If you’ve even so much as gotten a whiff of history, you might have heard of names
such as the Frankish Kingdom or the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies or the Anuradhapura Kingdom,
and you might have also heard of the Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire or the Russian
Empire and wondered why some monarchies are called kingdoms and others empires?
So with all that in mind, you might wonder, what exactly does the term “empire” mean,
and is there enough historical significance behind all this pedantry to give KhAnubis
an easy video for this week?
If you look from the samples I gave in the intro, you might have come to the conclusion
that an empire is like a kingdom, but bigger.
Indeed this is how the terms are normally used, as a kingdom is basically a nation-state
ruled by a king, whereas an empire generally span a vast-- often diverse-- area, namely
with multiple smaller states under its control, like with the Persian Achaemenid Empire, whose
ruler was known as the King of Kings, due to the arrangement of their empire (even though
they technically didn’t call it an empire, but we’ll get to that in a second).
That being said, this whole thing is a lot like trying to describe the difference between
states and provinces (a story for another time), in that there might be a sound definition,
but nations are often just going to use whatever they feel like, especially if one gives them
more prestige.
The term ‘empire’ came-- not as a way to better categorize historical powers-- but
as a way for someone in ancient Rome to justify themselves having all the power *after* 509
BC.
You see, Rome initially started off as the Roman Kingdom, but then they had this one
king who sucked so bad that they not only deposed him but disbanded the idea of having
kings at all, establishing the senate-run Roman Republic in its place.
The Senate generally elected consuls to oversee the affairs of the Republic-- at home and
on the frontier-- they elected two at a time for one-year terms as a way to make sure no
one could gather too much political power, as wanting to be king in the Republic was
essentially the worst crime a Roman could commit.
Thus, when this guy named Augustus did get all the power for himself and established
a hereditary office where he was in charge of everything, he needed to convince the Senate
that he wasn’t a king, he was just the… commander, yeah commander!
Or in Latin, imperator, which yeah I think you can see the etymological pattern here.
[It’s kind of like how an absolute dictatorship might call itself a republic, as all that
“republic” really means is a country without a monarchy].
So ‘emperor’ (and therefore ‘empire’) were originally made up as ways for someone
to essentially become king of a realm where kings were a serious taboo, but this definition
gradually changed as it was noticed that the Roman Empire was different from the smaller
kingdoms that rose after its fall, not just in how their rulers preferred to be addressed,
but also in another crucial way.
Now, Google defines an empire as “an extensive group of states or countries ruled over by
a single monarch, an oligarchy, or a sovereign state”, suggesting that the qualifications
for being an empire aren’t necessarily being ruled by someone who calls themselves an emperor,
but being an entity with multiple groups under one’s control.
This definition could include basically every country throughout history that has spanned
multiple different regions, including Russia, the US, India, etc., however an empire’s
territories are generally in an unequal, subservient relationship to the ruling power (and if they
are democratic, they don’t generally give the subservient territories much of a voice).
This however is in contrast to more equal commonwealths, or federations, who are still
largely centralized but give their subdivisions more of a say in how everything is done, as
is the case in countries like Russia, the US, or India… wait a minute.
That’s definitely one restriction (besides control over other powers) on the qualifications
of empire, as an empire is almost inherently unequal in terms of where the resources flow
and who makes all the decisions.
The Roman Empire was actually a great example of this, as they only expanded into other
regions, conquering numerous tribes and kingdoms and bringing them under their fold, to gain
access to more wealth and resources.
Another relevant example would be all the European colonial empires, with colonies set
up mainly for the benefit of the home country, regardless of the human or environmental cost
on said colonies.
The colonial empires also bring up another characteristic in that the territories (in
this case, colonies) of an empire might have been administered by a far off country on
pretty much all levels, but they might not have necessarily been /part/ of that country.
For instance the British Empire wasn’t so much a supersized United Kingdom, but rather
the United Kingdom and a whole bunch of Crown Colonies, either ruled over directly from
London or with some autonomy, in which case they were referred to as self-governing colonies,
but still didn’t necessarily have a say in British or Imperial politics.
Empires can have a lot of upsides for those in charge, but they can be expensive to maintain,
and it’s when the costs of administering and defending a colony surpass the benefits
from its resources, location, or influence that an empire has a bit of a problem.
In a sense this is how empires fall, basically when they can no longer pay the bills and
their provinces or colonies are left vulnerable to be either taken by another empire or to
gain independence.
Being an empire was something nations used to brag about, but after the devastation of
the World Wars and the subsequent disbanding of all the colonial empires (as well as the
emergent power of the nation-state), calling a country an empire became almost more of
a condemnation, perhaps notably in the concept of American Imperialism, an idea that refers
not only to America’s westward expansion through the idea of manifest destiny, but
also to a perception of American foreign policy, largely in Latin America and the Caribbean,
often touted in these circles as “America’s backyard”.
The idea of calling the United States an empire, as you can probably tell, is not one meant
as a compliment to the US, but as a strong critique.
Technically only one empire still remains, but only in the sense that one country has
an emperor, that country being Japan, which is about as individual-nation-state-y as you
can get, so it’s not really much of an empire.
Thank you as always for watching.
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