations and culminate in the Roman army s inability to effectively repel invading barbarians at the frontier The Western Roman economy was already stretched to its limit in the 4th and 5th centuries C E due to continual conflict and loss of territory which in turn generated loss of revenue from the tax base There was also the looming presence of the Persians which at any time took a large percentage of the fighting force s attention At the same time the Huns a nomadic warrior people from the steppes of Asia are also putting extreme pressure on the German tribes outside of the Roman frontier which gave the German tribes no other choice geographically but to move into Roman territory At this point without increased funding the Roman army could no longer effectively defend its borders against major waves of Germanic tribes This inability is illustrated by the crushing defeat at Adrianople in 378 C E and later the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 C E Transition from empire In time an empire may change from one political entity to another For example the Holy Roman Empire a German re constitution of the Roman Empire metamorphosed into various political structures i e federalism and eventually under Habsburg rule re constituted itself in 1804 as the Austrian Empire an empire of much different politics and scope which in turn became the Austro Hungarian Empire in 1867 The Roman Empire perennially reborn also lived on as the Byzantine Empire Eastern Roman Empire temporarily splitting into the Latin Empire the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond before its remaining territory and centre became part of the Ottoman Empire A similarly persistent concept of empire saw the Mongol Empire become the Khanate of the Golden Horde the Yuan Empire of China and the Ilkhanate before resurrection as the Timurid Empire and as the Mughal Empire After 1945 the Empire of Japan retained its Emperor but lost its colonial possessions and became the State of Japan Despite the semantic reference to imperial power Japan is a de jure constitutional monarchy with a homogeneous population of 127 million people that is 98 5 percent ethnic Japanese making it one of the largest nation states An autocratic empire can become a republic e g the Central African Empire in 1979 or it can become a republic with its imperial dominions reduced to a core territory e g Weimar Germany shorn of the German colonial empire 1918 1919 or the Ottoman Empire 1918 1923 The dissolution of the Austro Hungarian Empire after 1918 provides an example of a multi ethnic superstate broken into constituent nation oriented states the republics kingdoms and provinces of Austria Hungary Transylvania Croatia Slovenia Bosnia and Herzegovina Czechoslovakia Ruthenia Galicia et al In the aftermath of World War I the Russian Empire also broke up and became reduced to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic RSFSR before re forming as the USSR 1922 1991 sometimes seen as the core of a Soviet Empire The latter also disintegrated in 1989 91 After the Second World War 1939 1945 the deconstruction of colonial empires quickened and became commonly known as decolonisation The British Empire evolved into a loose multinational Commonwealth of Nations while the French colonial empire metamorphosed to a Francophone commonwealth The same process happened to the Portuguese Empire which evolved into a Lusophone commonwealth and to the former territories of the extinct Spanish Empire which alongside the Lusophone countries of Portugal and Brazil created an Ibero American commonwealth France returned the French territory of Kwang Chou Wan to China in 1946 The British gave Hong Kong back to China in 1997 after 150 years of rule The Portuguese territory of Macau reverted to China in 1999 Macau and Hong Kong did not become part of the provincial structure of China they have autonomous systems of government as Special Administrative Regions of the People s Republic of China France still governs overseas territories French Guiana Martinique Reunion French Polynesia New Caledonia Saint Martin Saint Pierre et Miquelon Guadeloupe French Southern and Antarctic Lands TAAF Wallis and Futuna Saint Barthelemy and Mayotte and exerts hegemony in Francafrique French Africa 29 francophone countries such as Chad Rwanda etc Fourteen British Overseas Territories remain under British sovereignty Fifteen countries of the Commonwealth of Nations share their head of state King Charles III as Commonwealth realms Contemporary usageUnited States of America Contemporaneously the concept of empire is politically valid yet is not always used in the traditional sense One of widely discussed cases is the United States Characterizing aspects of the US in regards to its territorial expansion foreign policy and its international behavior as American Empire is common The term American Empire refers to the United States cultural ideologies and foreign policy strategies The term is most commonly used to describe the U S s status since the 20th century but it can also be applied to the United States world standing before the rise of nationalism in the 20th century The US itself was at one point a colony in the British Empire Thomas Jefferson used the term Empire of Liberty and argued that no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire amp self government Jefferson in the 1780s while awaiting the fall of the Spanish empire said till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece Even so the ideology that the US was founded on anti imperialist principles has prevented many from acknowledging America s status as an empire This active rejection of imperialist status is not limited to high ranking government officials as it has been ingrained in American society throughout its entire history As David Ludden explains journalists scholars teachers students analysts and politicians prefer to depict the U S as a nation pursuing its own interests and ideals This often results in imperialist endeavors being presented as measures taken to enhance state security Ludden explains this phenomenon with the concept of ideological blinders which he says prevent American citizens from realizing the true nature of America s current systems and strategies These ideological blinders that people wear have resulted in an invisible American empire of which most American citizens are unaware Besides its anti imperialist principles the United States is not traditionally recognized as an empire because the U S adopted a different political system from those that previous empires had used Despite the anti imperial ideology and systematic differences the political objectives and strategies of the United States government have been quite similar to those of previous empires Throughout the 19th century the United States government attempted to expand its territory by any means necessary Regardless of the supposed motivation for this constant expansion all of these land acquisitions were carried out by imperialistic means This was done by financial means in some cases and by military force in others Most notably the Louisiana Purchase 1803 the Texas Annexation 1845 and the Mexican Cession 1848 highlight the imperialistic goals of the United States during this modern period of imperialism The U S government has stopped adding additional territories where they permanently and politically take over since the early 20th century and instead have established 800 military bases as their outposts With this overt but subtle military control of other countries scholars consider U S foreign policy strategies to be imperialistic Academic Krishna Kumar argues that the distinct principles of nationalism and imperialism may result in common practice that is the pursuit of nationalism can often coincide with the pursuit of imperialism in terms of strategy and decision making Stuart Creighton Miller posits that the public s sense of innocence about Realpolitik politics based on practical considerations rather than ideals impacts popular recognition of US imperial conduct since it governed other countries via surrogates These surrogates were domestically weak right wing governments that would collapse without US support Former President G W Bush s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said We don t seek empires We re not imperialistic we never have been This was said in the context of the international opposition to the Iraq War led by the United States in manner widely regarded as imperial With the 2003 invasion of Iraq underway historian Sidney Lens argued that from its inception the US has used every means available to dominate foreign peoples and states The same time Eliot A Cohen suggested The Age of Empire may indeed have ended but then an age of American hegemony has begun regardless of what one calls it Some scholars did not bother how to call it When it walks like a duck talks like a duck it s a duck European Union Since the European Union was formed as a polity in 1993 it has established its own currency its own citizenship established discrete military forces and exercises its limited hegemony in the Mediterranean eastern parts of Europe Sub Saharan Africa and Asia The big size and high development index of the EU economy often has the ability to influence global trade regulations in its favor The political scientist Jan Zielonka suggests that this behavior is imperial because it coerces its neighbouring countries into adopting its European economic legal and political structures Tony Benn a left wing Labour Party MP of the United Kingdom opposed the European integration policies of the European Union by saying I think they re the European Union building an empire there they want us the United Kingdom to be a part of their empire and I don t want that Russia In the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea political scientist Agnia Grigas argued that Moscow pursues the policy of reimperialization Two days after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine historian specializing on empires Niall Ferguson interpreted the policy of Putin as an attempt to bring back the tsarist Russian Empire By this time the neo imperialism or neo imperial ambitions of Russia became widely claimed When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state says another historian of empires Timothy Snyder he is speaking the familiar language of empire For five hundred years European conquerors saw themselves as actors with purpose and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision Vladimir Putin himself used to state For Russia to survive it must remain an empire In June 2022 on the 350 anniversary of the birth of the 18th century Russian tsar Peter the Great Putin has compared himself to him associating their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands For critics this association implied that Putin s complaints about historical injustice eastward NATO expansion and other grievances with the west were all a facade for a traditional war of conquest and imperialism After months of denials that Russia is driven by imperial ambitions in Ukraine Putin appeared to embrace that mission On the same occasion Mykhailo Podolyak an adviser to