The American Empire at its greatest extent (1898-1902) in terms of directly controlled territory by Red4tribe for Wikipedia “American Imperialism” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(3) AMERICAN EMPIRE

“Pick a spot…Any spot. I guarantee you we will have American troops there within thirty years. The Empire that you dreamed of while reading Tacitus” – The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Pax Americana – you’re living in it.

Perhaps the most paradoxical empire – or least the subject of the most vexed debate as to what extent it is an empire at all or whether it is imperialism without an empire, arising from the pervasive sense of its own exceptionalism.

A large part of that is that the United States has traditionally styled itself as anti-imperialist, or in the phrase of Thomas Jefferson, “an empire of liberty”, from its very founding in revolution against the British Empire through its traditional foreign policy encapsulated in the Monroe Doctrine of opposing European imperialism in the Americas – or American intervention beyond the Americas.

However, the United States would hardly be alone in pursuing imperialism while styling itself as anti-imperialist or even doing so in the name of anti-imperialism, as ironically two of its most formidable opponents did the same – Japan and the Soviet Union.

So the very idea of American imperialism or empire, let alone their nature, is one that meets substantial resistance.

However, there was at least the territorial expansion of the United States, as it manifested its destiny westwards across the continent from the very outset, ultimately to the Pacific – to the cost or destruction of all native American peoples in its path, and about half of Mexico.

Again ironically, that was parallel to the eastwards territorial expansion of the Russian empire across Siberia to the Pacific – as Alexis de Tocqueville observed as the basis for his prediction of them as opposing world powers.

Unlike the predominantly maritime empires of other European powers, the Russian empire was predominantly a territorial empire – and so , it is argued, was the United States, particularly as similarly to the Russian Empire and unlike European maritime empires, it absorbed and retained its territorial conquests or expansion into itself as a nation.

Whether one accepts the territorial expansion of the United States as imperialism or an empire, there can be no argument that the United States indeed was or had a formal empire for at least part of its history, as in the map in my feature image, albeit as a latecomer to the Age of Imperialism (or New Imperialism) in the late 19th century.

And it went about being a latecomer in the smartest possible way – it simply picked up someone else’s empire at a bargain bin sale of its own creation, the best pickings of the remaining Spanish empire in the Spanish-American War of 1898.

In that war, the United States acquired the Philippines (while also crushing the Philippines independence movement in the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1902) as well as Puerto Rico and Guam – both of which it retains as territories today (while the Philippines became independent in 1946).

It also effectively acquired Cuba as a de facto colony even when it did not formally occupy Cuba. Even before that, it had extended its manifest destiny beyond the continent into the Pacific, as it annexed Hawaii (and afterwards to other Pacific islands, such as American Samoa).

However, when people refer to American imperialism, they tend not to be referring to its limited formal empire – or at least not just referring to it – but its informal empire, “the expansion of American political, economic, cultural, and media influence beyond the boundaries of the United States”.

That is, hegemony or sphere of influence in more positive terms, neo-imperialism or neo-colonialism in more negative terms, “which leverages economic power rather than military force in an informal empire” or means of control other than formal annexation or rule. Of course, that may still involve military force when it needs to, but generally neo-imperialism by definition proposes more subtle or indirect means of coercion or influence.

My own view tends towards that of imperialism without an empire – whether or not the United States has comprised a formal or informal empire, its foreign and military policy has unquestionably been imperialistic, at least at certain times and places.

Foremost among those times and places would be its southern neighbors at, well most times actually, because the United States has been at its shabbiest dealing with Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine may have been anti-imperialist towards European powers in the Americas, but not so much for the United States – indeed, it implies the Americas to be their exclusive sphere.

The influence of the United States extended well beyond the Americas with its rise to world power in the world wars, not least in its system of alliances, in what was (or is) dubbed the American Century – indeed, to a world-encircling extent exceeding even that of the British Empire, which it is frequently portrayed as inheriting or succeeding.

Russian Empire by Milenioscuro for Wikipedia “Russian Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(2) RUSSIAN & SOVIET EMPIRES

Bizarro European empire and third largest empire by size in history, such that even the residual state of Russia remains the largest nation in the world.

Why bizarro European empire? Well, for one thing, as J.M. Roberts pointed out in Triumph of the West, it’s always been unclear where the West ends going east – and in particular on which side of the line of Western civilization the Russian state falls.

For another, the Russian Empire was distinct from other European empires, but ironically its closest parallel is with the United States, albeit still weirdly so, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed when he presciently predicted them – in 1835! – as the future global powers on parallel but opposing paths:

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles which nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained with the ploughshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

The primary distinction with other European empires was that, with one notable exception, the Russian Empire was not a maritime empire. Indeed, it was famously landlocked, with an equally famous strategic policy of seeking unobstructed warm-water ports.

