4 ms·
because they’re often brittle and create closed systems
by mylons 7y ago
because they’re often brittle and create closed systems
- tasubotadas 7y agoYou have to see yourself that it is a pretty week argument.
- shadowgovt 7y agoThis feels like tautological reasoning. Brittle empires fall. The Chinese empire has a history (including mutations to its government) spanning thousands of years.
- lostlogin 7y agoAnd yet it fell.
- shadowgovt 7y agoThe Chinese empire is still there and quite happy. It's communist now, but no less of an empire. It's even currently involved with an aggressive territorial dispute with neighboring land that it used to have total control over, as empires do. [Edited for unnecessary snark; my apologies]
- changchuming 7y agoI would think that undergoing a rebellion or civil war after which the form of governance changes marks the end of an empire, even if the territorial lines are not redrawn.
- apostate 7y agoDepends on how you look at it I guess. The history of the Chinese empire had periods of relative stability, separated by periods of rebellion, civil war, and strife, sometimes hundreds of years long. There were even periods where the empire was ruled by outsiders. At the end of any given dynasty, it would be hard to say whether the empire is truly crumbling, or merely transitioning to a new dynasty. Who knows, maybe 1,000 years from now communism and the period of strife in the 20th century will just be seen as an unstable period preceding a dynastic transition.
- shadowgovt 7y agoBy that metric, the United States ended in 1861 and another country took its place. The 13th-15th amendments fundamentally changed the understanding of the state / federal power dynamic.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chinesempire 7y ago> the last Chinese dynasty — the Qing dynasty — fell in 1911–1912, it marked the end of the nation's incredibly long imperial history.
- shadowgovt 7y agoIt marked the end of that government, but the nation of China is still very much an empire, by definition of its ambition and cultural reach exceeding its borders. In the same sense that the US and UK are empires.
- chinesempire 7y agoOf course, if you use a custom definition for everything and cherry pick informations, everything is possible. But no, it wasn't just the end of the government, it also meant losing almost 30% of its territory. https://imgur.com/r/mapporn/Cdi6KOL https://imgur.com/r/mapporn/Cdi6KOL > In the same sense that the US and UK are empires. UK was an empire, and it's already fallen, it is now on the brink of losing even the Kingdom and becoming an Island hosting borders and customs. U.S. is not really an empire, never was. It is more the mandator of many bad things that happened in the last 70 years, that turned many countries into U.S. colonies through "exporting democracy" which actually translated too many times as "planting dictatorships befriended with U.S.A.". But it was good for U.S. and only U.S. That's why Cliqz has reasons to exist, U.S. is an unreliable ally, even more now and Europe needs to > building the foundation for a sovereign digital future of Europe > develop digital key technologies as a European alternative to the market dominating US platforms. > If We Don’t Act Now, We Will Become a Digital Colony
- shadowgovt 7y agoI'm going by the Wikipedia definition, to wit: "An imperial political structure can be established and maintained in two ways: (i) as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control with force or (ii) as a coercive, hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power." The US and China are the latter. The UK's power has slipped, but it's still in this category with extraterritorial colonies. A specific emperor is structurally optional.
- isoskeles 7y agoAn empire crumbling under its own weight is different from deliberately destroying one because we dislike it.