the Ukrainian government suggested Russia s de imperialization instead of Russia s official war aim of de Nazification of Ukraine Later that year Anne Applebaum approached the new Russian Empire as a fact and opined that this Empire must be defeated Other pundits described the new Russian Empire as a failed attempt because Russia failed to annex the whole of Ukraine Timeline of empiresThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed April 2019 Learn how and when to remove this message The chart below shows a timeline of polities that have been called empires Dynastic changes are marked with a white line The Roman Empire s timeline listed below includes the Western and Eastern portion The Empires of Nicaea and Trebizond were Byzantine successor states The Empire of Bronze Age Egypt is not included in the graph Established by Narmer circa 3000 BC it lasted as long as China until it was conquered by Achaemenid Persia in 525 BC Japan is presented for the period of its overseas Empire 1895 1945 The original Japanese Empire of the Eight Islands would be third persistent after Egypt and China Many Indian empires are also included though only Mauryans Guptas Delhi Sultans Mughals Chola Empire and Marathas ruled for large periods in India Theoretical researchEmpire versus nation state Empires have been the dominant international organization in world history The fact that tribes peoples and nations have made empires points to a fundamental political dynamic one that helps explain why empires cannot be confined to a particular place or era but emerged and reemerged over thousands of years and on all continents Empires can be traced as far back as the recorded history goes indeed most history is the history of empires It is the nation state an essentially 19th century ideal that is the historical novelty and that may yet prove to be the more ephemeral entity Our field s fixation on the Westphalian state has tended to obscure the fact that the main actors in global politics for most of time immemorial have been empires rather than states In fact it is a very distorted view of even the Westphalian era not to recognize that it was always at least as much about empires as it was states Almost all of the emerging European states no sooner began to consolidate than they were off on campaigns of conquest and commerce to the farthest reaches of the globe Ironically it was the European empires that carried the idea of the sovereign territorial state to the rest of the world Empire has been the historically predominant form of order in world politics Looking at a time frame of several millennia there was no global anarchic system until the European explorations and subsequent imperial and colonial ventures connected disparate regional systems doing so approximately 500 years ago Prior to this emergence of a global scope system the pattern of world politics was characterized by regional systems These regional systems were initially anarchic and marked by high levels of military competition But almost universally they tended to consolidate into regional empires Thus it was empires not anarchic state systems that typically dominated the regional systems in all parts of the world Within this global pattern of regional empires European political order was distinctly anomalous because it persisted so long as an anarchy Similarly Anthony Pagden Eliot A Cohen Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper estimate that empires have always been more frequent more extensive political and social forms than tribal territories or nations have ever been Many empires endured for centuries while the age of the ancient Egyptian Chinese and Japanese Empires is counted in millennia Most people throughout history have lived under imperial rule Empires have played a long and critical part in human history Despite efforts in words and wars to put national unity at the center of political imagination imperial politics imperial practices and imperial cultures have shaped the world we live in Rome was evoked as a model of splendor and order into the Twentieth century and beyond By comparison the nation state appears as a blip on the historical horizon a state form that emerged recently from under imperial skies and whose hold on the world s political imagination may well prove partial or transitory The endurance of empire challenges the notion that the nation state is natural necessary and inevitable Political scientist Hedley Bull wrote that in the broad sweep of human history the form of states system has been the exception rather than the rule His colleague Robert Gilpin confirmed this conclusion for the pre modern period The history of interstate relations was largely that of successive great empires The pattern of international political change during the millennia of the pre modern era has been described as an imperial cycle World politics was characterized by the rise and decline of powerful empires each of which in turn unified and ordered its respective international system The recurrent pattern in every civilization of which we have knowledge was for one state to unify the system under its imperial domination The propensity toward universal empire was the principal feature of pre modern politics Historian Michael Doyle who undertook an extensive research on empires extended the observation into the modern era Empires have been the key actors in world politics for millennia They helped create the interdependent civilizations of all the continents Imperial control stretches through history many say to the present day Empires are as old as history itself They have held the leading role ever since The author of The Idea of Nationalism A Study in Its Origins and Background Hans Kohn acknowledged that it was the opposite idea of imperialism that was perhaps the most influential single idea for two millennia the ordering of human society through unified dominion and common civilization Yet a century ago most of the world was ruled by persons who proudly proclaimed themselves Emperors and were proud of their Empires Of the great powers only the United States and France were republics Universal empire Expert on warfare Quincy Wright generalized on what he called universal empire empire unifying all the contemporary system Balance of power systems have in the past tended through the process of conquest of lesser states by greater states towards reduction in the number of states involved and towards less frequent but more devastating wars until eventually a universal empire has been established through the conquest by one of all those remaining German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck finds that the macro historic process of imperial expansion gave rise to global history in which the formations of universal empires were most significant stages A later group of political scientists working on the phenomenon of the current unipolarity in 2007 edited research on several pre modern civilizations by experts in respective fields The overall conclusion was that the balance of power was inherently unstable order and usually soon broke in favor of imperial order Yet before the advent of the unipolarity world historian Arnold Toynbee and political scientist Martin Wight had drawn the same conclusion with an unambiguous implication for the modern world When this imperial pattern of political history is found in the New World as well as in the Old World it looks as if the pattern must be intrinsic to the political history of societies of the species we call civilizations in whatever part of the world the specimens of this species occur If this conclusion is warranted it illuminates our understanding of civilization itself Most states systems have ended in universal empire which has swallowed all the states of the system The examples are so abundant that we must ask two questions Is there any states system which has not led fairly directly to the establishment of a world empire Does the evidence rather suggest that we should expect any states system to culminate in this way It might be argued that every state system can only maintain its existence on the balance of power that the latter is inherently unstable and that sooner or later its tensions and conflicts will be resolved into a monopoly of power The earliest thinker to approach the phenomenon of universal empire from a theoretical point of view was Polybius 2 3 In previous times events in the world occurred without impinging on one another Then history became a whole as if a single body events in Italy and Libya came to be enmeshed with those in Asia and Greece and everything gets directed towards one single goal Johann Gottlieb Fichte having witnessed the battle at Jena in 1806 when Napoleon overwhelmed Prussia described what he perceived as a deep historical trend There is necessary tendency in every cultivated State to extend itself generally Such is the case in Ancient History As the States become stronger in themselves and cast off that Papal foreign power the tendency towards a Universal Monarchy over the whole Christian World necessarily comes to light This tendency has shown itself successively in several States which could make pretensions to such a dominion and since the fall of the Papacy it has become the sole animating principle of our History Whether clearly or not it may be obscurely yet has this tendency lain at the root of the undertakings of many States in Modern Times Although no individual Epoch may have contemplated this purpose yet is this the spirit which runs through all these individual Epochs and invisibly urges them onward Fichte s later compatriot Geographer Alexander von Humboldt in the mid Nineteenth century observed a macro historic trend of imperial growth in both Hemispheres Men of great and strong minds as well as whole nations acted under influence of one idea the purity of which was utterly unknown to them The imperial expansion filled the world c 1900 Two famous contemporary observers Frederick Turner and Halford Mackinder described the event and drew implications the former predicting American overseas expansion and the latter stressing that the world empire is now in sight In 1870 Argentine diplomat jurist and political theorist Juan Bautista Alberdi described imperial consolidation As von Humboldt he found this trend unplanned and irrational but evident beyond doubt in the unwritten history of events He linked this trend to the recent Evolution theory Nations gravitate towards the formation of a single universal society The laws that lead the nations in that direction are the same natural laws that has formed societies and are part of evolution These evolutionary laws exist disregarding whether men recognize them Similarly Friedrich Ratzel observed that the drive toward the building of continually larger states continues throughout the entirety of history and is active in the present He drew Seven Laws of Expansionism His seventh law stated The general trend toward amalgamation transmits the tendency of territorial growth from state to state and increases the tendency in the process of transmission He commented on this law to make its meaning clear There is on this small planet sufficient space for only one