Instead, it was a good old-fashioned territorial empire, expanding eastwards from European Russia across Siberia and central Asia, hence its parallel with the United States and its westward ‘manifest destiny’ or territorial expansion (in both cases to the Pacific).

Unlike the United States, it had more arguable justification in terms of its security against historical invasions of nomadic tribe from the steppes, most famously the Mongols – but like the United States (and unlike European maritime empires), it absorbed and retained its territorial conquests or expansion into itself as a nation.

Ultimately, the Russian empire’s eastward expansion brought it to the Pacific Ocean but more fundamentally, to the borders of an Asian state armed with firearms and robust enough to resist it – Qing China, in its prime and powerful enough to defeat Russia in the Sino-Russian border conflicts of the seventeenth century.

Of course, Qing China famously waned in the nineteenth century, while Russia had grown stronger such that it was again able to make encroachments eastwards, but was confronted by Britain and the new rising power in north-east Asia – Japan.

However the Pacific saw that one notable exception for Russia’s maritime empire – as a latecomer in the first phase of European imperialism in the Americas, most famously claiming Alaska (equally famously bought from them by the United States in 1867) but also extending to California and even Hawaii before receding back.

The Russian Empire also expanded southwards through central Asia, but was again blocked by Britain in the so-called Great Game, as well as more regional empires such as the Ottoman Empire. That saw the southernmost extent of the Russian Empire, which did not scramble for Africa like other European empires and was constrained by its naval limitations from extending elsewhere in Asia.

It also expanded westwards into Europe itself, taking Finland from a waning Sweden and partitioning territory (with Prussia and Austria) from the waning Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Despite all this, the Russian imperial state came crashing down like the three other great imperial states of Europe brought down by the First World War – Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – but more dramatically or spectacularly as it was succeeded by the world’s first communist state, the Soviet Union.

As a communist state, the Soviet Union styled itself as anti-imperialist, but ironically closely emulated or even exceeded the imperialism of its predecessor – arguably in the tradition of two other states that styled themselves as anti-imperialist as they created empires of their own, the United States and Japan.

Initially Soviet imperialism was limited within the former Russian empire itself, but with its rise to superpower escalated to reclaiming its predecessor’s lost territory and then to extending further than the Russian empire ever did, except across the Pacific to the Americas – starting westward to the heart of Europe with its subject satellite states after the Second World War, opposed by the United States in the Cold War, fulfilling de Tocqueville’s prediction.

It also renewed the Russian sphere of influence in north-east Asia, although that fell afoul of a resurgent China, ironically a rival communist state originally within (and a product of) that influence.

The most dramatic success of Soviet imperialism was when it graduated from the traditional territorial empire of its predecessor to the maritime empire of European empires, ironically as those empires were scrambling out of Africa and elsewhere – indeed expanding its influence under its continued anti-imperial guise of supporting decolonization or ‘liberation’ movements from those empires, with overlapping successes in Cuba, south-east Asia and Africa.

Despite all this – and accelerated by one imperial expedition too many into Afghanistan – the Soviet state came crashing down in the end of the Cold War, but not before President Reagan had famously characterized it as the “evil empire”, an epithet much relished by its east European subjects who in turn revolted against it in its death throes.

Diachronic map of the main empires of the modern era (1492-1945) – by Nagihuan for Wikipedia “Colonial Empires” under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Declaration

(1) EUROPEAN EMPIRES

The definitive imperialism for most of the world – not least because it was the imperialism that defined the modern world, the first truly global imperialism that transformed the world from regional to global.

Indeed, so much so that imperialism is often defined exclusively as European imperialism, particularly when you throw in my next three special mentions as offshoots of it to broaden it to Western imperialism.

This ignores that empires predated European imperialism throughout the world, well before the existence or even the concept of the European nations behind it. A substantial part of the impact of European imperialism lies in how recent it is, eclipsing any predecessors, and the wounds it inflicted are still raw. No one seeks reparations from Roman or Mongolian imperialism.

It’s striking to think that decolonization or independence is within living memory for many of the subjects of European imperialism, particularly in Africa, with some empires clinging on into the 1970s (looking at you, Portugal ) or even beyond in legacy or some residual colonies (looking at you, Hong Kong).

Equally it ignores that many of the states that fought or fell to European imperialism were themselves empires, often aggressively or belligerently so. Indeed, I’d say all of them, at least for any polities that comprised more than one ethnic group or beyond tribes and tribal confederations. Even more homogenous or tribal polities tended to be imperial in nature over their own members, in the absence of any concept of participatory representation, where they were not actually imperial to or over their neighbors.

Ironically, it was European political concepts that undermined the default imperial state settings that applied elsewhere or prior to them, as they would the European empires themselves.

