History
Empire Definition
An empire is a group of territories or nations ruled by a single sovereign authority, often an emperor or empress. Empires are characterized by their expansionist policies, diverse populations, and centralized governance. Throughout history, empires have played a significant role in shaping global politics, economics, and culture.
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10 Key excerpts on "Empire Definition"
eBook - PDFThe European Seaborne Empires
From the Thirty Years' War to the Age of Revolutions
- Gabriel Paquette(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Yale University Press(Publisher)
The challenge is largely attribut-able to the variety, range, and complexity of entities that have been designated 18 d e f i n i t i on s o f “ e m pi r e ” “empires” by historians. There have been numerous efforts to arrive at a single definition. Here I mention in passing several of the more successful attempts. These tend to treat empire as emerging from overlapping processes involving the imposition of authority by one group upon another, focusing on the asym-metrical relationship established between them. Historian John Darwin argued that empire is “the assertion of mastery (by influence or rule) by one ethnic group, or its rulers, over a number of others.” Political scientist William Doyle defined empire as “a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society.” Polit-ical scientist David Abernethy distilled empire into the “relationships of domi-nation and subordination between one polity (called the metropole) and one or more territories (called colonies) that lie outside of the metropole ’s boundaries yet are claimed as its lawful possessions.” Mastery, control, domination, and subordination are the prominent, common features of these definitions, with good reason. Historian Stephen Howe encompassed these features in a single definition: “An empire is a large, composite, multi-ethnic or multinational political unit, usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate, sometimes far distant, peripheries.” 3 I find Howe ’s formulation to be a suitable working definition, provided that it is fleshed out and several caveats are made. First, one must remain cognizant of the violence and unremitting coercion to which subject popula-tions were exposed following the entrenchment of European authority.
eBook - PDFRussian Imperialism
Development and Crisis
- Ariel Cohen(Author)
- 1996(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
1 Definitions, Theories, and Methodology DEFINITIONS The word "empire" stems from the Latin imperium which means "command." This was the meaning of the word before it came to define the realm commanded. 1 Empire can be understood to be an age-old form of government between the subjects and the objects of pohtical power, involving two or more national entities and territorial units in an unequal pohtical relationship. John Starchey defined empire as "any successful attempt to conquer and subjugate a people with the intention of ruling them for an indefinite period" with the accompanying purpose of exploitation. 2 Michael W. Doyle maintains that empires are "relationships of pohtical control imposed by some pohtical societies over the effective sovereignty of other pohtical societies." 3 According to Maxime Rodinson, empires are "state units within which one ethnic group dominates others." 4 B.J. Cohen writes that the word "imperialism," a highly emotionally charged term, first appeared in nineteenth century France to denote the ideas of partisans of the one-time Napoleonic empire, and later became a pejorative for the grandiose pretensions of Napoleon III. In the 1870s the word "imperialistic" was used in Britain by supporters and opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to denote the policy of British imperial expansion. 5 It is ironic that in most cases neither the Soviet effort to sustain the Romanov realm nor the American expansion westward during the nineteenth century were labeled "imperialistic" but were rather seen as "nation-building." 6 Imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century denoted mostly the colonialism of maritime powers, from the Spanish and the Portuguese, to the British, the French and other Europeans, to the Japanese and Americans.