great state Two other contemporaries Kang Youwei and George Vacher de Lapouge stressed that imperial expansion cannot indefinitely proceed on the definite surface of the globe and therefore world empire is imminent Kang Youwei in 1885 believed that the imperial trend will culminate in the contest between Washington and Berlin and Vacher de Lapouge in 1899 estimated that the final contest will be between Russia and America in which America is likely to triumph The above envisaged contests indeed took place known to us as World War I and II Writing during the First Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West compared two emergences of universal empires and implied for the modern world The Chinese League of States failed as well as the Taoist idea of intellectual self disarmament The Chinese states defended their last independence with bitterness but in vain Also in vain Rome attempted to avoid conquest of the Hellenistic east Imperialism is so necessary a product of any civilization that when a strongest people refuse to assume the role of master it is pushed into it It is the same with us The Hague Conference of 1907 was the prelude of World War the Washington Conference of 1921 will have been that of other wars Napoleon introduced the idea of military world empire different from the preceding European maritime empires The contest for the heritage of the whole world will culminate within two generations from 1922 The destinies of small states are without importance to the great march of things The strongest race will win and seize the management of the world Writing during the next World War political scientists Derwent Whittlesey Robert Strausz Hupe and John H Herz concluded Now that the earth is at last parceled out consolidation has commenced In this world of fighting superstates there could be no end to war until one state had subjected all others until world empire had been achieved by the strongest This undoubtedly is the logical final stage in the geopolitical theory of evolution The world is no longer large enough to harbor several self contained powers The trend toward world domination or hegemony of a single power is but the ultimate consummation of a power system engrafted upon an otherwise integrated world Writing in the last year of the War American theologian Parley Paul Wormer German historian Ludwig Dehio and Hungarian born writer Emery Reves drew similar conclusions Fluctuating but persistent movement occurred through the centuries toward ever greater unity The forward movement toward ever larger unities continues and there is no reason to conclude that it has come to an end More likely the greatest convergence of all time is at hand Possibly this is the deeper meaning of the savage world conflicts of the 20th century T he old European tendency toward division is now being thrust aside by the new global trend toward unification And the onrush of this trend may not come to rest until it has asserted itself throughout our planet The global order still seems to be going through its birth pangs With the last tempest barely over a new one is gathering The famous Anatomy of Peace by Reves written and published in 1945 supposed that without the industrial power of the United States Hitler already might have established world empire Proposing world federalism the book warned Every dynamic force every economic and technological reality every law of history and logic indicates that we are on the verge of a period of empire building which is the last phase of the struggle for the conquest of the world As an elimination contest one of the three remaining powers or a combination will achieve by force that unified control made mandatory by the times we live in Anyone of three by defeating the other two would conquer and rule the world If we fail to institute a unified control over the world in democratic way the iron law of history would compel us to wage wars until world empire is finally attained through conquest Since the former way is improbable due human blindness we should precipitate the unification by conquest as quickly as possible and start the restoration of human liberties within the world empire Atomic bomb and empire Reves added Postscript to the Anatomy opening A few weeks after the publication of this book the first atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima This new physical fact however has changed nothing in the political situation The world empire remains inevitable and nothing else in the book would have been said differently had it been written after August 6 1945 Not much chance we have to establish world government before the next horrible war between the two superpowers and whoever is victorious would establish the world empire The book sold an exceptional 800 000 copies in thirty languages was endorsed by Albert Einstein and numerous other prominent figures and in 1950 Reves was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize The year after the War and in the first year of the nuclear age Einstein and British philosopher Bertrand Russell known as prominent pacifists outlined for the near future a perspective of world empire world government established by force Einstein believed that unless world government is established by agreement an imperial world government would come by war or wars Russell expected a third World War to result in a world government under the empire of the United States Three years later another prominent pacifist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr generalized on the ancient Empires of Egypt Babylon Persia and Greece to imply for the modern world The analogy in present global terms would be the final unification of the world through the preponderant power of either America or Russia whichever proved herself victorious in the final struggle Russian colleague of Russell and Niebuhr Georgy Fedotov wrote in 1945 All empires are but stages on the way to the sole empire which must swallow all others The only question is who will build it and on which foundations Universal unity is the only alternative to annihilation Unity by conference is utopian but unity by conquest by the strongest power is not and probably the uncompleted in this War will be completed in the next Pax Atlantica is the best of possible outcomes Originally drafted as a secret study for the Office of Strategic Services the precursor of the CIA in 1944 and published as a book three years later The Struggle for the World by James Burnham concludes If either of the two Superpowers wins the result would be a universal empire which in our case would also be a world empire The historical stage for a world empire had already been set prior to and independently of the discovery of atomic weapons but these weapons make a world empire inevitable and imminent The atomic weapons will not permit the world to wait Only a world empire can establish monopoly on atomic weapons and thus guarantee the survival of civilization A world empire is in fact the objective of the Third World War which in its preliminary stages has already began The issue of a world empire will be decided and in our day In the course of the decision both of the present antagonists may it is true be destroyed but one of them must be The next year world historian Crane Brinton similarly supposed that the bomb may in the hands of a very skillful and lucky nation prove to be the weapon that permits that nation to unify the world by imperial conquest to do what Napoleon and Hitler failed to do Combined with other wonders of science it would permit a quick and easy conquest of the world In 1951 Hans Morgenthau concluded that the best outcome of World War III would be world empire Today war has become an instrument of universal destruction an instrument that destroys the victor and the vanquished At worst victor and loser would be undistinguishable under the leveling impact of such a catastrophe At best the destruction on one side would not be quite as great as on the other the victor would be somewhat better off than the loser and would establish with the aid of modern technology his domination over the world Expert on earlier civilizations Toynbee further developed the subject of World War III leading to world empire The outcome of the Third World War seemed likely to be the imposition of an ecumenical peace of the Roman kind by the victor whose victory would leave him with a monopoly on the control of atomic energy in his grasp This denouement was foreshadowed not only by present facts but by historical precedents since in the histories of other civilizations the time of troubles had been apt to culminate in the delivery of a knock out blow resulting in the establishment of a universal state The year this volume of A Study of History was published US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced a knock out blow as an official doctrine a detailed Plan was elaborated and Fortune magazine mapped the design Section VIII Atomic Armaments of the famous National Security Council Report 68 NSC 68 approved by President Harry Truman in 1951 uses the term blow 17 times mostly preceded by such adjectives as powerful overwhelming or crippling Another term applied by the strategists was Sunday punch Having modeled the rise of the world empire on the cases of previous empires Toynbee noted that by contrast the modern ultimate blow would be atomic But he remains optimistic No doubt the modern world has far greater capacity to reconstruct than the earlier civilizations had A pupil of Toynbee William McNeill associated with the case of ancient China which put a quietus upon the disorders of the warring states by erecting an imperial bureaucratic structure The warring states of the Twentieth century seem headed for a similar resolution of their conflicts The ancient resolution McNeill evoked was one of the most sweeping universal conquests in world history performed by Qin in 230 221 BC Chinese classic Sima Qian d 86 BC described the event 6 234 Qin raised troops on a grand scale and the whole world celebrated a great bacchanal Herman Kahn of the RAND Corporation criticized an assembled group of SAC officers for their war plan SIOP 62 He did not use the term bacchanal but he coined on the occasion an associating word Gentlemen you do not have a war plan You have a war orgasm History did not completely repeat itself but it passed close Circumscription theory According to the circumscription theory of Robert Carneiro the more sharply circumscribed area the more rapidly it will become politically unified The Empires of Egypt China and Japan are named the most durable political structures in human history Correspondingly these are the three most circumscribed civilizations in human history The Empires of Egypt established by Narmer c 3000 BC and China established by Cheng in 221 BC endured for over two millennia German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck criticizing the Western idea of progress emphasized that China and Egypt remained at one particular stage of development for millennia This stage was universal empire The development of Egypt and China came to a halt once their empires reached the limits of their natural habitat Sinology does not recognize