empire

empire — latest news, discussion & facts — IJR

Definition

An empire is an aggregate of many 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". Imperialism for Doyle is simply the process of establishing and maintaining an empire. Similarly, for Rein Taagepera imperialism is a policy of conquest and domination of foreign lands and populations.

Initially, the Marxist conception of imperialism was New Imperialism, where the qualifier "new" differentiated the contemporary imperialism from earlier imperialism, such as the formation of ancient empires and the first wave of European colonization. Eventually, Lenin cancelled all earlier forms and began the history of Imperialism in the 1760s. The Leninist definition of imperialism removed the essence of empire from politics, focused more on economics and explicitly denied that modern capitalist imperialism had anything in common with the empires of the past.

Since the beginning, mainstream historians of empire were puzzled: as the highest stage of capitalism, imperialism cannot exist before 1876. Such a concept is not very helpful “if we do not know for certain whether it fits the facts of two millennia or… two generations.” Kenneth Waltz believed that the cause of imperialism was capitalism, but appears much younger than the effect (imperialism). He believed that it is as though Newton explained gravitation by a 17th-century phenomenon, ignoring that gravitation operated earlier. Lenin’s work was interpreted as political pamphlet rather than scientific thesis, suitable for "the half-educated whose power of criticism was not fully developed," and calling them to hunt the “invisible hand” of economic exploitation. According to Michael Doyle, thus imperialism turned into an economic and European phenomenon. The pamphlet re-defined empire as the original sin of European peoples, who corrupted an 'innocent world', and the belief became wholeheartedly shared all over the non-Western world. In this world, the word imperialist became "the 20th-century version of the devil" who has constant designs on their sovereignty and economic growth.

Most historians recognize imperialism predates European colonialism by several millennia. In the early 21st century, most theories of empire still were Eurocentric, reflecting the brief period when European empires dominated the world. This perspective, according to the 2021 Oxford World History of Eire, must be widened and the "Age of Imperialism" situated within a proper world history of empires. Millennia had passed before Europe could claim to dictate the course of world history.

According to historians such as George Steinmetz, involving the cessation of state sovereignty, empires should properly be studied in the domain of politics rather than economics. The essential core of the definition is political. Lenin’s usage of the term 'empire' primarily deals with imperialism during the 20th century. Mainstream and Marxist historians heavily disagree on the topic of imperialism.

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."

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. According to Edward Luttwak, there are two main ways to establish and maintain an imperial political structure: (i) as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control by force or (ii) as a coercive, hegemonic empire of indirect control. 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.

Empires can expand by both land and sea. Territorial empires (e.g. the Macedonian Empire and Byzantine Empire) tend to be contiguous areas extending directly outwards from the original frontier. 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 and the British Empire) 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.

The Athenian Empire, the Roman Empire, and the British Empire developed at least in part under elective auspices. Empires such as the Holy Roman Empire also came together by electing the emperor with votes from member realms through the Imperial election. 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 expanding power and administration, and guaranteeing stability, security and legal order for their subjects. They tried to minimize ethnic and religious antagonism inside the empire. Some empires tended to impose their ideas, beliefs and cultural habits on the subject states to strengthen the imperial structure; others opted for multicultural and cosmopolitan policies. Anthony Pagden estimates that most of the early empires were multicultural and attempted to incorporate various groups into some larger cosmopolitan whole. The aristocracies that ruled empires were often more cosmopolitan and broad-minded than their nationalistic successors. Cultures generated by empires could have notable effects that outlasted the empire itself.

In the mid-twentieth century, the word "empire" obtained a negative connotation, viewed as inherently immoral or illegitimate. Traditional or overt empire destroyed and discredited itself in the World Wars. The matters are worse in the German language where empire is "reich" and immediately associates with the Third Reich. For the first time in history, countries which proudly called themselves empires disappeared from the map. The postwar world came under the domination of two superpowers both of which proclaimed themselves to be enemies of empire. The West contained the imperialist East and the East and the South resisted the imperialist West. Imperialism became a cosmopolitan, multi-front battle cry wielding many diverse and distant peoples in fighting a common enemy. As former colonies came to make up the majority of states in the United Nations, "empire" lost all legitimacy in this major international forum. "Any state stupid enough to call itself an empire became subject automatically to UN resolutions on decolonisation."