eBook - PDF- Peter Fibiger Bang, C. A. Bayly(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
This is the case with the definition given by S. M. Eisenstadt, according to whom: an empire is a political system which is strongly centralised and covers a large territory. The centre of that system forms a separate, controlling whole with respect to the remaining areas, and the power is in the hands of the emperor and central offices. 1 Empire may also be defined in general terms as a political organisation which wields power over states (as a “state of states”), where the centre controls the subordinated areas through military, political and ideological means. A characteristic feature of an empire is the existence of internal diversity, coupled with the aspirations of the ruling group to order the world known to that group according to the religious, ideological or political principles developed in the centre. Those aspirations are one of the reasons for the expansiveness of empires. 2 Such general definitions do not diminish the importance of the second option, which consists in considering a typology of empires and introduc- ing more detailed criteria to distinguish between different forms of empires and variation over time. So, for example, in the historical and political sci- ence literature we may find described and defined as distinct: the ancient Imperium Romanum, the medieval Imperium Christianum, early modern seaborne empires, nineteenth century colonial empires, twentieth century totalitarian empires etc. 3 Two opposite theories link empires with the exist- ence of separate world-economies. According to F. Braudel and E. Wallerstein, an empire may be the political expression of a world-economy. 4 R. Kamen and J. Kieniewicz, however, give examples of empires which transgressed the Early Imperial Formations 109 borders of one and mobilised the resources of two or more separate world economies. 5 For example, the Mongolian empire or the Portuguese seaborne empire.
eBook - PDFEmpires and Bureaucracy in World History
From Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century
- Peter Crooks, Timothy H. Parsons(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
1 John Darwin describes empire as the ‘default setting’ for large-scale political formations until the past two centuries (After Tamerlane: the global history of empire since 1405 (London: Allen Lane, 2007), p. 23), a phrase echoed in Ashley Jackson, The British empire: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 11; and Mrinalini Sinha, ‘Projecting power: empires, colonies, and world history’, in Douglas Northrop (ed.), A companion to world history (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), p. 263. See also Lieven, Empire, p. xvi (‘[empires] are one of the commonest forms of state in history’); Howe, Empire, p. 1 (‘a great deal of the world’ s history is the history of empires’); Goldstone & Haldon, ‘Ancient states’, p. 19 (‘[the] typical formation by which large territorial states were ruled for most of human history’); Burbank & Cooper, Empires, p. 8 (‘[empires] played a long and critical role in human history’). 2 Dane Kennedy, ‘Imperial history and post-colonial theory’, JICH 24:3 (1996), 357. 3 Such chronological and geographical scope, not to mention the range of disciplinary backgrounds and theoretical dispositions represented among our authors, is unusual in a book of this sort. It is quite deliberate. We explicitly reject the notion that an unbridgeable chasm separates historicist and generalist positions, ‘splitters’ and ‘lumpers’. 3 Our methodological point of departure is that a diachronic approach to the history of empires is mutually enriching for all the sub-disciplines involved, and that it is possible to engage in long-range comparison while attending closely to geographical specificity, human agency and change over time.
eBook - PDFThe Limits of Universal Rule
Eurasian Empires Compared
- Yuri Pines, Michal Biran, Jörg Rüpke(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
The current volume, which deals with the questions of imperial space and its perceptions, is the first step in this direction. 2 What Is an Empire? One of the trickiest questions for authors and editors of comparative studies of empires is the definition of empire. The long history of the term “empire” and of its derivative and related terms (Latin imperium, imperator, or modern “imperialism”) creates inevitable terminological confusion (see, e.g., Reynolds 2006). Not a few theorists reject the possibility of producing an adequate definition at the current stage of our knowledge. For instance, Johann Arnason (2015, 494) plainly states: “Given the enormous variety of imperial regimes, and the unsatisfactory state of comparative research, we cannot begin with a general definition of empire as a category.” This is a fair assessment (and a fair criticism of comparative research), but it cannot serve as a starting point for a comparative volume. After all, without producing at least a temporary working definition of what an empire is we cannot proceed toward selecting case studies for a comparative endeavor. Although not all of the comparative volumes start with the discussion of what an empire is, several authors and editors did provide useful answers. For instance, Burbank and Cooper proposed: Empires are large political units, expansionist or with a memory of power extended over space, polities that maintain distinction and hierarchy as they incorporate new peoples. (Burbank and Cooper 2010, 8) Burbank and Cooper contrast the empire with the nation-state, which “proclaims the commonality of its people” and “tends to homogenize those inside its borders and exclude those who do not belong.” The problem of this juxtaposition, however, is that nation-states are a relatively recent phenomenon, and it is not 5 Introduction: Empires and Their Space clear how to apply the distinction between empires and smaller-scale states in pre-modern periods.