the Eurocentric view of the inevitable imperial fall Egyptology and Japanology pose equal challenges Carneiro explored the Bronze Age civilizations Stuart J Kaufman Richard Little and William Wohlforth researched the next three millennia comparing eight civilizations They conclude The rigidity of the borders contributed importantly to hegemony in every concerned case Hence when the system s borders are rigid the probability of hegemony is high The circumscription theory was stressed in the comparative studies of the Roman and Chinese Empires The circumscribed Chinese Empire recovered from all falls while the fall of Rome by contrast was fatal What counteracted this imperial tendency in Europe was a countervailing tendency for the geographical boundaries of the system to expand If Europe had been a closed system some great power would eventually have succeeded in establishing absolute supremacy over the other states in the region The ancient Chinese system was relatively enclosed whereas the European system began to expand its reach to the rest of the world from the onset of system formation In addition overseas provided outlet for territorial competition thereby allowing international competition on the European continent to trump the ongoing pressure toward convergence In the 1945 book The Precarious Balance on four centuries of the European power struggle Ludwig Dehio explained the durability of the European states system by its overseas expansion Overseas expansion and the system of states were born at the same time the vitality that burst the bounds of the Western world also destroyed its unity In a more famous 1945 book Reves similarly argued that the era of outward expansion is forever closed and the historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers Edward Carr causally linked the end of the overseas outlet for imperial expansion and World Wars In the nineteenth century he wrote during the Second World War imperialist wars were waged against primitive peoples It was silly for European countries to fight against one another when they could still maintain social cohesion by continuous expansion in Asia and Africa Since 1900 however this has no longer been possible the situation has radically changed Now wars are between imperial powers Hans Morgenthau wrote that the very imperial expansion into relatively empty geographical spaces in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries in Africa Eurasia and western North America deflected great power politics into the periphery of the earth thereby reducing conflict For example the more attention Russia France and the United States paid to expanding into far flung territories in imperial fashion the less attention they paid to one another and the more peaceful in a sense the world was But by the late nineteenth century the consolidation of the great nation states and empires of the West was consummated and territorial gains could only be made at the expense of one another John H Herz outlined one chief function of the overseas expansion and the impact of its end A European balance of power could be maintained or adjusted because it was relatively easy to divert European conflicts into overseas directions and adjust them there Thus the openness of the world contributed to the consolidation of the territorial system The end of the world frontier and the resulting closedness of an interdependent world inevitably affected the system s effectiveness Some later commentators who drew similar conclusions For some commentators the passing of the Nineteenth century seemed destined to mark the end of this long era of European empire building The unexplored and unclaimed blank spaces on the world map were rapidly diminishing and the sense of global closure prompted an anxious fin de siecle debate about the future of the great empires The closure of the global imperial system implied the beginning of a new era of intensifying inter imperial struggle along borders that now straddled the globe The opportunity for any system to expand in size seems almost a necessary condition for it to remain balanced at least over the long haul Far from being impossible or exceedingly improbable systemic hegemony is likely under two conditions when the boundaries of the international system remain stable and no new major powers emerge from outside the system With the system becoming global further expansion is precluded The geopolitical condition of global closure will remain to the end of history Since the contemporary international system is global we can rule out the possibility that geographic expansion of the system will contribute to the emergence of a new balance of power as it did so many times in the past As Quincy Wright had put it this process can no longer continue without interplanetary wars One of leading experts on world system theory Christopher Chase Dunn noted that the circumscription theory is applicable for the global system since the global system is circumscribed In fact within less than a century of its circumscribed existence the global system overcame the centuries old balance of power and reached the unipolarity Given constant spatial parameters of the global system its unipolar structure is neither historically unusual nor theoretically surprising Randall Schweller theorized that a closed international system such as the global became a century ago would reach entropy in a kind of thermodynamic law Once the state of entropy is reached there is no going back The initial conditions are lost forever Stressing the curiosity of the fact Schweller writes that since the moment the modern world became a closed system the process has worked in only one direction from many poles to two poles to one pole Thus unipolarity might represent the entropy stable and permanent loss of variation in the global system Present Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar Chalmers Johnson argues that the US global network of hundreds of military bases already represents a global empire in its initial form For a major power prosecution of any war that is not a defense of the homeland usually requires overseas military bases for strategic reasons After the war is over it is tempting for the victor to retain such bases and easy to find reasons to do so Commonly preparedness for a possible resumption of hostilities will be invoked Over time if a nation s aims become imperial the bases form the skeleton of an empire Simon Dalby associates the network of bases with the Roman imperial system Looking at these impressive facilities which reproduce substantial parts of American suburbia complete with movie theatres and restaurant chains the parallels with Roman garrison towns built on the Rhine or on Hadrian s wall in England where the remains are strikingly visible on the landscape are obvious Less visible is the sheer scale of the logistics to keep garrison troops in residence in the far flung reaches of empire That military presence literally builds the cultural logic of the garrison troops into the landscape a permanent reminder of imperial control Kenneth Pomeranz and Harvard Historian Niall Ferguson share the above cited views With American military bases in over 120 countries we have hardly seen the end of empire This vast archipelago of US military bases far exceeds 19th century British ambitions Britain s imperium consisted of specific albeit numerous colonies and clients the American imperial vision is much more global Conventional maps of US military deployments understate the extent of America s military reach A Defense Department map of the world which shows the areas of responsibility of the five major regional commands suggests that America s sphere of military influence is now literally global The regional combatant commanders the pro consuls of this imperium have responsibility for swaths of territory beyond the wildest imaginings of their Roman predecessors Another Harvard Historian Charles S Maier opens his Among Empires American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors with these words What a substratum for empire Compared with which the foundation of the Macedonian the Roman and the British sink into insignificance One of the most accepted distinctions between earlier empires and the American Empire is the latter s global or planetary scope French former Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine wondered The situation is unprecedented What previous empire subjugated the entire world The quests for universal empire are old but the present quest outdoes the previous in the notable respect of being the first to actually be global in its reach Another historian Paul Kennedy who wrote prediction talks of the imminent US imperial overstretch in 2002 acknowledged about the present world system Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power The Pax Britannica was run on the cheap Napoleon s France and Philip II s Spain had powerful foes and were part of a multipolar system Charlemagne s empire was merely western European in stretch The Roman Empire stretched further afield but there was another great empire in Persia and a larger one in China There is no comparison Walter Russell Mead observes that the United States attempts to recreate globally what the ancient empires of Egypt China and Rome had each accomplished on a regional basis Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds Zygmunt Bauman concludes that due to its planetary dimension the new empire cannot be drawn on a map The new empire is not an entity that could be drawn on a map Drawing a map of the empire would also be a pointless exercise because the most conspicuously imperial trait of the new empire s mode of being consists in viewing and treating the whole of the planet as a potential grazing ground Times Atlas of Empires numbers 70 empires in the world history Niall Ferguson lists numerous parallels between them and the United States He concludes To those who would still insist on American exceptionalism the historian of empires can only retort as exceptional as all the other 69 empires Fareed Zakaria stressed one element not exceptional for the American Empire the concept of exceptionalism All dominant empires thought they were special Future In 1945 Historian Ludwig Dehio predicted global unification due to the circumscription of the global system although he did not use this term Being global the system can neither expand nor be subject to external intrusion as the European states system had been for centuries In all previous struggles for supremacy attempts to unite the European peninsula in a single state have been condemned to failure primarily through the intrusion of new forces from outside the old Occident The Occident was an open area But the globe was not and for that very reason ultimately destined to be unified And this very process of unification was clearly reflected in both World Wars Fifteen years later Dehio confirmed his hypothesis The European system owed its durability to its overseas outlet But how can a multiple grouping of world states conceivably be supported from outside in the framework of a finite globe During the same time Quincy Wright developed a similar concept Balance of