I introduced my Top 10 Wars of History on the basis that I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, so it’s not surprising that I’ve also always found empires a fascinating subject of history, again from the fortunate perspective of being well removed from the sharp end of them – and have similarly ranked my Top 10 Empires of History.
But I don’t just have a top ten. As usual for my top tens, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions – where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty. My special mentions are also where I tend to have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.
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 that 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”.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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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.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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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.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Map of the Japanese Empire at its peak in 1942 (although it did extend its territory in China in 1944-1945) by San Jose for Wikipedia “Japan during World War II” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
(4) JAPANESE EMPIRE
One of the oldest empires but also one of the newest – which, among other things, makes it one of the oddest.
There were older empires than Japan, whose mythology traces its imperial line to legendary founder Jimmo in 660 BC, although more conventional history tends to trace its origins “in the late Kofun period of the 3rd-6th centuries AD”. However, it is the oldest empire still existing, at least in retaining an emperor, the last state to do so, albeit as ceremonial head of state.
Which brings us to the one of many oddities of Japan’s empire – that for the vast majority of its history, Japan had an emperor without an empire.
Firstly, in the sense that Japan was a homogenous polity that mostly kept to itself, apart from importing cultural influences, mostly from China – contrary to how empire is typically defined as one nation or people ruling over another. In that sense, the Japanese emperor was a somewhat inflated term for monarch, albeit a cult figure in the native Japanese religion of Shinto.
Secondly, in the sense that for a substantial part of its history, the emperor wasn’t even that, but a lame-duck monarch where de facto power was held by military aristocrats in what is generally known as the shogunate. Ironically, it is during one of these periods that Japan actually embarked on empire in the conventional definition of the term – its invasions of Korea in 1592-1598.
Japan was also one of the newest empires, a latecomer in the Age of Imperialism – and as the only Asian imperial power of that otherwise exclusive club of European empires, seen as somewhat of a gate crasher or interloper, although ironically its primary crash course was for collision with the other non-European imperial power, the United States.
Japan narrowly escaped being the subject of an imperial power or powers that was the fate of the rest of Asia. When European imperialism first tentatively reached east Asia about three centuries before in the Age of Discovery, Japan decided it was having none of that and famously sealed itself off in isolationism.
That couldn’t last forever, as European imperialism had bigger guns in the Age of Imperialism – and the United States forced Japan to open up with classic gunboat diplomacy (in the literal form of a fleet commanded by Commodore Perry), starting Japan’s love-hate relationship with the United States as an object of admiration and awe but also potential hostility and rivalry.
That saw Japan revive its emperor within a new centralized government in the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and adapt all those features of European nations that led to their imperial power – in the smartest possible way by following world leaders in their fields, notably building their navy on expertise from Britain and their army on expertise from France, before swapping out the latter for Germany after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.
And what more distinctive European feature was there than an empire? So Japan set about acquiring that too – modestly at first, from its immediate neighbors, starting with the Ryukuan island kingdom in 1879. By 1894, it was powerful enough to join in that other distinctive European feature in the nineteenth century – pawning Qing China, which it did in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, acquiring Taiwan, and continuing to use China as its punching bag thereafter.
However, its victory and claims against China saw it clash with European imperial powers keen to maintain the balance of power and their spheres of influence there – foremost among them Russia, looming largest against Japan in north-east Asia. That aligned Japan with Britain, which was similarly concerned with Russia, and they sealed their alignment with a formal alliance in 1902 – which allowed Japan to take on Russia directly and win in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
The spoils of victory in that war saw Japan revisit its ambitions in Korea, but this time successfully annexing it – where they were notoriously brutal ruling over it. Not Belgium-brutal, but still up there even on the scale of brutality in the Age of Imperialism.
Japan made more gains at the expense of Germany in and after the First World War – and at the expense of increasing hostility with the United States, prompting Britain to abandon the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
Which brings us perhaps to most of the oddities of the Japanese Empire, as it sowed the seeds of its rise to one of the largest territorial empires in history at the same time as the seeds of its decline as one of the shortest-lived empires in history. All the while on the path of evil empire, ultimately one that was dying and insane.