- Longxi Zhang, Sorin Antohi, Chun-chieh Huang, Jörn Rüsen(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- V&R Unipress(Publisher)
The past has no special authority over us, to be sure; but it is surely a resource that we would do well to make use of in understanding and confronting our current condition. The history and sociol- ogy of empires seems one such promising resource. Empires and the Universal Mission It is striking that one of the most influential, perhaps the most influential, critique of imperialism contains the following passage: The notion of a number of competing empires is essentially modern. The root idea of empire in the ancient and the medieval world was that of a federation of States, under a hegemony, covering in general terms the entire known recog- nized world, such as was held by Rome under the so-called pax Romana. When Roman citizens, with full civic rights, were found all over the explored world, in Africa and Asia, as well as in Gaul and Britain, Imperialism contained a genuine element of internationalism. With the fall of Rome this conception of a single empire wielding political authority over the civilized world did not disappear. On the contrary, it survived all the fluctuations of the Holy Roman Empire. Even after the definite split between the Eastern and Western sections had taken place at the close of the fourth century, the theory of a single state, divided for ad- ministrative purposes, survived. Beneath every cleavage or antagonism, and notwithstanding the severance of many independent kingdoms and provinces, this ideal unity of the empire lived. It formed the conscious avowed ideal of Charlemagne … Rudolf of Habsburg not merely revived the idea, but laboured to realize it through Central Europe, while his descendant Charles V gave a very real meaning to the term by gathering under the unity of his imperial rule the territories of Austria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Sicily and Naples. In later ages this dream of a European Empire animated the policy of Peter the Great, Catherine, and Napoleon.
eBook - PDFSociology and Empire
The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline
- George Steinmetz(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Duke University Press Books(Publisher)
Moreover, the breakup of these empires too had partly been the result of a cataclysmic war, 282 · Current Sociological Theories of Empire World War II, and as with the previous war, there was offi cial endorsement of the nationality principle in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (“everyone has the right to a nationality”). Later still, in 1989, the “informal colonies” of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe declared their independence, followed swift ly thereafter by similar actions among the various national republics or “internal colonies” of the Soviet Union itself (though, as Gellner rightly noted [1998: 57], it was not national-ism itself that brought down the Soviet Union). The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 seemed to set the seal on the long-drawn-out encounter between nation and empire. Despite much talk about the new “American Empire,” it was clear that formal empire in the classic sense had for the time being at least reached a certain historic termi-nus (the announcement of the “end of history” and similar claims that lib-eral democracy had triumphed in the world were some kind of recognition of this). The opprobrium that had, with increasing force since World War II, gathered around the terms “empire” and “imperialism” seemed now to hold sway everywhere. No state called itself an empire anymore; only its enemies did so. If indeed there was or is an American Empire, as Niall Ferguson ar-gued, it was “an empire in denial,” an empire that practiced “the imperialism of anti-imperialism,” an empire that “dare not speak its name” (Ferguson 2005: xxii, 6, 61–104; cf. Teschke 2006: 137). 2 NATIONS AS EMPIRES But there is another way of telling the story of the relation between nation and empire. In this account, nation and empire are not so much opposed as acknowledged to be alternative or complementary expressions of the same phenomenon of power. Empires can be nations writ large, nations empires under another name.