power politics has aimed less at preserving peace than at preserving the independence of states and preventing the development of world empire In the course of history the balance of power repeatedly re emerged but on ever wider scale Eventually the scale became global Unless we proceed to interplanetary wars this pattern can no longer continue In spite of significant reversals the trend towards world unity can scarcely be denied World unity appears to be the limit toward which the process of world history seems to tend The same interplanetary motif is present also in the Anatomy of Peace The era of outward expansion is forever closed Until and unless we are able to communicate with another planet the theater of human history will be limited to geographically determined constant and known dimensions The historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers Multiplied by modern technology the centripetal forces will accomplish what the greatest empires of the past failed For the first time in human history one power can conquer and rule the world The Father of American Anthropology Franz Boas known for his historical particularism and cultural relativism outlined the inexorable laws of history by which political units grow larger in size and smaller in number The process began in the earliest times and has continued almost always in the same direction In the long run the tendency to unification has been more powerful than of disintegration Thus the history of mankind shows us the grand spectacle of the grouping of man in units of ever increasing size The progress in the direction of unification has been so regular and so marked that we must needs conclude that the same tendencies will govern our history in the future Today the unity of the world is not less conceivable than the modern nations were in the early history The practical difficulties that stand in the way of the formation of still larger units count for nothing before the inexorable laws of history Seven later scholars Hornell Hart Raoul Naroll Louis Morano Rein Taagepera the author of the circumscription theory Robert Carneiro and Jesse H Ausubel amp Cesare Marchetti researched expanding imperial cycles All argued that these cycles represent an historical trend leading to world empire Naroll and Carneiro also found this outcome close at hand c 2200 and 2300 respectively In 2013 Marchetti and Ausubel estimated that the global empire is to rise within a couple more generations The founder of the Paneuropean Union Richard von Coudenhove Kalergi writing yet in 1943 drew a more specific and immediate future imperial project After the War America is bound to take over the command of the skies The danger of the utter annihilation of all enemy towns and lands can only be prevented by the air superiority of a single power America s air role is the only alternative to intercontinental wars Despite his outstanding anti imperialism Coudenhove Kalergi detailed No imperialism but technical and strategic problems of security urge America to rule the skies of the globe just as Britain during the last century ruled the seas of the world Pacifists and anti imperialists will be shocked by this logic They will try to find an escape But they will try in vain At the end of the war the crushing superiority of American plane production will be an established fact The solution of the problem is by no means ideal nor even satisfactory But it is the minor evil Coudenhove Kalergi envisaged a kind of Pax Americana modeled on Pax Romana During the third century BC the Mediterranean world was divided on five great powers Roma and Carthage Macedonia Syria and Egypt The balance of power led to a series of wars until Rome emerged the queen of the Mediterranean and established an incomparable era of two centuries of peace and progress the Pax Romana It may be that America s air power could again assure our world now much smaller than the Mediterranean at that period two hundred years of peace This period would be necessary transitory stage before World State is eventually established though he did not specify how the last transformation is expected to occur Coudenhove Kalergi s follower in the teleological theory of World State Toynbee specified two ways One is by wars going on to a bitter end at which one surviving great power knocks out its last remaining competitor and establishes world empire like the earlier empires used to on the regional scale The other alternative is the United Nations Having devoted his life to the study of history and international affairs Toynbee did not bet on the United Nations Instead he identified symptoms of the traditional power politics leading to the world empire by a universal conquest Toynbee emphasized that the world is ripe for conquest Hitler s eventual failure to impose peace on the world by the force of arms was due not to any flaw in his thesis that the world was ripe for conquest but to an accidental combination of incidental errors in his measures But in falling by so narrow a margin to win the prize of world dominion for himself Hitler had left the prize dangling within the reach of any successor capable of pursuing the same aims of world conquest with a little more patience prudence and tact With his revolution of destruction Hitler has performed the yeoman service for some future architect of a Pax Ecumenica For a post Hitlerian empire builder Hitler s derelict legacy was a gift of the Gods The next architect of a Pax Ecumenica known more commonly as Pax Americana demonstrated more patience prudence and tact Consequently as President Dwight Eisenhower put it the NATO allies became almost psychopathic whenever anyone talked about a US withdrawal and the reception of his successor John F Kennedy in Berlin was almost hysterical as Chancellor Konrad Adenauer characterized it John Ikenberry finds that the Europeans wanted a stronger more formal and more imperial system than the United States was initially willing to provide In the end the United States settled for this form of empire a Pax Americana with formal commitments to Europe According to a much debated thesis the United States became empire by invitation The period discussed in the thesis 1945 1952 ended precisely the year Toynbee theorized on some future architect of a Pax Ecumenica Dissociating America from Rome Eisenhower gave a pessimistic forecast In 1951 before he became president he had written on West Europe We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions if for no other reason than that these are not politically our frontiers What we must do is to assist these West European peoples Two years later he wrote When it was decided to deploy US divisions to Europe no one had for an instant thought that they would remain there for several decades that the United States could build a sort of Roman Wall with its own troops and so protect the world Eisenhower assured Soviet first secretary Nikita Khrushchev on Berlin in 1959 Clearly we did not contemplate 50 years in occupation there It lasted remarks Marc Trachtenberg from July 1945 to September 1994 10 months short of 50 years Notably when the US troops eventually left they left eastward Confirming the theory of the empire by invitation with their first opportunity East European states extended the invitation Oswald Spengler envisaged the Imperial Age for the world in both senses of empire spatial as a world wide unit ruled by one center and governmental as ruled by Emperor Published in 1922 The Decline of the West predicts the triumph of the strongest race in the fight for the whole world within two generations and of Caesarism over democracy within a century In 2022 the Spenglerian century ended short of global Caesarism albeit two years before its end Donald Trump had been advised to cross the Rubicon Chalmers Johnson regards the global military reach of the United States as empire in its initial form Dimitri Simes finds that most of the world sees the United States as a nascent imperial power Some scholars concerned how this empire would look in its ultimate form The ultimate form of empire was described by Michael Doyle in his Empires It is empire in which its two main components the ruling core and the ruled periphery merged to form one integrated whole At this stage the empire as defined ceases to exist and becomes world state Doyle exemplifies the transformation on the case of the Roman Emperor Caracalla whose edict in AD 212 extended the Roman citizenship to all inhabitants of the Mediterranean world Doyle s case of the Roman Empire had also been evoked by Susan Strange in her 1988 article The Future of the American Empire Strange emphasized that the most persistent empires were those which best managed to integrate the ruling core and the peripheral allies The article is partly a reply on the published a year earlier bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers which predicted imminent US imperial overstretch Strange found this outcome unlikely stressing the fact that the peripheral allies have been successfully recruited into the American Empire Envisaging a world empire of either the United States or the Soviet Union whoever is victorious in World War III Bertrand Russell projected the Roman scenario too Like the Romans they will in the course of time extend citizenship to the vanquished There will then be a true world state and it will be possible to forget that it will have owed its origin to conquest International Relations scholar Alexander Wendt supposes world empire by universal conquest and subsequent consolidation provided the conquering power recognizes all conquered members For his example he also invokes the Roman Empire In satirical criticism of the European pro American stance in the wake of September 11 French Philosopher Regis Debray warned that the logical culmination of the motto We are all Americans would be a modernized Edict of Caracalla extending US citizenship to all the West and thus establishing the United States of the West To the case of Caracalla Toynbee added the Abbasid cosmopolitan reformation of 750 AD Both were good auguries for the prospect that in a post Modern chapter of Western history a supranational commonwealth originally based on the hegemony of a paramount power over its satellites might eventually be put on the sounder basis of a constitutional partnership in which all the people of all the partner states would have their fare share in the conduct of common affairs To the cases of Caracalla and the Abbasid revolution Max Ostrovsky added the Han overthrow of Qin in 206 BC and more gradual cosmopolitan reformations he finds characteristic to all persistent empires and expects in the future global empire Crane Brinton expected that the world empire would not be built instantly but not as slowly as Rome for much in the modern world has been speeded up Charles Galton Darwin a grandson of the father of Evolution Theory suggested that China as an isolated and enduring civilization seems to provide the most relevant model for the global future As the Chinese Empire the regions of the world periodically albeit more rarely will be united by force into an uneasy world empire which will endure for a period until it falls Along