Empire
- For alternative meanings, see Empire (disambiguation)
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2 Imperialism 3 Modern "Empires" 4 Historical Empires (with approximate dates) 5 Fictional Empires 6 See Also |
The modern term "empire" derives from the Latin imperium, a word coined in what became possibly the most famous example of this sort of political structure, the Roman Empire founded in 31 BC. For many centuries, the term "Empire" applied exclusively to states which considered themselves to be successors to the Roman Empire, such as the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, or the Russian Empire. Over time, other monarchies which viewed themselves as greater in size and power than mere kingdoms used the name or its translation (Bulgaria, for example), and it came to apply to large non-European monarchies. The word eventually came to apply loosely to any entity meeting the criteria, whether a monarchy or not.
The actual political concept predates the Romans by several thousand years: empires began to appear soon after the first cities made the necessary administrative structures possible. The Akkadian Empire of Sargon of Akkad furnishes one of the earliest known examples.
Empires can take several forms. They have traditionally involved rule by powerful monarchies under the leadership of a hereditary (or in some cases, self-appointed) emperor. Historically, most empires came into being as the result of a militarily strong state conquering other states and incorporating them into a larger political union. Typically, a monarchy or an oligarchy rooted in the original core territory would continue to dominate this union. Many ancient empires maintained control of their subject peoples by controlling the supply of a vital resource, usually water; historians refer to such régimes as "hydraulic empires." The introduction of a common religion also often strengthened empires, as occurred (pace Edward Gibbon) with the adoption of Christianity under Constantine I of the Roman Empire.
The discovery of the New World provided an opportunity for many European states to embark upon programs of imperialism on a different model, colonization. Under this model (previously trialled in the Old World in the Canary Islands and in Ireland), subject states became de jure subordinate to the imperial state, rather than de facto as in earlier empires. This led to a good deal of resentment in the client states, and therefore probably to the demise of this system by the early- to mid-twentieth century.
One might describe another problem with the European imperial model as gerrymandering. In the interest of expediency, an imperial power tended to carve out a client state based solely on convenience of geography, while ignoring extreme cultural differences in the resulting area. An example of the attendant problems occurred in the Indian sub-continent. Formerly part of the British Empire, when the sub-continent gained its independence it split along cultural/religious lines producing modern India and the two-part country of Pakistan, which later split yet again resulting in the country of Bangladesh.
The concept of "empire" in the modern world, while still present politically, has begun to lose cohesion semantically. The only remaining country nominally ruled by an Emperor, Japan, comprises a constitutional monarchy with a population of approximately 99% ethnic Japanese. Just as monarchies (as opposed to constitutional monarchies) have largely fallen out of favour in modern times, the term "empire" itself may now become somewhat of an anachronism.
The former Soviet Union had many of the criteria of an empire, but nevertheless did not claim to be one, nor was it ruled by a traditional hereditary "emperor" (see Soviet Empire). Nevertheless, historians still occasionally classify it as an empire, if only because of its similarities to empires of the past and its sway over a large multi-ethnic bloc of Eurasia.
Most modern multi-ethnic states (Switzerland, for example, or Belgium) see themselves as voluntary federations, and not as empires. Most have democratic structures, and operate under systems which share power through multiple levels of government that differentiate between areas of federal and provincial/state jurisdiction. Where separatist groups exist, internal and external observers may disagree on whether state action against them represents legitimate law-enforcement against a violent or non-violent fringe group, or state violence to control a broadly unwilling population. A list of multi-ethnic states with ongoing violence by and against separatists would be too long to include, although China, Russia, Indonesia and India distinguish themselves by sheer size.
The United States of America, widely categorized as a federation, offers another example. The North used coercion to keep the Union together during the American civil war, which made this characterization more ambiguous in the minds of many. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the United States has emerged as a unrivaled superpower, and although the country has not engaged in formal territorial expansion since the annexation of Hawaii and of the Philippines, many suggest its powerful military and economic influences allow it to extert a sort of informal neo-imperial influence on much of the modern world (see American Empire).
Empires throughout History
Imperialism
Modern "Empires"
Historical Empires (with approximate dates)