Yet on that path and even before, certainly from the Russo-Japanese War, Japan styled itself as anti-imperialist, in the tradition of those two other states that styled themselves as anti-imperialist while engaging in imperialism of their own, the United States and the Soviet Union.
Of course, for Japan this was against European imperialism – propagandizing their own imperialism with slogans such as “Asia for the Asians” and as the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, although they weren’t too big on the co- part of that title, more their own prosperity sphere. Those claims were not without some justice, but they were also with brutality and violence that eclipsed those of European imperialism as well as making their previous occupation of Korea seem like a picnic
Ultimately the Japanese Empire fell to defeat, primarily by the United States in the Pacific War – and Japan was not only shorn of its empire, but itself occupied by an American shogunate, albeit one that proved extraordinarily and unexpectedly enlightened in its role in the equally extraordinary and unexpected revival of Japan as an economic superpower, for a period second only to the United States itself. Which of course has seen Japan also accused of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism, substituting economic power for military victory in controlling other nations.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Europe at the height of Axis success by Gorak ten-en for Wikipedia “Nazi Germany” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
(5) NAZI EMPIRE
The evil empire par excellence. Although that is an overstatement – it was barely an empire.
Despite styling itself as the Third Reich after the first German “empire” or Reich of a thousand years, the Holy Roman Empire, it didn’t even last as long as the second, Wilhelmine Germany.
In total, Nazi Germany lasted only twelve years from 1933 to 1945 – for which it could only be described as imperial, at least beyond its original borders, for a little over half of that, from 1938 onwards. Well, perhaps from its involvement in the Spanish Civil War before that, although that failed to yield a reliable client state – and it was arguably preparing for its imperialism from its very inception.
And even for war beyond its borders from 1939 to 1945, the second half of that period was defending or retreating from conquests made in the first half – before its complete collapse, defeat, unconditional surrender, occupation and partition. So the Nazi empire was about three years of conquests, albeit impressive, then defending or retreating from those conquests before falling altogether.
The evil part, however, is not an overstatement. It can probably best be summed up by the Encyclopedia of Fantasy’s comparison of the First World War with the Second – “despite the attempts of propagandists on both sides, no wholly evil figure emerges from World War I to occupy the world’s imagination, no one of a viciousness so unmitigated that it seems almost supernatural; Hitler, on the other hand, has all the lineaments of a Dark Lord, and the Reich he hoped to found was a parody of the true Land”.
The Nazi empire, short-lived as it was, consisted of its conquests and occupied territory in Europe and north Africa – as well as its allies that started off resembling client states at best and finished off resembling hostages at worst.
And it was notorious for all the worst features of empire – war, extortion, plunder, slavery and genocide – arguably as a form of hyper-imperialism, both in intent and scale, more so by being crammed into a few short years.
It couldn’t even aspire to the caustic observation of empire by the Roman historian Tacitus through the mouthpiece of a Caledonian chieftain – that they make a desert and call it peace. Rather they made a desert and called it war.
The most that could be said for it was that its occupation of western Europe, extortionate as it was from the outset, was relatively benign – relatively that is, compared to its occupation of eastern Europe, brutal or genocidal as it was from the outset
“It has been argued, and not altogether frivolously, that the crucial German mistake of the Second World War was to have behaved atrociously to Poland and correctly to France when the reverse would have served German interests to better effect”.
On a related side note, I have never understood why the Germans crushed the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, rather than simply withdraw to leave it as a thorn in the Soviet side.
Ironically, there were strains of anti-imperialism within the Nazi empire, similar to those other modern imperial powers that styled themselves as anti-imperialist while creating empires or enacting imperialism of their own. That was particularly so as it opposed the British Empire and hence sporadically invoked or supported anti-imperialism against that empire, as well as its propaganda posing as defending itself (or Europe) from Soviet and American forms of imperialism.
But it couldn’t even do that right – as it was not particularly concerned with expressing such sentiments during its high tide of conquest, and they only came to the fore as it became increasingly desperate defending against its defeat.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Assyrian Empire 824-671 BC
(6) MESOPOTAMIA – AKKADIAN, ASSYRIAN & BABYLONIAN EMPIRES
Ur-imperialism.
The original imperialism – in that Mesopotamia was the origin (or one of the origins) of human civilization, and even more so, states.