China Ostrovsky mentions Egypt as a model for the future but by contrast estimates that the intermediate periods of the global empire will be shorter and rarer See alsoLinguistic imperialism List of medieval great powers Military globalization Nomadic empireLists List of empires List of largest empires List of former sovereign states List of transcontinental countries List of Hindu empires and dynastiesNotesReferencesCitationsHowe 2002 p 30 Reus Smit Christian 2013 Individual Rights and the Making of the International System Cambridge University Press p 4 ISBN 978 0 521 85777 2 Burbank amp Cooper 2010 p 8 Howe 2002 p 35 Empire Oxford Dictionary Online Retrieved 21 October 2014 Howe 2002 Oxford Dictionary Online Retrieved 2020 06 30 An extensive territory under the control of a supreme ruler typically an emperor or an oligarchy often consisting of an aggregate of many separate states or territories In later use also an extensive group of subject territories ultimately under the rule of a single sovereign state Howe 2002 p 15 Doyle Michael 5 September 2018 Empires Cornell University Press p 30 ISBN 978 1 5017 3413 7 I favor the behavioral definition of empire as effective control whether formal or informal of a subordinated society by an imperial society James amp Nairn 2006 p xxiii Taagepera Rein 1979 Size and Duration of Empires Growth Decline Curves 600 B C to 600 A D Social Science History 3 3 4 117 doi 10 2307 1170959 JSTOR 1170959 Bang Peter Fibiger 2021 03 03 Empire A World History The Oxford World History of Empire Oxford University Press pp 1 88 doi 10 1093 oso 9780199772360 003 0002 ISBN 978 0 19 977236 0 retrieved 2024 11 30 Howe 2002 p 66 empire The Free Dictionary Retrieved 26 October 2018 any monarchy that for reasons of history prestige etc has an emperor rather than a king as head of state empire Your Dictionary LoveToKnow Corp 2018 Retrieved 26 October 2018 government by an emperor or empress empire Vocabulary com Dictionary Retrieved 26 October 2018 a monarchy with an emperor as head of state empire Collins English Dictionary 2018 Retrieved 26 October 2018 government by an emperor or empress Tilly Charles 1990 Coercion Capital and European States AD 990 1992 Blackwell pp 4 45 46 Colomer Josep M 2017 Empires Versus States Empires Versus States Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics doi 10 1093 acrefore 9780190228637 013 608 ISBN 978 0 19 022863 7 Hechter Michael Brustein William 1980 Regional Modes of Production and Patterns of State Formation in Western Europe American Journal of Sociology 85 5 1061 1094 doi 10 1086 227125 ISSN 0002 9602 JSTOR 2778891 S2CID 143853058 Stanard Matthew G 2018 European Overseas Empire 1879 1999 A Short History John Wiley amp Sons pp 3 4 ISBN 978 1 119 13013 0 Burbank amp Cooper 2010 U M Web Hosting PDF Howe 2002 p 126 127 Ross Hassig Mexico and the Spanish Conquest 1994 pp 23 24 ISBN 0 582 06829 0 pbk Mapas Imperiales Imperio Seleucida usuarios lycos es permanent dead link Haywood John 1997 The Cassell Atlas of World History et al Andromeda Oxford Ltd p 2 02 Howe 2002 pp 37 39 Naroll Raoul 1967 Imperial Cycles and World Order Peace Research Society 7 pp 83 101 Brien Pierre 2002 From Cyrus to Alexander A History of the Persian Empire tr Daniels Peter T Indiana Eisenbrauns p 79 Orosius History against the Pagans IV 23 tr Fear A T Liverpool University Press 2010 Lucan Civil War 7 482 tr Braund S H Oxford University Press 1992 Stearns 2001 Samuel N Eisenstadt Axial Age Civilizations New York New York State University Press 1986 Friedrich Ratzel Territorial Growth of States Human Geography An Essential Anthology eds Agnew John amp Livingstone David amp Rogers Alisdair Oxford Blackwell 1997 p 527 and The Laws of the Spatial Growth of States The Structure of Political Geography eds Kasperson Roger E amp Minghi Julian V Chicago Aldine Publishing Company 1969 p 18 Namita Sanjay Sugandhi 2008 Between the Patterns of History Rethinking Mauryan Imperial Interaction in the Southern Deccan pp 88 89 ISBN 978 0 549 74441 2 Retrieved 2012 06 06 permanent dead link Burger Michael 2008 The Shaping of Western Civilization From Antiquity to the Enlightenment University of Toronto Press p 115 ISBN 978 1 55111 432 3 Hornblower Simon Spawforth Antony Eidinow Esther 2012 Imperium The Oxford Classical Dictionary OUP Oxford p 730 ISBN 978 0 19 954556 8 Hornblower Simon Spawforth Antony Eidinow Esther 2012 Imperator The Oxford Classical Dictionary OUP Oxford p 728 ISBN 978 0 1995 4556 8 Ken Pennington France Legal History Columbus School of Law and School of Canon Law The Catholic University of America Archived from the original on September 29 2013 Retrieved September 23 2013 Haven Cynthia February 19 2010 Stanford scholar links Rome and America in Philadelphia exhibition Stanford Report Ancient Japan World History Encyclopedia Retrieved 2018 07 31 Ancient Japanese amp Chinese Relations World History Encyclopedia Retrieved 2018 07 31 Ancient Korean amp Chinese Relations World History Encyclopedia Retrieved 2018 07 31 Bulliet amp Crossley amp Headrick amp Hirsch amp Johnson 2014 p 264 Lockard Craig 1999 Tang Civilization and the Chinese Centuries PDF Encarta Historical Essays Luling Virginia 2002 Somali Sultanate the Geledi city state over 150 years Transaction Publishers p 17 ISBN 978 1 874209 98 0 Luc Cambrezy Populations refugiees de l exil au retour p 316 Mukhtar Mohamed Haji 1989 The Emergence and Role of Political Parties in the Inter River Region of Somalia from 1947 1960 Ufahamu 17 2 98 doi 10 5070 F7172016882 Shelley Fred M 2013 Nation Shapes The Story behind the World s Borders ABC CLIO p 358 ISBN 978 1 61069 106 2 Dvornik Francis 1956 The Slavs Their Early History and Civilization Boston American Academy of Arts and Sciences p 179 The Psalter and the Book of Prophets were adapted or modernized with special regard to their use in Bulgarian churches and it was in this school that glagolitic writing was replaced by the so called Cyrillic writing which was more akin to the Greek uncial which simplified matters considerably and is still used by the Orthodox Slavs Florin Curta 2006 Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500 1250 Cambridge Medieval Textbooks Cambridge University Press pp 221 222 ISBN 978 0 521 81539 0 Cyrillic preslav J M Hussey Andrew Louth 2010 The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire Oxford History of the Christian Church Oxford University Press p 100 ISBN 978 0 19 161488 0 Voltaire Wikiquote citing Essai sur l histoire generale et sur les moeurs et l espirit des nations Chapter 70 1756 retrieved 2008 01 06 Howe 2002 p 46 Howe 2002 p 47 Gregory G Guzman Were the barbarians a negative or positive factor in ancient and medieval history The Historian 50 1988 568 570 Thomas T Allsen Culture and conquest in Mongol Eurasia 211 Khan 2005 p 54 Jackson Roy 2010 Mawlana Mawdudi and Political Islam Authority and the Islamic State Routledge ISBN 978 1 136 95036 0 Chapra Muhammad Umer 2014 Morality and Justice in Islamic Economics and Finance Edward Elgar Publishing pp 62 63 ISBN 978 1 78347 572 8 Parthasarathi Prasannan 2011 Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not Global Economic Divergence 1600 1850 Cambridge University Press pp 39 45 ISBN 978 1 139 49889 0 Maddison Angus 2003 Development Centre Studies The World Economy Historical Statistics Historical Statistics OECD Publishing ISBN 92 64 10414 3 pages 259 261 Lawrence E Harrison Peter L Berger 2006 Developing cultures case studies Routledge p 158 ISBN 978 0 415 95279 8 An Outline of the History of Persia During the Last Two Centuries A D 1722 1922 Edward G Browne London Packard Humanities Institute p 33 Archived from the original on 2016 03 04 Retrieved 2010 09 24 Goldfarb Michael 18 March 2007 Napoleon the Jews and French Muslims The New York Times Voltaire Rousseau and Napoleon on Prophet Muhammad 25 June 2015 Archived from the original on 28 March 2019 Retrieved 31 May 2019 Bonaparte and Islam Liberty Equality Fraternity Archived from the original on 2019 05 28 Retrieved 2019 05 31 Murshidabad net 8 May 2012 Hassan Ali Mirza s succession Archived from the original on 2 August 2012 Retrieved 10 August 2012 Ian Copland Ian Mabbett Asim Roy et al 2012 A History of State and Religion in India Routledge p 161 Thomson Basil January 1901 Note Upon the Natives of Savage Island or Niue The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 31 137 145 doi 10 2307 2842790 JSTOR 2842790 1 Conquerors How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire Author Roger Crowley Publisher Random House 1st edition year 2015 Johnston Steve Tea Party Culture War A Clash of Worldviews permanent dead link p90 By 1922 the British Empire presided over 458 million people one quarter of the world s population and comprised more than 13 million square miles Watts Carl P Pax Britannica p 3 it left many legacies including widespread use of the English language belief in Protestant religion economic globalization modern precepts of law and order and representative democracy Winks Robin W 1993 World civilization a brief history 2nd ed San Diego CA Collegiate Press p 406 ISBN 978 0 939693 28 3 By 1914 common law trail by jury the King James Authorized Version of the Bible the English language and the British navy had been spread around the globe Pagadi Setumadhavarao R 1983 Shivaji National Book Trust India p 21 ISBN 978 81 237 0647 4 Robert Aldrich Greater France A History of French Overseas Expansion 1996 p 304 Melvin E Page ed 2003 Colonialism An International Social Cultural and Political Encyclopedia ABC CLIO p 218 ISBN 978 1 57607 335 3 Archived from the original on 19 November 2021 Retrieved 23 December 2021 Piganiol Andre 1950 The Causes of the Fall of the Roman Empire The Journal of General Education 5 1 62 69 JSTOR 27795332 Bury John 2011 History of the Later Roman Empire New York Dover Publications ISBN 978 0 486 20398 0 Heather Peter 2007 The Fall of the Roman Empire A New History of Rome and the Barbarians New York Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 532541 6 George Hicks Japan s hidden apartheid the Korean Minority and the Japanese Aldershot England Brookfield VT Ashgate 1998 3 Lens amp Zinn 2003 Jefferson Thomas 2019 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Volume 44 1 July to 10 November 1804 Princeton University Press p 194 ISBN 978 0 691 19437 0 Lens amp Zinn 2003 pp 63 64 LaFeber Walter Inevitable Revolutions The United States in Central America 1993 2nd edition p 19 Boot Max May 6 2003 American Imperialism No Need to Run Away from Label Council on Foreign Relations op ed quoting USA Today Archived from the original on January 23 2009 Retrieved 2008 01 06 America s Invisible Empire Economic and Political Weekly 39 44 30 October 2004 Text available here Archived 2017 01 27 at the Wayback Machine author link here Archived 2016 11 18 at the Wayback Machine Malesevic Sinisa 2013 Nation states and nationalisms organization ideology and solidarity Polity Press ISBN 978 0 7456 7206 9 Immerwahr Daniel 2019 How to Hide an Empire A History of the Greater United States Farrar Straus and Giroux Debrix Francois Lacy Mark eds 2009 The Geopolitics of American Insecurity Terror Power and Foreign Policy Routledge pp 129 