History

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. Only in the wreckage of the Roman Empire, distinguished Robert G. Wesson, a system of full-fledged nation-states evolved and it took a millennium. "It seems almost impossible for a community of free states to reemerge where a universal empire has once stretched across the land and fixed its ways and symbols of authority." Walter Scheidel also finds Europe exceptional among civilizations which experienced imperial unity because for an entire millennium (between Charlemagne and Napoleon) no single power managed to control more than one-fifth of the region’s population. 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, taking on an increasingly global scale. Raoul Naroll called it "expanding pulsation," Christopher Chase-Dunn "upward sweeps," and Ian Morris "exponential growth."

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, that is, by the great empires themselves. The imperial sources tend to ignore or reduce the resistance by subdued states. But two rich primary sources of the subject population are the Hebrew Prophetic books and the Sibylline Oracles. The hatred towards the ruling empires expressed in these sources 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. More subject voices were revealed by Historian Timothy H. Parson in his research of seven empires from the perspective of their subjects.

Early empires

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 the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia 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.

In the Amarna Period (15th-13th centuries BC), Egypt, the Middle Assyrian Empire, Hittite Empire, and those of the Mitanni and Elamites formed club of great powers. Egypt and the Hittites emerged as two dominant Empires of the club and in 1274 BC clashed in the Battle of Kadesh. The confrontation was not decisive and soon the Amarna international system was dissolved during the late Bronze Age collapse. All its empires declined. The first empire to recover from the collapse was the Neo-Assyrian Empire (916–612 BC). By 673 BC, Assyria conquered the entire Fertile Crescent including Cyprus and Egypt.

The Assyrian achievement, however, was short lived. In the 6th century BC, the Median Empire, Babylonians, Scythians, and Cimmerians allied and defeated the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian capital, Nineveh, was razed by their combined armies in 612 BC. Never again a world leading empire would be centered in a great River Valley. The fall of Nineveh marks the end of the River Valleys age and the beginning of the Axial Age, when the center of power shifted away from the great River Valleys, and empires suddenly became significantly larger. The Median Empire became the first leading empire, the largest of its day, centered beyond River Valleys. This Empire lasted for about sixty years and was conquered by the Persian Empire.

From 1500 BC in China rose the Shang Empire which was succeeded by the Zhou Empire around 1100 BC. Chronologically, the collapse of Shang also coincides with the late Bronze Age collapse. Both Shang and Zhou equalled or surpassed in territory their contemporary Near Eastern empires. 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.

Classical period

The Axial Age (mid-First Millennium BC) witnessed unprecedented imperial expansion in the Indo-Mediterranean region and China, distinguished as the most "dramatic" surge in premodern history. The array of successive and parallel empires of the Age makes "bewildering" impression on imperiometric experts. The Axial threshold is remarkable in world history. From 600 BC, the area of the largest empire would never fell below 2.0 million km2 (0.77 million sq mi) – a size never reached before 600 BC. The Colonial surge was less exponential. The Axial surge culminated with the Roman, Kushan and Han Empires ruling over as many as two-thirds of all people on Earth, the most extreme ever degree of imperial consolidation. The relative demographic size of the three largest empires in the world was not as massive before and ever since.

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 Antigonid, 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 (156–87 BC), the Xiongnu were pacified. In the first two centuries of the Common Era, 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 a later imperial age 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 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. 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. Since 2002, all the world is divided between US "commands" literally reflecting Roman imperia.

Post-classical period

The fall of Rome looms large in the Eurocentric view of history but it did not alter the general imperial trend and the rest of Eurasia does not fit the "Middle Ages" of the Eurocentric periodization. Far from a graveyard of empires, the new age is marked by vibrant imperial formations continuing the earlier imperial impulse undimmed. Empires continued to establish new records, albeit with longer intervals, and some experienced Golden Ages. China reunified by the 6th century and under the Tang dynasty pushed into Central Asia. In the 8th century, the Caliphate became the largest so far empire in area. The Caliphate and China crossed the whole Old World from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the 9th century, China under the Song dynasty established the all-time record in the share of world population (38%). And in the 13th century, the Mongols created the largest ever contigous empire. The two last records still hold.

In West Asia, the term "Persian Empire" came to denote the Iranian imperial states established in the pre–Islamic and, beginning with the Safavid Empire, modern Persia. In the 7th century, the Arab Empire was established by Muhammad, the founder of Islam. Over the next century, in one of the fastest and vastest expansions in history, his Empire conquered Persia and expanded on three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe). At their height, under the Umayyad Caliphate, the territory that was conquered by the Arab Empire stretched from Iberia (at the Pyrenees) in the west to India (at Sind) in the east. In 751 AD, the Arab and Chinese Empires clashed in the Battle of Talas.

