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> Empire is a spectrum or a continuum, not an either/or proposition, and it’s a little bit like the old saying about pornography: You know it when you see it. T
by lucraft 6y ago
> Empire is a spectrum or a continuum, not an either/or proposition, and it’s a little bit like the old saying about pornography: You know it when you see it. The United States is an empire, and nobody who works seriously on the subject of empire would be likely to argue otherwise.
What does "empire" mean? I thought it meant "a group of nations or peoples ruled over by an emperor, empress, or other powerful sovereign or government" (from dictionary.com) but clearly he's not using it in this fashion. Is it now another word for hegemon?
If the concept of empire is a spectrum would that mean the US is a very large but relatively very weak empire, as it exerts a lot of influence but little direct control over a lot of its "territory" in the style of other past empires? Does that mean Luxembourg is an empire now, but only at a very very low level of empire?
I guess there's Puerto Rico (and maybe more like that?) – but I don't think this is the sense he means it.
He talks about global military bases making an empire: as both the US and UK have bases in Germany and Bahrain, does that mean that Germany and Bahrain are both part of overlapping US and UK empires? Empires can overlap? Or is the UK too weak and powerless to make an empire - and that means there's now no such thing as a small empire? Does empire just mean "Very powerful and influential country"?
Before I read this article I thought I knew what an empire was and would know it when I see it – now I feel have no idea what an empire is...
I don't mind changing the meanings of words when it makes them more useful - what specific concept beyond "Very powerful and influential" does "empire" now identify?
- mchanson 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
- free_rms 6y agoUndisputed hegemon over large portions of the world. I think you're hung up on the PR fictions -- it used to be, empires would indulge in the fiction of an absolute authority vested in the emperor when of course it was more complicated than that with feudal and tributary relationships. Now, in this political era, we spin things the other direction.
- lucraft 6y agoThat's interesting! So that would mean that as we've studied empires we've realized that they were never particularly about ruling countries directly as we thought (and so as the word originally meant), the important identifying concept behind them was hegemony, power and influence?
- free_rms 6y agoThere's a continuum between direct central administration and tributary/vassal status. The Roman Empire, for example, often had big chunks of land that were entirely run by local people, but were 'part of the Roman Empire' as far as public perception. Look strong and all that. (this went back and forth in different places at different times, sometimes there was very strong central bureaucracy). The US, by contrast, insists that we're merely allies with all of these countries that host more US military power than they even have domestically, only buy US weapons, trade using our currency, scrupulously respect US intellectual property law, vote with us in the UN nearly 100% of the time.. it's a different political posture for a different time.
- godelzilla 6y ago>little direct control over a lot of its "territory" Check out Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Venezuela, Bolovia, Chile, etc.