141 ISBN 978 1 134 04540 2 Kumar Krishan 2010 Nation states as empires empires as nation states two principles one practice Theory and Society 39 2 119 143 doi 10 1007 s11186 009 9102 8 S2CID 144559989 Johnson Chalmers Blowback The Costs and Consequences of American Empire 2000 pp 72 79 Niall Ferguson Colossus The Rise and Fall of the American Empire Archived from the original on 2011 07 15 Retrieved 2010 07 11 Lens amp Zinn 2003 p Back cover Cohen 2004 p 56 Sebastian Huhnholz Do All Roads Lead to Rome Ancient Implications and Modern Transformations in the Recent US Discourse on an American Empire Mediterraneo Antico 13 1 2 2010 p 55 Dimitri K Simes America s Imperial Dilemma Foreign Affairs 82 6 2003 p 93 In Clyde V Prestowitz s version it also quacks like a duck Rogue Nation American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions New York Basic Books 2004 p 25 Ian Black December 20 2002 Living in a euro wonderland Guardian Retrieved 2008 01 06 EU gets its military fist BBC News December 13 2002 Retrieved 2008 01 06 Nikolaos Tzifakis April 2007 EU s region building and boundary drawing policies the European approach to the Southern Mediterranean and the Western Balkans 1 Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 9 1 informaworld 47 64 doi 10 1080 14613190701217001 S2CID 154857668 Stephen R Hurt 2003 Co operation and coercion The Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and acp states and the end of the Lome Convention PDF Third World Quarterly 24 informaworld 161 176 doi 10 1080 713701373 S2CID 153354532 Archived from the original PDF on February 7 2023 Retrieved 2007 01 06 Bruno Coppieters Michael Emerson Michel Huysseune Tamara Kovziridze Nathalie Tocci Gergana Noutcheva Marius Vahl Europeanisation and Conflict Resolution Case Studies from the European Periphery PDF Belgian Science Policy Archived from the original PDF on 2007 12 02 Retrieved 2008 01 06 Jan Zielonka 2006 Europe as Empire The Nature of the Enlarged European Union PDF Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 929221 9 Archived from the original PDF on 2007 12 02 Retrieved 2008 01 06 Tony Benn 25 March 2013 European Union Oxford Union Archived from the original on 2021 11 04 Agnia Grigas Beyond Crimea The New Russian Empire Yale University Press 2015 pp 16 22 Ferguson Niall February 24 2022 Vlad the Invader Putin is looking to rebuild Russia s empire The Spectator Phillips David L February 25 2022 Contending With the New Russian Empire The National Interest Berriault Lea May 6 2022 Russia s attempt to build a Third Empire Snyder Timothy April 28 2022 The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War The New Yorker via www newyorker com Nathan Hodge Restoration of empire is the endgame for Russia s Vladimir Putin CNN June 11 2022 Roth Andrew June 10 2022 Putin compares himself to Peter the Great in quest to take back Russian lands The Guardian https www washingtonpost com world 2022 06 13 putin imperial russia empire ukraine bare URL Applebaum Anne November 14 2022 The Russian Empire Must Die The Atlantic The Wikipedia Library wikipedialibrary wmflabs org Niall Ferguson The Unconscious Colossus Limits of Alternatives to American Empire Daedalus 134 2 2005 p 24 Yale H Ferguson amp Richard W Mansbach Superpower Hegemony Empire San Diego Annual Meeting paper The International Studies Association March 22 26 2006 9 Archived 2016 11 24 at the Wayback Machine Daniel Deudney amp G John Ikenberry America s Impact The End of Empire and the Globalization of the Westphalian System working paper Princeton University 2015 pp 7 8 permanent dead link Pagden Anthony 2005 Imperialism Liberalism amp the Quest for Perpetual Peace Daedalus 134 2 47 doi 10 1162 0011526053887301 S2CID 57564158 Cohen 2004 p 50 Burbank amp Cooper 2010 pp 2 3 The Anarchical Society A Study of Order in World Politics London Macmillan 1977 p 21 Gilpin War and Change in World Politics Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1981 pp 110 116 Empires London Cornell University Press 1986 pp 12 51 137 Kohn Hans 1942 World Order in Historical Perspective Cambridge Harvard University Press p 113 Pines Yuri amp Biran Michal amp Rupke Jorg 2011 The Limits of Universal Rule Eurasian Empires Compared New York Cambridge University Press p 2 https books google com books id eyoNEAAAQBAJ Wright Quincy August 1 1948 On the Application of Intelligence to World Affairs Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 4 8 250 Bibcode 1948BuAtS 4h 249W doi 10 1080 00963402 1948 11460234 Tenbruck Friedrich 1994 Internal History of Society or Universal History Theory Culture amp Society 11 Translated by J Bleicher 87 William Wohlforth amp Stuart J Kaufman amp Richard Little Balance of Power in World History London Palgrave Macmillan 2007 Garcilaso de la Vega 1966 Foreword Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru University of Texas Press pp X XI ISBN 978 0 292 73358 9 System of States Leicester Leicester University Press 1977 pp 43 44 Fichte Johann Gottlieb 1975 1806 Characteristics of the Present Age In Wright Moorhead ed Theory and Practice of the Balance of Power 1486 1914 Selected European Writings pp 87 89 ISBN 978 0 460 10196 7 Cosmos a sketch of a physical description of the universe by Alexander von Humboldt translated from German by E C Otte Vol I 1866 p 359 50 Centuries in 10 Minutes 2014 YouTube History of the World Every Year 2015 YouTube 16 December 2015 Turner Frederick Jackson 1920 The Frontier in American History Halford J Mackinder The Geographical Pivot of History J Murray London 1904 In Spanish Alberdi Juan Bautista 1870 Chapter VIII Analogia biologica El crimen de la guerra PDF Fridriech Ratzel The Laws of the Spatial Growth of States The Structure of Political Geography eds Kasperson Roger E amp Minghi Julian V Chicago Aldine Publishing Company 1969 p 28 Cited in Robert Strausz Hupe Geopolitics The Struggle for Space and Power New York G P Putnam s Sons 1942 p 30 31 K ang Yu wei The One World Philosophy tr Thompson Lawrence G London 1958 pp 79 80 85 George Vacher de Lapouge L Aryen Son Role Social Nantes 1899 chapter L Avenir des Aryens Spengler Oswald 1922 The Decline of the West Perspectives on World History tr Atkinson Charles Francis London George Allen amp Unwin LTD vol II p 422 428 432 https archive org details in ernet dli 2015 264078 mode 2up view theater Derwent Whittlesey German Strategy of World Conquest New York Farrar amp Rinehart 1942 p 74 Robert Strausz Hupe Geopolitics The Struggle for Space and Power New York G P Putnam s Sons 1942 p XI John H Herz Power Politics and World Organization The American Political Science Review 36 6 1942 p 1041 Wormer Parley Paul 1945 Citizenship and the New Day New York Abingdon Cokesbury Press p 206 Ludwig Dehio The Precarious Balance Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle 1945 tr Fullman Charles New York Alfred A Knopf 1962 pp 266 267 Reves Emery 1945 The Anatomy of Peace 1 ed New York amp London Harper amp Brothers Publishers pp 265 266 268 270 Reves 1945 pp 277 278 287 Einstein Albert 27 September 2011 Atomic War or Peace 1945 Albert Einstein Collection Essays in Humanism New York Philosophical Library Open Road 2016 Open Road Media ISBN 978 1 4532 0459 7 Atomic Weapon and the Prevention of War Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2 7 8 October 1 p 20 October 1946 The Illusion of World Government Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 5 10 October 1 1949 p 291 October 1949 Georgij P Fedotov 1945 Novoe Otechestvo Novyj Grad Nyu Jork Izdatelstvo Chehova 1952 p 98 102 107 Stagnation John Bellamy FosterTopics Imperialism Political Economy January 1 2006 Monthly Review The New Geopolitics of Empire Archived from the original on September 29 2018 James Burnham Struggle for the World New York The John Day Company 1947 pp 33 50 53 55 134 135 143 Brinton Crane 1948 From Many One The Process of Political Integration the Problem of World Government Westport Greenwood Press 1971 pp 88 89 94 In Defense of the National Interest A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy New York Alfred A Knopf 1951 p 58 A Study of History London Oxford University Press 1954 vol IX p 524 Max Gschwind Massive Retaliatory Power map Fortune 51 May 1954 p 105 Archived from the original on March 12 2017 Michio Kaku amp Daniel Axelrod To Win a Nuclear War The Pentagon Secret War Plans Boston South End Press 1987 p 195 Toynbee Arnold 1948 Civilization on Trial New York Oxford University Press p 133 134 https archive org details civilizationontr00toyn page 126 mode 2up view theater The Rise of the West A History of the Human Community Chicago University of Chicago Press 1963 p 807 Emphasis added cited in Fred Kaplan The Wizards of Armageddon Stanford California Stanford University Press 1991 pp 223 https books google fr books id RSwVBgAAQBAJ amp printsec copyright amp redir esc y v snippet amp q gentlemen amp f false Robert Carneiro The Circumscription Theory Challenge and Response American Behavioral Scientist 31 4 1988 p 499 O Connor D B amp Silverman D P Ancient Egyptian Kingship Leiden amp New York E J Brill 1995 p XXI Amelie Kuhrt The Ancient Near East circa 3000 330 BC London amp New York Routledge 1995 vol I pp 123 124 Yuri Pines amp Moreno Garcia Juan Carlos Maat and Tianxia Building world orders in ancient Egypt and China Journal of Egyptian History vol 13 2020 p 227 http yuri pines sinology com wp content uploads 2022 08 Moreno Pines Maat and Tianxia final pdf Yuri Pines Envisioning Eternal Empire Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era Honolulu University of Hawaii Press 2009 pp 8 9 Since 1979 the only country preserving its Emperor as head of state Pines Yuri amp Biran Michal amp Rupke Jorg 2011 The Limits of Universal Rule Eurasian Empires Compared New York Cambridge University Press p 2 https books google com books id eyoNEAAAQBAJ Tenbruck 1994 pp 84 86 87 Yuri Pines Envisioning Eternal Empire Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era Honolulu University of Hawaii Press 2009 Yuri Pines The Everlasting Empire The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy Princeton Princeton University Press 2012 D B O Connor amp D P Silverman Ancient Egyptian Kingship Leiden amp New York E J Brill 1995 Aidan Dodson Monarchs of the Nile London The Rubicon Press 1995 Kaufman amp Little amp Wohlforth The Balance of Power in World History London Palgrave 2007 p 237 Kaufman amp Little amp Wohlforth Testing Balance of Power Theory in World History European Journal of International Relations 13 2 2007 p 178 Stuart J Kaufman amp William C Wohlforth amp Richard Little The Balance of Power in World History London Palgrave 2007 pp 45 46 Victoria Tin bor Hui War and State Formation in China and Early Modern Europe Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2005 p 141 tr Fullman Charles New York Alfred A Knopf 1962 pp 50 90 279 Reves 1945 pp 267 268 Conditions of Peace London Macmillan 1943 p 113 114 Politics Among Nations The Struggle for Power and Peace 1948 New York McGraw Hill revised 2006 edition p 354 357 John H Herz Rise and Demise of the Territorial State World Politics 9 1957 p 482 Michael Heffernan The Politics of the Map in the Early Twentieth Century Cartography and