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 Song population reached 125 million in 1125, representing 38% of a world population – the largest percentage any empire has ever reached. 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.

Around the 6th century, the Yamato clan set up Japan's first empire and first and only dynasty. During the next two centuries, Japan's kingdoms and tribes came to be unified under this dynasty. The Japanese emperor adopted the Chinese title Son of Heaven. Emperor Kinmei (509–571) is considered the first historically verifiable Japanese emperor. The Japanese imperial dynasty continues to this day, albeit in an almost entirely ceremonial role, and represents the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world.

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 it became one of the largest states in Europe. This period is considered the Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture.

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. Both German Kaiser and Russian Tsar derive from Caesar. In its peak under Charlemagne (748-814), the Carolingian Empire remained modest compared to the contemporary Caliphate or Song – "lots of Charles but little of magnum."

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 the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan expanded the Mongol Empire to be the largest contiguous empire in the world history. It traversed nine modern time zones. For the first time, all of the major regional powers of Eurasia were integrated into a single geopolitical space. Nikolay Kradin calls the phenomenon "medieval globalization." 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.

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 one of the most powerful empires in the world. Centered on modern day Turkey, the Ottoman Empire overthrew the Byzantine Empire and dominated the eastern Mediterranean, battering at Austria and Malta, key geographical locations to central and south-west Europe respectively.

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. 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.

Early Modern period

In 1547, Ivan the Terrible was crowned Emperor of Russia. He transformed Russia from a medieval state to a fledgling empire and began the conquest of Siberia. With this conquest completed by 1778, the Russian Empire became the second contiguous empire in size after the Mongol Empire.

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 over most of the South Asia and imposed Sharia. The Mughal Empire 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 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.

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.

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

Beginning in the 15th century, a number of west European countries reached and colonized overseas regions across the globe. Ushering the Age of Discovery, the imperial expansion advanced to a new global scale. The extensive overseas expansion, particularly in the South Asia and Americas by the Portuguese and Spanish, later joined by the English, French and Dutch, created empires on which the Sun never sets. The global scale is one of main distinctions between the colonial and traditional land empires. Colonial empires were a transformative period in world history when previously isolated parts of the world became connected to form one world system. They laid the groundwork for globalization, and set human history on the global common course. For this reason, Adam Smith in 1776 named the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama "the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind."

The Portuguese Empire colonized vast portions of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania to become one of the most powerful empires of the period, the longest-lived colonial empire in European history, and one of the largest empires in history. The Spanish Empire expanded over the same continents as well as in Europe, exceeding the Portuguese rival in size and, among colonial empires, remaining second only to Britain.

The British Empire established an absolute imperial record in size and, for a century, was the foremost global power. 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."

In India, Britain confronted the Sikh Empire (1799–1849) in the Punjab region. Weakened by the death of its founder, Ranjit Singh, 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 Europe's most populous, richest and powerful country. 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. The Napoleonic Empire (1804–1814) conquered much of the continental Europe. It ruled over 90 million people and was the leading world power of the time. 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.

Late modern period

Beginning around 1760, the New Imperialism or Age of Imperialism characterizes a period of colonial expansion by European powers, the United States and Japan. Though the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and the collapse of the Spanish Empire in Latin America in the 1820s ended the first era of European colonialism, the period featured an unprecedented pursuit of overseas territorial acquisitions. At the time, states focused on building their empires with new technological advances and developments. During the era of New Imperialism, the European powers and Japan conquered almost all of Africa and most of Asia. The new wave of imperialism reflected ongoing imperial rivalries, their imperial ambitions, and a "civilizing mission".

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) and claimed to "inherite" the imperium of Central and Western Europe. Another "heir to the Holy Roman Empire", was the German Empire (1871–1918).

Over the course of the Scramble for Africa (1870-1914), European empires separated between themselves almost all the continent. Symbolized by the Pink Map, the Portuguese claimed sovereignty over a wide land corridor stretching between the Atlantic shore of Angola and Indian shore of Mozambique. This led to the 1890 British Ultimatum as Britain aimed to establish their own and longer corridor from Egypt to South Africa. In the clash of the corridors, the British prevailed.

The Spanish–American War of 1898 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 signaled the advent of new extra-European empires, the United States and Japan respectively. The two events marked the closure of the "imperial belt"—belt of great empires stretching from west to east. Originally formed in the Old World during the Axial Age along the Silk Road, this belt shifted northward during the medieval period due to climatic change, penetrated to North America in the colonial period, and "closed" in the Far East c.1900. The history of empires ceased being eurocentric. The attack on Pearl Harbor symbolized the fact that two non-European empires clashed on the opposite side of the globe to Europe.