Of course those states were necessarily on a small scale, as in the archetypal city-states of Sumerian civilization, and their imperialism was similarly on a small scale, as in city states conquering other city states or their neighbors.
In his book Against the Grain, James C Scott strikingly argues that such imperialism was ingrained (heh) in those states from their very foundations in grain agriculture as an instrument and means of state control, depending on various degrees of forced labor or extraction.
Whether or not that is the case, Sumerian city states warred against each other in what might be regarded as micro-imperialism or proto-imperialism.
Or as I introduced it, ur-imperialism – both as the term ur- is used to connote an ancestral prototype or primeval origin, and for the Sumerian city state of Ur.
One of the aspects of that ur-imperialism is, like many other features of subsequent civilizations, Sumerian civilization created or set the standard features of imperial or at least palace states, including monumental architecture – such as ziggurats! – and imperial or royal cults of leadership.
Ultimately, Mesopotamia evolved to imperialism on a larger scale – with its three namesake empires best known in general history. The Akkadian empire – best known for Sargon of Akkad – managed to conquer or unite all Mesopotamian city states in an area similar to modern Iraq, in the floodplains of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that defined Mesopotamia.
However, the Akkadian Empire pales in comparison to the biggest and most belligerent of Mesopotamian empires, the Assyrian Empire (or technically neo-Assyrian Empire, as I understand it was a resurgence of the Assyrian state) – indeed, the largest empire in world history to that date.
To be honest, I don’t know too much about the Assyrian Empire, other than it being portrayed as one of the evil empires that menaced the Israelites in the Bible – and also that Jonah was ordered to its capital Ninevah by God before disobeying and being swallowed by the whale.
Although smaller than its predecessor, the Babylonian Empire (or again technically neo-Babylonian Empire) loomed larger in the Bible as one of its ultimate symbols, if not the ultimate symbol, of evil empire, because of the so-called Babylonian captivity and exile of the Jews.
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion”.
Egypt and Babylon are the two famous (or infamous) poles of captivity for the Jews, but the latter is more raw in the Bible – because it was more recent (and less mythic), but also because the Old Testament was mostly written or compiled at or about that time.
And the symbolism of Babylon as evil empire loomed even larger in Christianity, due to its use as a symbol for Rome in the Book of Apocalypse, with the enduring imagery of that hot harlot, Mystery Babylon.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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The maximum borders of the Egyptian empire 1450 BC by J.G. Bartholomew in 1913 (public domain image – Wikipedia “New Kingdom of Egypt”
(7) EGYPTIAN EMPIRE
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Even more so than Mesopotamia, Egypt set the standard for imperial state chic, not least in its monumental architecture and statuary, as well as its priesthoods and divine ruler personality cult.
Indeed, it is not too difficult to see the stamp of Egyptian imperial chic even to the twentieth century and beyond, as in the Soviet Union but with a secular party priesthood devoted to the cycles of history as opposed to the Nile and cult of socialism rather than the sun god. Less pyramids perhaps, but equally monumental architecture and statuary, as well as a tendency towards equally grandiose and gigantic projects.
Ironically, despite this imperial chic, Egypt was not so much of an empire itself, except of course to its own subjects, as it largely kept within its own borders to the Nile. The exception is the imperial Egypt of the New Kingdom, when it extended southwards to Nubia and northwards through the Levant – under pharaohs such as Rameses, whose title in Greek gave us the figure in Shelley’s poem.
Also ironically, Egypt has consistently played an important role within empires, but more as imperial prize rather than ruling empire itself – starting with its conquest by Assyrian, Persian and Macedonian empires in turn.
The last also reveals something of an odd recurring tendency, for foreign invaders or subjects from an empire conquering or ruling Egypt to break away from that empire with their own dynasty within Egypt, which is then effectively regarded as Egyptian.
First and foremost among those was the Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by Alexander’s general Ptolemy as a successor state of the Macedonian empire and regarded as the last dynasty of ancient Egypt. It was the dynasty that gave history Egypt’s most famous female monarch, Cleopatra – also Egypt’s last reigning monarch, before its fall to the Roman Empire. Indeed, its fall transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
Kudos to Cleopatra, however, for almost pulling all a second breakaway dynasty based in Egypt, this time from the Roman Empire in its eastern half, through her alliance with Mark Antony. Yes – it was a long shot but it’s tempting to imagine the counterfactual of their victory, perhaps anticipating the eastern Roman Empire by three centuries, except from Alexandria rather than Constantinople, with Greek as its lingua franca at an earlier date. Or alternatively something like the short-lived breakaway Palmyrene empire under Zenobia two centuries ahead of the Crisis of the Third Century.