Geographic Information Science 29 3 2002 p 207 Kaufman amp Little amp Wohlforth The Balance of Power in World History London Palgrave 2007 p 229 237 Idem Testing Balance of Power Theory in World History European Journal of International Relations 13 2 2007 p 159 Gerry Kearns Fin de Siecle Geopolitics Mackinder Hobson and Theories of Global Closure Political Geography of the Twentieth Century A Global Analysis ed Peter J Taylor London Belhaven Press 1993 Kaufman amp Little amp Wohlforth The Balance of Power in World History p 21 Quincy Wright A Study of War Chicago amp London The University of Chicago Press 1964 p 92 93 World State Formation Historical Processes and Emergent Necessity Political Geography Quarterly 9 2 1990 pp 108 130 Robert Carneiro Are We Circumscribed Now 2012 YouTube 5 October 2012 Kaufman amp Little amp Wohlforth Testing Balance of Power Theory in World History European Journal of International Relations 13 2 2007 p 179 Randall L Schweller Entropy and the Trajectory of World Politics Why Polarity Has Become Less Meaningful Cambridge Review of International Affairs 23 1 2010 pp 149 151 The Sorrows of Empire Militarism Secrecy and the End of the Republic New York Henry Hobt and Company 2004 p 187 Simon Dalby Imperialism Domination Culture The Continued Relevance of Critical Geopolitics Geopolitics 13 3 2008 p 425 Kenneth Pomeranz Empire amp Civilizing Missions Past amp Present Daedalus 134 2 2005 p 43 45 Niall Ferguson Colossus The Rise and Fall of the American Empire New York Penguin Books 2005 p 17 Massachusetts amp London Harvard University Press 2006 p 1 Neil Smith American Empire Roosevelt s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization Berkeley amp Los Angeles amp London University of California Press 2003 p XIII Hubert Vedrine amp Dominique Moisi France in an Age of Globalization tr Gordon Philip H Washington Brookings Institutions Press 2001 p 2 David C Hendrickson The Curious Case of American Hegemony Imperial Aspirations and National Decline World Policy Journal 22 2 2005 p 5 PDF The Greatest Superpower Ever New Perspectives Quarterly 19 2 2002 Archived from the original on 2016 04 14 Retrieved 2016 12 16 America s Sticky Power Foreign Policy 141 March April 2004 p 48 Europe An Unfinished Adventure Cambridge Polity Press 2004 p 55 56 The Unconscious Colossus Limits of Alternatives to American Empire Daedalus 134 2 2005 p 20 21 The Arrogant Empire Newsweek March 24 2003 Newsweek 23 March 2003 Ludwig Dehio The Precarious Balance Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle 1945 tr Fullman Charles New York Alfred A Knopf 1962 p 234 Ludwig Dehio Epilogue The Precarious Balance Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle 1960 tr Fullman Charles New York Alfred A Knopf 1962 p 279 Quincy Wright A Study of War Chicago amp London The University of Chicago Press 1964 p 92 93 228 234 Boas Franz posthumous publication Race and Democratic Society New York Biblo ad Tannen 1969 pp 99 100 The Logistic Growth of Political Areas Social Forces 26 1948 p 396 408 Imperial Cycles and World Order Peace Research Society 7 1967 p 83 101 A Macrohistoric Trend towards World Government Behavior Science Notes 8 1973 p 35 40 Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities Context for Russia International Studies Quarterly 41 3 1997 475 504 Political Expansion as an Expression of the Principle of Competitive Exclusion Studying War Anthropological Perspective eds Reyna Stephen P amp Dawns Richard Erskine Gordon and Breach New Hampshire 1994 The Political Unification of the World Cross Cultural Survey 38 2 2004 p 162 177 Marchetti Cesare amp Ausubel Jesse H 2013 Quantitative dynamics of human empires p 2 49 https phe rockefeller edu docs empires booklet pdf Adapted from idem 2012 International Journal of Anthropology vol 27 1 2 p 1 62 Marchetti Cesare amp Ausubel Jesse H 2013 Quantitative dynamics of human empires p 2 https phe rockefeller edu docs empires booklet pdf Adapted from idem 2012 International Journal of Anthropology vol 27 1 2 p 1 62 von Coudenhove Kalergi Richard 1943 Crusade for Pan Europe G P Putnam s Sons pp 297 298 von Coudenhove Kalergi 1943 p 299 Toynbee Arnold J 1954 A Study of History Vol IX Contacts between Civilizations in Time Renaissances Law and Freedom in History The Prospects of the Western Civilization London Oxford University Press p 502 Trachtenberg Marc 1999 A Constructed Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945 1963 Princeton New Jersey Princeton University Press pp 152 153 394 Ikenberry John G 1989 Rethinking the Origins of American Hegemony Political Science Quarterly 104 3 399 doi 10 2307 2151270 JSTOR 2151270 Lundestad Geir 1986 Empire by Invitation The United States and Western Europe 1945 1952 Journal of Peace Research 23 3 263 267 doi 10 1177 002234338602300305 S2CID 73345898 Trachtenberg 1999 pp 147 148 Trachtenberg 1999 p 401 Lundestad Geir 2005 The United States and Western Europe since 1945 From Empire by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift Oxford University Press p 3 Spengler Oswald 1922 The Decline of the West Perspectives on World History tr Atkinson Charles Francis London George Allen amp Unwin LTD vol II p 416 428 432 464 465 506 507 https archive org details in ernet dli 2015 264078 mode 2up view theater Lemon Jason December 20 2020 Arizona GOP Chair calls for Trump to cross the Rubicon in tweet shared by Michael Flynn Newsweek https www newsweek com arizona gop chair calls trump cross rubicon tweet shared michael flynn 1556232 The Sorrows of Empire Militarism Secrecy and the End of the Republic New York Henry Hobt and Company 2004 p 187 Simes Dimitri 2003 America s Imperial Dilemma Foreign Affairs 82 6 91 102 doi 10 2307 20033759 JSTOR 20033759 Doyle Michael 1986 Empires London Cornell University Press p 12 Strange Susan 1988 The Future of the American Empire Journal of International Affairs 42 1 9 11 Russell Bertrand April 1951 The Future of Man Atlantic Monthly Wendt Alexander 2003 Why the World State is Inevitable Teleology and the Logic of Anarchy European Journal of International Relations 9 4 pp 54 56 https www comw org qdr fulltext 03wendt pdf Wendt Alexander 2005 Agency Teleology and the World State A Reply to Shannon European Journal of International Relations 11 4 p 595 In French Debray Regis 2002 L edit de Caracalla ou plaidoyer pour des Etats Unis d occident Paris Fayard p 40 64 https archive org details leditdecaracalla0000xavi page 40 mode 2up view theater Toynbee 1954 p 554 555 Ostrovsky Max 2007 The Hyperbola of the World Order Lanham University Press of America p 350 https archive org details yarctgxhyperbola0000ostr page 350 mode 2up view theater Brinton Crane 1948 From Many One The Process of Political Integration the Problem of World Government Westport Greenwood Press 1971 p 95 Darwin Charles Galton 1950 The Next Million Years The Fate of Man New York G Braziller 1961 pp 499 501 Ostrovsky 2007 pp 352 362 367 Cited sources and further readingBrown Peter 24 September 2020 No Barbarians Needed The New York Review of Books LXVII 14 61 62 Warlordism not any great movement of peoples was the political virus that brought down the Roman empire in the West In less than a generation provinces became kingdoms Due to Europe s state of perpetual war amid the persistent polycentrism made possible by the disappearance of Rome b y the time of the Reformation the competitive fragmentation of power ensured that Europe was studded with safety zones that protected beleaguered dissidents The best thing that Rome ever did for Europe was to die and not return review of Kulikowski Michael The Tragedy of Empire From Constantine to the Destruction of Roman Italy Scheidel Walter Escape from Rome The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity Nelson Janet L King and Emperor A New Life of Charlemagne Burbank Jane Cooper Frederick 2010 Empires in World History Power and the Politics of Difference Princeton Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 12708 8 Cohen Eliot A July August 2004 History and the Hyperpower Foreign Affairs 83 4 49 63 doi 10 2307 20034046 JSTOR 20034046 Retrieved 26 December 2017 Colomer Josep 2016 The European Empire Createspace Independent Publishing Platform ISBN 978 1 5233 1890 2 Colomer Josep 2007 Great Empires Small Nations The uncertain future of the sovereign state London Routledge Crooks Peter Parsons Timothy H eds 2016 Empires and bureaucracy in world history from late antiquity to the twentieth century Cambridge University Press Darwin John 2008 After Tamerlane The Global History of Empire since 1405 London Bloomsbury Press Elliott J H 2006 Empires of the Atlantic World Britain and Spain in America 1492 1830 New Haven Yale University Press Findlay Ronald O Rourke Kevin H 2007 Power and Plenty Trade Power and the World Economy in the Second Millennium Princeton Princeton University Press Galtung Johan January 1996 The Decline and Fall of Empires A Theory of De Development Honolulu Archived from the original on 2007 10 13 Retrieved 2008 01 06 Written for the United Nations Research Institute on Development UNRISD Geneva Geiss Imanuel 1983 War and Empire in the Twentieth Century Aberdeen University Press ISBN 978 0 08 030387 1 Gilpin Robert 1981 War and Change in World Politics Cambridge University Press pp 110 116 ISBN 978 0 521 27376 3 Howe Stephen 2002 Empire A Very Short Introduction Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 280223 1 Innis Harold 1950 Empire and Communications 1972 revision ed Toronto Ontario University of Toronto Press Rev by Mary Q Innis foreword by Marshall McLuhan James Paul Nairn Tom 2006 Globalization and Violence Vol 1 Globalizing Empires Old and New London Sage Publications Khan Iqtidar Alam March April 2005 Gunpowder and Empire Indian Case Social Scientist 33 3 4 54 65 JSTOR 3518112 Kamen Henry 2003 Empire How Spain Became a World Power 1492 1763 New York HarperCollins Kennedy Paul The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 New York Random House 1987 Kumar Krishan 2019 Visions of empire How five imperial regimes shaped the world Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 19280 2 examines the Roman Ottoman Habsburg Russian British and French empires Lens Sidney Zinn Howard 2003 The Forging of the American Empire From the Revolution to Vietnam A History of American Imperialism Pluto Press p 464 ISBN 978 0 7453 2100 4 Pagden Anthony 2001 Peoples and Empires A Short History of European Migration Exploration and Conquest from Greece to the Present New York Modern Library Stearns Peter ed 2001 The Encyclopedia of World History Ancient Medieval and Modern Chronologically Arranged 6th ed Houghton Mifflin p passim ISBN 978 0 395 65237 4 Subrahmanyam Sanjay 1993 The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500 1700 London Longman Tracy James D ed 1990 The Rise of Merchant Empires State Power and World Trade 1350 1750 New York Cambridge University Press External linksEmpire at Wikipedia s sister projects Definitions from WiktionaryMedia from CommonsQuotations from WikiquoteTexts from WikisourceData from Wikidata Bryce James 1878 Empire Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol VIII 9th ed pp 181 182 Index of Colonies and Possessions