Though seldom viewed through an imperial lens, the World Wars were imperial wars. All great powers which waged both World Wars were empires fighting for their survival or expansion. The alliances and rivalries that brought about World War I were inter-imperial. The empires that came to an end after this War did not die a natural death as an intrinsically anachronistic organizations; their demise was the consequence of the "clash of empires" in which stronger empires won, added colonies and introduced "mandate." No victorious empire dissolved. Colonial expansion reached its zenith during the interwar period, when, including the sphere under the Monroe Doctrine, 85% of the earth dry land came under an imperial system. Imperial continuity, transformation and invention characterize the two decades after the enunciation of the doctrine of self-determination. The world order of this time remained an imperial one. In his magnum opus Sources of Social Power, Michael Mann titled the chapter on World War II "The last interimperial war," where he concluded that European and Japanese imperialism was the deeper cause of the War. On January 18, 1942, the Axis powers agreed to divide up Eurasia along the 70th meridian east envisioning "two large imperial blocs." The Axis lost and instead of the 70 meridian the frontier between the two remaining imperial blocs was fixed on the Fulda Gap.

In view of Richard Overy, the origins of both World Wars can only be understood through the prism of the fresh drive to empire since the 1870s. He regards both Wars as one Thirty Year War caused by that imperial surge. The concept of Second Thirty Years' War is notable and was shared by Churchill and de Gaulle. According to them, paraphrasing Carl von Clausewitz, World War II was continuation of World War I with the same means. This concept was suppressed in both Western and Soviet historiography because it heavily shares the Axis "guilt of war" between all contemporary empires.

The world political map was completed c.1900 leaving no sovereign void and with empires ruling over four-fifth of the world. A contemporary observer, Max Weber, generalized that great empires claim spheres of interest over a wide orbit and in the 1900s "such orbits encompass the whole surface of the planet." Many scholars suppose that the end of the overseas space for imperial expansion contributed to the intensity of the World Wars if not was their main factor (chapter "Circumscription theory" below). According to one thesis, the overseas world provided European empires with an enormous outlet and thus prevented Europe from unifying into a single European empire. The European powers turned their exceeding energies outward and the internal European power was balanced. Correspondingly, the thesis continues, when the space for expansion ended, the empires became destined for head-on collisions, as reflected in the anxious, claustrophobic mood of the Fin de siècle. This was the time when the theory of lebensraum developed and the term geopolitics was coined to designate a new science, accompanied by an avalanche of literature envisaging war. Volk ohne Raum (A People without Space) by the former colonist Hans Grimm (1926) sold nearly 700,000 copies. “Raving maniacs, described Halford Mackinder the opponents of his Empire, suffering from global claustrophobia.”

Furthermore, the global closure coincided with unprecedented technological advances in weapons now produced on the industrial scale. The same year (1904), Mackinder outlined the global closure and Henry Brooks Adams the law of acceleration in technological progress and production. These factors caused a "clash of empires" of epic proportions, as vividly described by its famous participant:

And the first gust of wind swept across Europe grown nervous. The time that now followed lay in the chests of men like a heavy nightmare... And then the first mighty lightening flash struck the earth ... and with the thunder of heaven there mingled the roar of World War batteries... The fight for freedom has began mightier than the Earth has ever seen.

The Ottoman, Austrian, German and Russian Empires were defeated in the First World War, though the two latter Empires soon reappeared in their Nazi and Soviet forms. The German (once again), Italian and Japanese Empires were defeated in the Second World War. Weakened by the same War, the rest of the European Empires underwent decolonization. The Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989-1991. The United States remained the only superpower, but whether its foreign policy qualifies as imperial is debatable (chapters "Contemporary usage" and 'Present" below).

Egyptologist Barry Kemp developed a "basic model" of imperial evolution. At the start, according to the model, we have a number of roughly equal players. The game inexorably follows a trajectory toward a critical point when one player accumulated sufficient power to outweigh other players and becomes unstoppable. Imagining an imperial game of this kind outlines the "essence of the basic process at work in history." Kemp specialized on the Bronze Age and by accident published his game theory in 1989, the moment before modern empires completed his "basic process."