eBook - PDF- Kevin R Cox, Murray Low, Jennifer Robinson, Kevin R Cox, Murray Low, Jennifer Robinson(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
France’s assimilationist agenda for col-onized peoples, for instance, was replicated (and indeed preceded) within British humanitarian dis-course, but countervailing British practices of seg-regation and indirect rule distinguished the two empires in the late nineteenth-century (Fieldhouse, 1982). While comparative, general theories and sur-veys of imperialism are significant in helping us to contextualize different episodes in empire construction and decline, they often end up gen-erating semantic debates over the proper def-initions of terms such as ‘empire’, ‘imperial-ism’ and ‘colonialism’ rather than contributing to our appreciation of how the people involved understood and experienced these episodes of cross-cultural encounter. Even where the calcu-lations of imperial statesmen ( sic ) take centre stage, the existence of other, often competing, imperial and colonial interests, let alone colo-nized subjectivities, is rarely taken into account in the generalized historical-sociological literature on empire. Historical geographers have produced much work of late that does attempt to uncover the conflicts, accommodations, negotiations and refor-mulations of power relations, both material and cultural, that imperialism and colonialism fostered in different sites across the globe (see Clayton, 2000; Lester, 2001; Blunt and McEwan, 2002; Yeoh, 2003, for some examples, and Clayton, 2002, for an excellent overview). But in this chapter, rather than explore the geographies of particular colonial encounters as these studies have, I want to take a recent resurgence in the use and discussion of the term ‘Empire’ as my main focus. I intend to explore how both historical geogra-phers of colonialism and scholars of contemporary geopolitics can contribute to a current debate on ‘Empire’ by connecting past and present in more meaningful ways.
- Warren Breckman, Peter E. Gordon(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
19 Ideas of Empire: Civilization, Race, and Global Hierarchy jennifer pitts The nineteenth century saw the rise of global imperial political structures and the advent of industrial capitalism, with its hierarchically structured global economy. European political control expanded from roughly a third of the earth’s territory in 1815 to 85 percent in 1914. An economic “great divergence” between the economies of Europe and Asia, which had been comparable in their most advanced regions in the eighteenth century, opened in part thanks to European conquest of agricultural land in the new world and the forced deindustrialization of colonies such as India. 1 European observers interpreted these changes as evidence of European superiority, and the admiration for non-European civilizations that had been comparatively common among eighteenth-century thinkers all but disappeared. Discourses of civilization and barbarism, progress and backwardness, played a newly central role in conceptions of human society, which varied from universalist theories in which all societies were considered as progressing in similar fashion, if at different paces, along a spectrum from less to more advanced social and political organization, to accounts, often racialized, that held modern civili- zation to be uniquely available to Europe. Views of empire varied accord- ingly, from projects of a civilizing imperial mission or of the global spread of European civilization through settler colonies, to defenses of imperial rule on the grounds that non-European societies were not, and might never be, capable of self-rule. Many critics of empire likewise presumed the superiority of European civilization. * I am very grateful to Warren Breckman, Peter E. Gordon, Adam Kuper, and Lisa Wedeen for comments on a draft of this chapter.
eBook - PDFBetween Europe and America
The Future of British Politics
- Andrew Gamble(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
33 It was this position of dominance and leadership maintained throughout the nineteenth century which gave rise to the interpretation of British history as the smooth and largely uninterrupted growth in the powers and capacities of the state which the internal Union and external Empire had created — the United Kingdom. This successful ÔnationalÕ history came to form one of the main strands of Britishness, emphasizing the military and colonial prowess of the British state and celebrating a political class which was small and aristocratic (the Upper Ten Thousand) 34 rooted in landown-ership, and closely connected with the land and with the established insti-tutions of the state such as the Church, the Law, the Army and the Navy. The idea of Empire, along with the Union, became closely associated at this time with the Conservative Party, appealing as it did both to ideals and to interest. Maintaining and strengthening the Empire was regarded as not just the best protection of British prosperity and British security, but also the best way to promote British values and to civilize the world. 35 The Imperial Idea was not confined to Conservatives. By the end of the nineteenth century it had invaded all parties. The civilizing mission of the British in the world appealed to many Liberals and some Socialists, conscious of the huge responsibilities as well as opportunities of governing one-quarter of the worldÕs land area. Empire could not be wished away, and although the older expedient attitude to the colonies, which saw them as foreign estates intended to contribute to national wealth, never entirely disappeared, it was now supplemented by high-flown notions of imperial service and the white manÕs burden. The need to organize the Empire and defend it against its enemies put the emphasis on efficiency and order, and gave rise to the doctrines of social imperialism.
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