Empire

Category: Fields of research

An empire is a political entity that extends its dominance over other diverse territories, peoples, or nations, often through conquest, colonization, or economic and military control. Empires are typically characterized by their ability to establish centralized governance and exert authority over vast areas, often spanning multiple continents. Some empires had territories that were not under direct control, but were they were their vassals or dependencies. The most notable features of an empire are its pursuit of expansion, whether for political, economic, or strategic purposes; division into a center or core that dominates over the subordinate periphery of the empire; and one dominant ethnic group, usually originating from the core of the empire.

Imperialism, on the other hand, refers to the policy or ideology that justifies or promotes the expansion of an empire. It is the practice of extending a nation's power and influence over other countries or regions through direct conquest, colonization, or indirect methods such as economic and political domination. Imperialism is often underpinned by the belief in the superiority of one nation or culture over others, and the justification for imperialism can range from the desire for resources to the perceived obligation to "civilize" other peoples. Empires can be divided into those that constitute continuous land mass and those spanning oceans and distant continents. The former type of empire is historically older.

Shmuel Eisenstadt, using a comparative analysis of the social structures of empires, concluded that all empires must meet several institutional and cultural preconditions. The basic precondition of any empire is the creation and preservation of resources that will not be under the control of traditional social structures. Bureaucracies and standing armies, which emerged with the formation of empires, exercised that role - a non-traditional resource. The cultural dimension and values of social actors are autonomous factors in the development of empires, which operate independently of socio-economic structures.

The Rise of Empires

Empires have existed throughout human history, with some of the earliest examples being the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Persians in the ancient world. The classical empires of Greece and Rome laid the foundations for future imperial endeavors by demonstrating the political and military structures necessary to control vast territories. However, the most expansive period of empire-building came during the Age of Exploration and the early modern period, particularly between the 16th and 20th centuries.

During this time, European powers such as Spain, Portugal, France, and Great Britain embarked on widespread imperial conquests across the globe. The motivation behind this imperial drive was multifaceted. Economic interests, such as the search for new trade routes, wealth through the exploitation of natural resources, and the establishment of lucrative colonies, played a major role. In addition, the spread of Christianity, the desire to increase national prestige, and the notion of the "civilizing mission" were often cited as justifications for imperial actions.

The British Empire, at its zenith, was the largest empire in history, spanning continents from India to Africa, North America, and the Pacific. The British saw their empire not just as a means of economic and military dominance but as a vehicle for spreading their political systems, culture, and religion. Similar narratives of cultural superiority were employed by other imperial powers, which often viewed their colonies as "blank slates" upon which they could impose their values and institutions. After the decolonization ended in the 1980s, some authors argue that the only true remaining empire is the United States, i.e. Michael Man in Incoherent Empire (2003).

Classical Marxism’s Critique of the Imperialism

Marx and Engels argued that colonialism enhanced the ‘‘primitive accumulation’’ of capital and helped the spread of capitalist social relations around the globe. John Hobson, in his famous study Imperialism (1902), applied his economic theory to explain the Boer War in South Africa, as well as the whole system of imperialism. The Boer War came about because international mine owners and speculators who had investments in South Africa pushed Britain into the war to secure those investments. He believed that imperial wars were justified to the masses, in the countries of the center, by the fact that governments, through the daily press, indulged the worst instincts of the large urban masses and thus spread militarism. Imperialism is a consequence of the problem of declining demand, on the one hand, and the need for capitalists to increase profits, on the other. The imperial wars provided an opportunity to acquire new markets for the placement of goods, and also to create markets for new investments. The imperial wars themselves were not profitable for the states that waged them, but only for the capitalists and financiers for two reasons: increasing profits and pacifying the working class. The impact of the wars on the pacification of the working class was twofold. By spreading nationalism and militarism, the capitalists diverted the attention of the working class from its catastrophic position, while, on the other hand, by gaining new markets, they solved the problem of reducing demand without making economic concessions to the working class. In the end, imperialism led to the First World War. Hobson believed that the introduction of a political system that would bring all the countries of the world together could prevent imperialism and new wars.