Historian Max Ostrovsky, specializing in world history, explicitly applied Kemp's game analogy to modern empires. The global closure c.1900 marks the point when empires ended their "regular season" and entered "play-offs." The knock-out tournament began with "wild card playoff" (First World War), proceeded with "breath-stopping series of quarterfinals and semifinals" (Second World War), and "culminated with a deadly boring final that went into triple overtime until the Soviets scored a golden own goal."

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. Historian André 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, historian Peter Heather contends that there were many factors, including issues of money and manpower, which produced military limitations and culminated 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.

An empire can fall for many reasons. However, why the fall of the Roman Empire was fatal, and why the post-classical Europe never repeated its ancient unity, is a completely different question. Eurocentrism in the Roman case led to the theory of inevitable imperial fall and Western declinism in imperiology, which remains the only widely believed case of historical inevitability. To describe any polity as an empire is usually to damn it as doomed to disappear, usually due to imperial overstretch. Comparative history, however, alters the Eurocentric theory. The Chinese Empire rose synchronously with Rome and never fell. More precisely, China underwent several disintegrations but each time reunified and each time faster. Asking why post-Roman Europe, contrary to China, never reunified reveals factors which the case study of the fall of Rome cannot reveal. The latter question was addressed in this comparative analysis.

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 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.

An autocratic empire can become a republic with its imperial dominions reduced to a core territory (e.g., Weimar Germany shorn of the German colonial empire in 1918–1919, the Ottoman Empire in 1918–1923, the Austro-Hungarian Empire after 1918, or the Russian Empire after 1918 and again in 1989–1991). Or it can become a republic within the same borders (e.g., the Central African Empire in 1979).

Alternatively, an empire can integrate the ruling metropole with the ruled periphery to become state. Originally imperial cores, Wessex, the Capetian Île-de-France, Aragon and Castile, Sardinia, Prussia, and Muscovy merged with their imperial peripheries to form the states of England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia respectively. Many "nation-states" of today, including "the most talked-about model of the nation-state" (France), were originally formed as empires. "The later ideology of nationalism of course disguises this unpalatable fact, just as it exhibits amnesia about many other aspects of the violent origins of nations."

Earlier, Narmer, Yamato, and Qin established empires which evolved into states of Egypt, Japan, and China. These states count millennia. Sociologists of empires, noted Krishan Kumar, have tended to ignore China because it does not fit neatly into their concept of imperial duration and ethnic composition. "If there is a successful imposition of the dominant system, the resultant elimination of differences produces a unified 'national' state rather than empire." All empires were temporary organizations but not all empires fell. The paradigm "all empires fall" is politically correct and historically wrong. However, according to Robert Conquest, deep historical analysis in the case is overshadowed by the popular wish of the US decline. Breaking the law of imperial fall means giving the United States a chance.

United States

Contemporaneously, the concept of empire is politically valid, yet is not always used in the traditional sense. One of the most 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 and so similar to Rome that the comparison between the two turned into cliché. In fact, the "unipolar moment" was followed by a so-called "imperial turn" in the academic research meaning increased interest in the study of empires. During the war on terror, the number of publications related to empire has increased exponentially, with reviewers complaining that they cannot keep the pace. In 2005, two notable Journals, History and Theory and Daedalus, devoted a special issue to empires. Reflecting the popularity of the theme, Sinologist Yuri Pines coined the term "comparative imperiology."

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 George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said: "We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic; we never have been", a statement made in reference to accusations of imperialism due to the Iraq War. 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. Another historian, John Darwin, emphasized that, synchronously with decolonization, proceeded the bipolar empire-building. Two great imperial systems, the United States and the Soviet Union, struggled to contain each other’s expansion. After 1990, the United States became "the only world empire." The Second World War, according to Michael Mann, hastened on the end of Eurasian empires as well as a triumph of the "American global empire." While defeating and containing Eurasian empires and encouraging the liquidation of Colonial empires, the United States built another one—"and not just any empire, but a globe-spanning leviathan." Finding the phenomenon ethically disappointing, Ethicist Gary Dorrien stated that the United States since 1989 has wielded a "new kind of world empire" that overshadows all former colonial empires. The decolonized zones were not left with imperial vacuum. The United States appeared operating in areas that derive from the Spanish, Ottoman, British, French, and Soviet Empires. 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, such as Sebastian Huhnholz, Dimitri Simes and Clyde V. Prestowitz, did not engage with the question on what to call American hegemony, instead presenting variations of the phrase "When it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck."

Empire versus nation state

Empires can be traced as far back as the recorded history goes and have been the dominant international organization in world history until the 20th century to the least. 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. In his textbook on empires, Michael Doyle observed:

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.