However, European imperialism was distinctive in a number of ways so as to distinguish it as the modern definition of imperialism. One is that very factor – that it is recent or modern. Another is that it consisted almost entirely of maritime empires, as opposed to the more usual territorial empires conquering adjoining or neighboring territories by land. Of course, they are not the only maritime empires in history, but those other empires either tended to be more mixed between maritime and territorial conquests or lacked the same reach (or both).

And that last point brings us to the most distinctive feature of European imperialism – its unprecedented scope, scale, and transformative force, particularly when viewed collectively, as it tends to be outside Europe.

In terms of scale and scope, it reached to every metaphorical corner of the globe, including an unparalleled command of the seas (and even skies), and to every continent, including Antarctica. Only a few countries remained independent of one European empire or another – and even then independence was often only nominal or more a balance of power between competing European nations or spheres of influence. It is not for nothing that of the top ten empires in history by land area or size, four of them are European.

And in terms of transformative force, we are living in the world it made – “to which we owe the development of transport and communication” as well as “the spread of science and technology”, industry and trade, and European culture and political ideologies. Not to mention the spread of European languages as global lingua franca – English above all, but also French and Spanish.

And yes – that transformative force had its negative aspects, which indeed tend to be the focus of contemporary perspectives on European imperialism to the exclusion of anything else. Although history is not a balance sheet, all European powers were quite prepared to resort to brutality when they had to, albeit some more so than others, or else they wouldn’t have had any empires.

Although the rest of the world tends to see European imperialism collectively – with some justice – that does conceal there was not one European imperial power but several, as a general rule fiercely competitive with each other. Indeed, the fierce competition between European nations is often identified as a reason for European imperialism in the first place, as European technological and other advancement owed itself to European nations competing – and warring – with each other.

It also conceals that there was more than one European imperialism within what was, after all, a span of over at least half a millennium. A common historical classification is to divide European imperialism into two broad phases, albeit overlapping – as for example with the classification of the British and French Empires into their First and Second Empires which largely reflects those phases (although the Spanish and Portuguese Empires might arguably be divided into three phases).

In the first phase, from Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas in 1492 through to the early nineteenth century or so – often styled as the Age of Discovery – the subject of European imperialism was predominantly the Americas. European imperialism did extend to Africa and Asia but was limited – in Africa as tropical disease limited European encroachment into the continent’s interior (although European penetration of the continent’s coastline and the consequent Atlantic slave trade was damaging enough) and in Asia as its polities were mostly robust enough to resist direct conquest.

This phase was certainly marked by fierce competition between European powers, despite the early lead of Spain and Portugal, which cooperated with each other at least in dividing the world up into their respective spheres of influence, by papal mediation in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (although only after Portugal nudged the line further west to party it up in Brazil).

Other European nations disagreed as three others competed with the Spanish and Portuguese to round out the big five imperial powers in this phase – the British (or English prior to 1707), the French, and after they became independent of Spain, the Dutch. The British and French eclipsed the Spanish and Portuguese as they fought in what was no less than an Anglo-French contest for global supremacy, fought particularly in North America and India.

That phase came to end with the first wave of decolonization or wars of independence by their American settler states, although substantial parts of the Americas remained in European empires or spheres of influence.

While the second phase effectively began before the end of the first phase, it acquired its full force after the Napoleonic Wars in what is often styled as the Age of Imperialism or New Imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, as the European powers descended on Asia and Africa, the latter styled as the Scramble for Africa.

While they remained competitive to the point of occasional conflict in this phase, the European powers were remarkably cooperative in negotiating their empires or spheres of influence, although a large part of that was necessity from British naval supremacy or Pax Britannica

European imperialism deserves and will get its own top 10 (and special mentions) to do it justice, not least for ranking the individual European imperial powers. The focus of this entry are the classic eight continental European imperial powers and their empires- British (who also rank third in my Top 10 Empires), Spanish (who also rank fifth in my Top 10 Empires), French, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians, Germans and Italians.

Some might note that this omits a significant European empire, indeed the largest apart from the British – but this was distinctive and separate enough to earn its own special mention entry, as were the two other substantial non-European imperial powers in the Age of Imperialism.

A proper tier ranking of the classic eight will await their own top ten list for European empires, but Britain was obviously top dog in this phase of imperialism. Spain, which had been the British Empire of the first phase, was knocked down to mid-tier when most of its Latin American empire won its independence, then to bottom tier when defeated by the United States in the Spanish-American War.

France, the Netherlands, and Portugal all rank in high or mid-tier, with Belgium ranking in low tier for its abominations in the Congo – and latecomers Germany and Italy bringing up the rear in bottom-tier with the scraps left by other empires. Italy earned the particular humiliation of being defeated by Ethiopia, so that the latter remained the only African state to retain independence (apart from the American founded state of Liberia).

However, the charges of European imperialism don’t stop with the end of formal European empires, as European powers are charged with simply substituting neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism -“which leverages economic power” (or other forms of power and influence) “rather than military force” (or direct means of control) “in an informal empire”.