Egypt then became an imperial prize for the Roman Empire – and its richest, the proverbial breadbasket of its empire. That always strikes me as strange from my perspective of contemporary Egypt and its comparative poverty – but then that is part of the more general strange feature that the Roman Empire’s eastern or southern African and Asian provinces were richer than its western and northern European provinces, the reverse of our contemporary perspective.
From there, it was briefly a battlefield between the eastern Roman (or Byzantine) empire and the resurgent Persian (or Sassanid) empire, before falling to the Arab conquest that defeated one and conquered the other.
Egypt remained in the hands of one caliphate after another, but rose to new prominence as the seat of power for the Fatimid Caliphate. The Fatimids did not quite fall within that recurring tendency for Egyptian breakaway dynasties, except perhaps in the last stages of their decline when their rule was effectively confined to Egypt – but the Mamluks did, the slave mercenary military case that rose to rule their own Sultanate in Egypt and beyond, even famously defeating the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalat in 1260.
The Mamluks declined in turn, but their role was replayed by Albanian mercenaries with Egypt as a province in the Ottoman Empire, led by their commander Muhammed Ali Pasha, who founded his own dynasty, nominally subject to but effectively independent from the Ottoman Empire.
Egypt became a protectorate of the British Empire, as Egypt again rose to prominence as an imperial prize, not for its agriculture but for the newly constructed Suez Canal as maritime trade route.
And once again ironically, Egypt and the Suez Canal subsequently rose to prominence as the imperial humiliation of the British Empire, with the Suez Crisis in 1956 – often cited as one of the end points of the British Empire.
We’re not quite done with Egypt and its imperial ironies yet – as finally modern Egypt echoed the imperial heights of its ancient New Kingdom with the short-lived United Arab Republic, when it formed a sovereign union with Syria from 1958 to 1961.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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Carthaginian dependencies and protectorates through the Punic Wars (public domain image – Wikipedia “Ancient Carthage”)
(8) PHOENICIAN & PUNIC EMPIRES
The Phoenicians rose to prominence among the Canaanites after the Bronze Age Collapse as the thalassocracy par excellence to dominate the Mediterranean and to influence classical Western civilization.
They earn special mention as with one notable exception they weren’t really an empire. Indeed, they weren’t even really a single ‘nationality’ or state, but an agglomeration of city-states like Sumer before them, located on the Levantine coast (mostly in modern Lebanon) – with the most prominent being Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos.
Of these, Tyre rose to become the richest and most powerful, famed for its purple dye that became synonymous with imperial chic – particularly through its use by the Roman emperor. Under its ruling priest Ithobaal from 887 to 856 BC, it even took a shot at expanding its territory to other Phoenician states, coming the closest the Phoenicians ever did to a unitary territorial state.
So if the Phoenicians didn’t really have an empire or even a single state, why the special mention at all?
Well, firstly there remains the history of Phoenician maritime and mercantile power, indeed the sole such power in the region for several centuries – arguably the precursor of what might be styled as economic neo-imperialism.
Interestingly, they combined maritime power with proto-industrialism. Like the Greek city-states which rose in parallel with them, they had few natural resources – apart from the lumber (or cedar) for which they were famed – so they specialized in craft, construction, and manufacture, for which they were also famed in contemporary literary works from the Bible to Homer.
With that maritime and mercantile power came cultural influence, best known of which is the oldest verified alphabet, but the full extent of their influence on classical Western civilization is still being discovered – for example, the “orientalization” of “Greek cultural and artistic conventions”.