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. 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."

Looking at a time frame of several millennia prior to the emergence of a global system, Robert Gilpin, Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry observed that all pre-modern regional systems were initially anarchic and marked by high levels of military competition. But almost universally, they tended to consolidate into universal empires. For millennia, this propensity was the principal feature of pre-modern politics. pointing to a fundamental political dynamic.

This dynamic, according to Niall Ferguson, Ikenberry and Deudney, is obscured by our fixation on the Westphalian state. Within the macrohistoric trend, however, European political order was distinctly anomalous because it persisted so long as an anarchy. By comparisons of Jane Burbank, Frederick Cooper and Ferguson, nation-state appears as a "historical novelty" or a "blip on the historical horizon," that "emerged recently from under imperial skies" and whose hold may well prove "ephemeral." Moreover, the consolidations of European states proceeded synchronously with their imperial expansions worldwide. "Ironically, it was the European empires that carried the idea of the sovereign territorial state to the rest of the world..."

Puzzled why there is no non-Western IR theory, Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan sought to apply the discipline to other Asian civilizations. They found the discipline, created in modern Europe, hardly applicabe for the civilizations they selected. Instead of anarchy, international relations appeared usually fixed by the imperial center. A later attempt of Bridging Two Worlds aimed to introduce insights from early China and India into their present dialogue for deeper mutual understanding, appreciation and friendship. The project’s goals are laudable, reviewed the book Sinologist Yuri Pines. However, the use of those classics for modern IR woule rather be "detrimental" as the outcome invariably was IR "fiasco" and "quagmire." Diplomatic failures led to total wars and ultimately to universal empire.

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. Empire is something like the "darling of global historians," usually not because they like it, but because empire was the way history shifted to transnational and global stages.

The prevalence of empire in history was partly due to peace which it establishes for both the conquerors and the conquered, and the by-product of peace, prosperity. The attitude towards the imperial peace since the mid-20th century has been overwhelmingly negative. Within the field of International relations all central concepts have been formulated against a world empire. John Kennedy called the idea of Pax Americana "the peace of grave" and the association has been popular ever since. History, however, shows that humans eventually "prefer the peace of graveyard over the very graveyard."

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."

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.

The Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevski (1880) envisaged a distant future of universal empire ruled by Caesar. The overall unity (human "anthill") has always been one of the main aims of men. The greater was the nation, the more they recognized the need for universal unity. History's great conquerors, such as Genghis Khan and Tamerlan, irrationally expressed this greatest necessity of humanity. The world unification entails long suffering but it will be the last suffering of mankind before the universal Caesar stops it and imposes world peace. The Inquisitor reminds Jesus that Satan from the beginning proposed him the sword of Caesar over all kingdoms of the world. The allusion is to Matthew 4:8 where universal empire and absolute Caesarism are the ultimate temptation. This would have stopped all suffering caused by the lack of unity. But Jesus declined the proposal opting instead to grant humans freedom of choice. Due to human nature, however, humans screwed up to choose unity and instead slaughter each other. Stressing that freedom plunged humanity into unbearbale suffering, the Inquisitor blames Jesus for his rejection of Devil's imperial gift. Moreover, people took his freedom to science which, in the absence of unity, will lead to such "marvels" that the survivors will crawl to the future Caesar begging him to "save them from themselves." The image of Caesar as Savior from wars is common in Rome and other universal empires. People, adds the Inquisitor, will be free only when they reject freedom and recognize the Caesar. As Jesus failed in his primary mission, earthly rulers took the sword of Caesar. By sword they will wield the world into universal empire and thus fulfill mankind's ancient dream of universal unity as initially proposed to Jesus by Antichrist on the mountain.

Under the literary style of Dostoevski appears a deep historical insight. In 1946, with the "marvels" of science accomplished, Atomic Scientists repeated the concept of the Grand Inquisitor in their One World or None. In 1967, Robert Wesson published a 500-page comparative research on universal empires searching how these organizations, horrible in his view, repeatedly occurred in history and the next he expected for the same reason on the global scale before the year 2000. His outline of the prime cause seems in agreement with the implication of the Grand Inquisitor: "Always... we need a higher power to prevent us from abusing our little powers and hurting one another... Let someone save us from ourselves. We long to have peace and security... Yet we cannot have all this with freedom, for freedom means the ability to be disorderly..."