Vladimir Lenin later applied a similar logic in his study of imperialism, so this approach to imperialism was sometimes called "Hobson-Lenin's theory of imperialism". In The book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) Lenin analyzes the relationship between capitalism and imperialism. Western capitalism postponed the anti-capitalist revolution by starting the exploitation of colonies and semi-colonies. The imperialist expansion of the world's largest powers, at the end of the nineteenth century, resulted from the development of monopoly capitalism, in which the economies of rich countries were increasingly concentrated in a relatively small number of large firms, while at the same time the merger of industrial capital with large banks, as well as the growing integration of interests between private companies and the state, took place. Such development of capitalism leads to a competition of capital to conquer new markets. "The more capitalism develops, the more there is a shortage of raw materials and a fiercer competition and race for raw materials around the world leads to an increasingly desperate struggle to conquer new colonies." (Lenin, 1916). The newly formed financial capital increases the already existing rivalries between the capitalists of different countries, and therefore also between the countries themselves. The rivalries and wars between the great powers were the product of the very dynamic of capitalist development, especially the new stage in the development of capitalism dominated by financial capital and the monopolization of the economy. This is precisely why Lenin defined imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. Lenin believed that it was necessary to form an international anti-imperialist alliance that would fight both against capitalism and against imperialism. The end of imperial rivalries can only come about through a radical reorganization of the economic system of the entire planet, whereby capitalism would be replaced by socialism. The fall of capitalism has become necessary to ensure the survival of the human species.

Rosa Luxemburg, In The Accumulation of Capital: A Contribution to the Economic Explanation of Imperialism (1913), presents her theory of the causes and the rise of imperialism. Luxemburg examines various socio-economic systems with communal ownership of the property that existed in pre-capitalist societies, all across the world – ancient Germany, the Inca Empire, Africa, Russia, and India. She admired the fact that those systems were marked by egalitarianism, longevity, and flexibility. The rise of modern capitalism in the West was intrinsically tied to and spearheaded by imperialistic subjection and exploitation of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Western imperialism destroyed those communal economic systems and caused immense social and economic devastation, hunger, and deaths. She argued that the inherent tendencies of capitalism for limitless production and capital accumulation and the need for new markets inevitably lead to imperialism. Luxemburg was extremely critical of war and militarism and saw them as outgrowths of capitalism and imperialism.

Imperialism in Theoretical Perspectives of the Dependency Theory and World Systems Theory

The dependency theory approach emerged out of Latin America in the 1960s, as an intellectual and political reaction to Eurocentric modernization theories of development. It is focused on international economic and political relations. The Dependency theory states that unequal economic exchange between developed and underdeveloped countries puts later in a constant state of dependency. Paul Baran, examines, in The Political Economy of Growth (1957), the colonial relations between Great Britain and India and shows that the domestic industry in India was destroyed so that India would become just a territory from which Britain would procure cheap resources.

Classical Marxist theory viewed Latin America as a semi-feudal society, while modernization theories explained the region's economic backwardness as incomplete modernization and an underdeveloped capitalist economy. Andre Gunder Frank rejects both interpretations. Although he accepts the Marxist view of economics and classes, Frank thinks that to explain the situation in Latin America, it is necessary to apply Marxist theory differently. He believed that since the beginning of European colonization, Latin America had been exploited by the greatest colonial powers. The essence of the underdevelopment of this region was external political, economic, and cultural influences on national development policies. After gaining independence, Latin American countries continued to be subject to colonial economic logic - they continued to export a small number of unprocessed raw materials, which did not yield large profits. The dynamics of the relationship between the center and the periphery, after gaining independence, were maintained through the local lumpen bourgeoisie, which, in addition to economic, also achieved political domination.

In Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (1973) Giovanni Arrighi developed the theory that labor supply and workers' resistance influenced colonialism and national liberation movements in Africa. Colonial capitalists could not force Africans to work as wage earners on plantations, in mines, or as market producers, as long as the domicile population owned the means of production, which allowed them to produce for their own needs. The colonizers, therefore, took away the land from the African population, forcibly forced it to work, and forced it to pay taxes in colonial currency. In Geometry of Imperialism (1978), Arrighi states that imperialism, which is a war between capitalist countries, is a necessary consequence of the transformation of classical capitalism into monopoly and financial capitalism. In The Long Twentieth Century (1994), Arrighi deals with the history of international capitalism from the 14th century to the present day. He believes that financial capital has been a central component of the world system all that time. Current cash flows have the typical characteristics of very long "systemic cycles of accumulation".

Immanuel Wallerstein developed his approach to international relations known as the World systems theory. He began studying the history of economic and political relations between colonial powers and their colonies in the early 1970s, and the results of this research are presented in The Modern World-System, vol. I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1974). In his theory, one type of world system is the "world-economies", which consists of a large number of politically independent units that are all economically integrated through trade and division of labor. All the products necessary for the survival of the world-economy are produced within it, but since different political units of the world-economy produce different products, which is the basis of the division of labor, it is necessary to redistribute these products through trade. World economies in the past were short-lived, as they were usually disintegrated or integrated into world-empires. The current world-economy, which has survived to this day, emerged at the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. At that time, a complex trade network of agricultural products was created, and the most important role in that trade was played by trade cities, among them those in the Netherlands, and the Hanseatic League were especially important. The world-economy, which existed in Europe at that time, was surrounded by world empires, which gradually, as they lost power, became integrated into the world-economy. The centers of development of the world-economy in the modern era were England, the Netherlands, and France. The development that took place in these countries created the basis for capitalist industrialization. By the end of the nineteenth century, this world economy, through colonialism and imperialism, had spread to the entire planet, and the engine of its expansion was the constant need for the accumulation of capital.

The world-economy is characterized by three different sectors, which Wallerstein calls the periphery, the semi-periphery, and the center. Each of these sectors contains several different states. The center consists of the most technologically developed and richest countries, which appropriate the greatest benefit from the way the whole system is organized. The countries of the center shape the world system itself and the patterns of investment and trade. There is always a struggle between the states of the center for power and the accumulation of capital. The states and colonies located on the periphery are exploited, through trade relations, by the countries of the center, and this exchange produces the subordination of the states of the periphery. Both development and underdevelopment are interdependent processes because the development of the countries of the center necessarily depends on the underdevelopment of the countries on the periphery.

The states of the semi-periphery, by their characteristics and position, are located between the center and the periphery and may include former countries of the center, whose position has declined or countries originating from the periphery, but whose position has improved, so they moved to the semi-periphery. While the countries of the center often advocate a free world market, the countries of the semi-periphery prefer the tactics of protectionism. Belonging to a sector affects many characteristics of a certain state or territorial unit: average life expectancy, living standard, position and control over the labor force, type of products intended for foreign trade, type of political regime, etc. The position of the labor force and the control over it, are directly related to the type of production intended for foreign trade. The periphery produces and trades mainly with raw materials, and the labor force is poorly paid and subject to great control (whether the labor force has a formal-legal position of slaves, serfs, or free workers, it does not change its essentially extremely bad position of workers in the periphery), while the countries of the center produce and export finished products, and the wages of the labor force are higher, while the control over it is less strict.

References:

Abu-Lughod. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (1989);

Amin. Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value (2018);

Anderson P. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (1974);

Arrighi. Geometry of Imperialism (1978);

Chase-Dunn. The Historical Evolution of World-Systems (2005);

- Global Social Change: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (2006);

- BRICS and the New American Imperialism: Global Rivalry and Resistance (2020);

Eisenstadt. The Political Systems of Empires (1963);

Giddens. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, 2 vols. (1981, 1985);

Giddings. Democracy and Empire (1900);

Grinin. „The Early State and its Analogues”, in Social Evolution & History (2004a);