In 1886, Nietzsche perceived the new warlike age which the Europeans have entered in the "long spun-out comedy of its petty-statism" and, above all, under "parliamentary imbecility." Blaming the shattering of the European empire into small states when the time for petty politics is past, he stressed the threatening attitude of the immense Russia Empire and warned that the next (20th) century "will bring the struggle for the dominion of the world—the compulsion to great politics."

The imperial expansion filled the world c. 1900. Three famous contemporary observers—Frederick Turner, Halford Mackinder and Max Weber—emphasized the significance of the event. Turner drew his Frontier Thesis, predicting American overseas expansion, and Mackinder proclaimed that the world empire is now in sight.

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."

Three other contemporaries—Kang Youwei, Josiah Strong 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. The same year, Josiah Strong bet on the Anglo-Saxons to establish a world empire centered on the United States. Vacher de Lapouge in 1899 estimated that the final contest will be between Russia and America in which America is likely to triumph. Writing the same year, Charles Oman stressed the technological annihilation of time-space and estimated that a federal union of the Anglo-Saxon race would submit the whole world.

Gabriel de Tarde, also writing in 1899, supposed a "law of evolution" forming universal empires which, in his comparison, have nothing else in common. Peoples on all inhabited continents inevitably, it seems, end in gigantic social "baobabs" unifying all within each's own sphere. As long as these spheres remain isolated from each other, they are destined for universal pacification by universal conquest. Thus we have had various pax imperia. Unless the French wake up, the future universal pacification will be either Russian or English. Just as all financial competition tends towards a monopoly and the division of parties towards a one party rule, the division of states, all separately eager for domination, runs towards either the "triumph or accepted preponderance" of one state.

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 and regretted that the United States is not enough “imperialistic” to launch a preventive nuclear war for this cause. 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. Expert on comparative imperiology, Robert G. Wesson, emphasized the unique in world history "repetition of universal empires" in Egypt and China. 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 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."

Sociologist, Michael Mann, developed the cage metaphor to explain the persistent unity of Egypt. The River Valley was a cage. The whole population was "trapped within the domain of the conqueror," unable to turn backs on emerging authority. A veritable unitary society resulted. Comparing Egypt with other civilizations, Mann concludes: "The social cage was as total as has ever been seen. In this respect it has not been the dominant model of social organization.” Max Ostrovsky remarked that Mann omitted one system which is even more caged—our own. Egypt could be the most caged of historic civilizations but it was not a “total cage’. Modern world system, being global, is a total cage, and this "model of social organization" will remain until the end of history. One of the leading experts on world-systems theory, Christopher Chase-Dunn, also noted that circumscription theory is applicable to the global system, since the global system is circumscribed. In fact, within less than a century of circumscribed existence, the global system overcame the centuries-old balance of power and reached the state of 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 system 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 this 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 entropy—stable and permanent loss of variation—in the global system.

Present

For Dominic Lieven, empire is all about unequal distribution of power and consequent domination. Thus the 2000s world order is more imperial than the 19th-century one because instead of several empire of roughly equal power there is one imperial superpower. ‘Empire’ has therefore replaced "anarchy." 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…" The greatest conquerors who have ever lived only dreamed of a military presence as expansive as the United States has already achieved.

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." On almost any criterion, the American Empire in the 2000s transcends the limits of empire that John Darwin has observed since 1400 AD. Those writers who compare America to Victorian Britain "betray a staggering ignorance of the history of both."

One of the most accepted distinctions between earlier empires and the American Empire is the latter's unprecedented "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." James Kurth found that there was "only one empire--the global empire of the United States." Another historian Paul Kennedy, who in 1986 predicted 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:

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 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. "Each empire is unique, each regards itself as holding the truth of the world, each sees its mission as realizing that truth throughout the whole world." Historian Paul A. Kramer suggested a comparative history of imperial exceptionalisms themselves.

A team of historians of empire supposed that we witness genesis of the American empire. Hence, it should not be compared to empires in their height, such as Rome under Hadrian, but rather with emerging empires undergoing their "imperial moment". In their hypothesis, at a certain moment a powerful state turns into empire. Their research developed into book, titled The Imperial Moment, where each scholar attempted to identify a parallel imperial moment in the empire of his specialization. The six cases of the book are devoted to five historical empires and the American empire. Their comparative analysis aims to show how, why and when empires come into being and the American empire is expected to come.

The five past cases under concern demonstrate that very few policy makers were aware that their state was on the brink of empire when the key transformation occurred. Later authors, knowing the outcome (empire), write either teleological or tautological histories. Thucydides and Polybius teleologically described empire as the natural culmination of an impersonal process. Others describe pre-imperial events as rational planning of empire, though the participants of those events had no such idea and acted out of different considerations.

One of the contributors to The Imperial Moment, Roman Historian Arthur Eckstein, in his earlier research had already asked the same question, "At what point does a state begin to have an empire?" and found that this point pre-dates the collective recognition of the imperial situation. The Mediterranean unipolarity was established in 189 BC, but to many intelligent and experienced Greek politicians, according to Polybius (Histories 1:1–4; 29:21, 27), this did not actually become clear until after 168 BC.

Empires evolve from a long series of events in which empire has not been an intended outcome. Having criticized Thucydides and Polybius for their "teleological" approach, the Authors of The Imperial Moment drew the same teleological conclusion of empire as the natural culmination of an impersonal process. Empires often seem inevitable after the fact, but inconceivable beforehand. The fact of empire precedes the understanding of the existence of empire. Ideological recognition comes rather late in the game. Views of empire as impersonal process are most prominent in theses related to defensive imperialism.

In the case of the United States, the sixth case in The Imperial Moment, the attitude is similar. The imperial situation is new but well known in history and commonly called "empire". To avoid the word, many alternative terms were tried, such as liberal hegemony, hyperpower, unipolarity, and others. The very panoply of terms suggests that Americans find themselves in a new imperial situation, "largely of their own making, which they do not fully understand". Eventually, some "unusually perceptive individuals" will grasp the imperial reality and announce the final destination of a "torturous" centuries-long journey: "Last stop, 'empire'. Everybody off."

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—quantitatively researched expanding imperial cycles. Initially, the imperiometric scholars worked with historical atlases but the advent of YouTube created a more dynamic visualization. Later spot-checks with Wikipedia showed few disagreements. All seven scholars concluded that imperial cycles represent an historical trend leading to world empire. Naroll and Carneiro 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." These predictions surprised their many contemporaries, as the 20th century has seen falls of empires, decolonization, and increase in the number of independent states. Nevertheless, the authors explained, when viewed within the millennial context, this recent reversal appears akin to random fluctuation. Since the dawn of history, the total number of separate polities has been reduced from thousands of tribes and states to about 200 and the number was even less in recent history. None of the authors is determinist: "The future is not obliged to continue past trends; it just often does..."

The reversal of the trend in 20th century those scholars stated, according to Max Ostrovsky, does not exist. Instead, the 20th century is the point when the historical atlases they worked with reverse their approach and begin painting every nominal sovereignty in different color. They had not done so for the earlier history. Most imperial provinces in history were nominally independent but historical atlases paint them all in the color of their metropole. Since the 20th century, however, political maps begin painting every Vatican, Monaco and Tuvalu in different color. None of the seven mentioned imperiometric scholars counted the sphere under the Monroe Doctrine, for example, or the sphere after the Monroe Doctrine was extended to Eurasia, named Truman Doctrine, and "globalized." To preserve the consistent approach, Ostrovsky says, in the 20th century we should switch from historical atlases to the map of the Unified Combatant Command.

Though unnoted by contemporary imperiometric scholars, the phenomenon reflected in the latter map was envisaged by the founder of the Paneuropean Union, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi yet in 1943, when he drew a 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. For Charles H. Fairbanks, it is an empire "in formation" and for Kimberly Kagan an "emerging" empire. 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.

In the above views, the Edict of Caracalla is an advanced form of empire. Emmanuel Todd and Magdi Allam disregarded this nuance and compared the Edict with the US citizenship policy in the early 21st century. Todd found the US policy of this time lagging far behind the Roman under Caracalla while Allam stressed that the United States is also a nation forged by immigrants and already the most successful contemporary expression of multiculturalism the world has seen.

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. The tragedy of empire is that it is disastrous for the conquered in the beginning and eventually for the conquerors, as they lose their privileges and often the very identity, becoming assimilated within the conquered population. Rein Taagepera called it imperial "self-ethnocide." When this distant stage comes to the American Empire, according to Ostrovsky, the green card is abolished since all Earth inhabitants have it by birth.

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.

empire

empire

Article

Notable quotes

Notable quotes

Article

Definition

Characteristics

History

Early empires

Classical period

Post-classical period

Early Modern period

Colonial empires

Late modern period

Fall of empires

Roman Empire

Decolonization

Transition from empire

Contemporary usage

United States

European Union

Russia

Timeline of empires

Theoretical research

Empire versus nation state

Universal empire

Atomic bomb and empire

Circumscription theory

Present

Future

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