However, “as a mercantile power concentrated along a narrow coastal strip of land, the Phoenicians lacked the size and population to support a large military”, and hence “increasingly fell under the sway of foreign rules” from “neighboring empires – except for their colonies, which brings me to my next point…
Secondly, there was the history Phoenician colonization, overlapping and in rivalry with classical Greek colonization – similarly founding colonies and trading posts, mostly of limited size but of impressive range throughout the Mediterranean coastline. The Greeks may have eclipsed them in the eastern Mediterranean, but the Phoenicians continued to predominate in the western Mediterranean, not least one colony founded by Tyre known to history as Carthage. Which brings me to my third point…
Thirdly, there was that one notable exception to the Phoenicians not really being an empire and that was the empire of the Phoenician colony that effectively took over the other colonies in the western Mediterranean and eclipsed the original Phoenician city-states, even Tyre as the city-state that founded it – Carthage and its Carthaginian or Punic empire.
Like the power that rivalled and ultimately destroyed it as the predominant power in the western Mediterranean – Rome – Carthage was an imperial republic. Before it lost out to the Rome that it mirrored as a republic – as it also mirrored the maritime and mercantile power of the original Phoenician city states – Carthage gradually expanding its economic and political hegemony across the western Mediterranean through a network of “colonies, vassal states and satellite states” that “controlled the largest territory in the region”.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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Athens and its Delian League vs Sparta and its Peloponnesian League at the outset of the Peloponnesian War – map by Marysas (from E Levy) for Wikipedia “Delian League” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
(9) GREEK – ATHENIAN EMPIRE & SPARTAN HEGEMONY
Athenian empire vs Spartan hegemony.
We usually (and correctly) think of the Roman Empire as the imperial template in Western culture, but this can mislead us into overlooking the Greek imperial template in Western culture. No – I’m not talking the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great, although that too was influential, but the classical Greek city states, particularly the opposing Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony of the Peloponnesian War.
Of course, similarly to the archetypal city-states of Sumerian civilization, their imperialism was on a small scale – city states ruling other city states or their colonies.
And it tended not to call itself a formal empire as such. Indeed, in this it was a remarkably far-reaching imperial template, not so much for imperialism but neo-imperialism. Where the Roman imperial template set the model for imperialism from the fall of the western empire through to the European maritime empires, the Greek imperial template set the model for neo-imperialism from the European maritime empires onwards.
The Athenian empire evolved from the Delian League, an alliance of Greek cities led by Athens against Persia after the Greek-Persian Wars, based on Athenian naval supremacy and named (in modern historiography) after the sacred island of Delos, “where congresses were held in the temple and where the treasury stood until, in a symbolic gesture, Pericles moved it to Athens in 454 BC”.
That last part of moving the Delian treasury to Athens marked the point where the heavy-handed control by Athens of the Delian League evolved into an Athenian empire, where Athens began to use the League’s funds for its own purposes and there were conflicts with or outright rebellions by less powerful League members.
Essentially members of the League were given a choice of either offering armed forces or paying taxes into the treasury. Most states chose the tax, which now doubled up as leaving them effectively disarmed while paying taxes or tribute to Athens. In the words of the classical historian Thucydides, ” it was correspondingly easy” for Athens “to reduce any that tried to leave the confederacy” – that is, crush members that tried to revolt or secede.
Thucydides dramatized just how heavy-handed Athens could be in the famous Melian Dialogue, often invoked by the so-called school of realism in international relations for its maxim that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must”. Thucydides put that maxim in the mouths of his imagined Athenian emissaries when giving their ultimatum to the neutral island of Melos – surrender and join the League, paying tribute to Athens, or be destroyed.
One might well see the template from this Athenian “empire” or Delian League for the style or techniques of modern neo-imperialism or European maritime empire – even more so when one recalls that the Athenian state was democratic, in the style of so-called democratic empires, “a political state which conducts its internal affairs democratically but externally its policies have a striking resemblance to imperial rule”.
Interestingly, American democracy initially echoed classical Athenian democracy, in that both were also slave-owning societies and excluded women from politics.
Its opposing counterpart, Sparta, was authoritarian at heart but was also shy of formal empire with its Spartan hegemony. Particularly after its victory in the Peloponnesian War, it too could prove equally heavy-handed – establishing many of the pro-Spartan foreign governments throughout the Aegean and also establishing many Spartan garrisons.
Just as I tend to see the Peloponnesian War between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta underlying the grand ideological conflict in Western civilization, so too I am tempted to see the Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony resembling the rival United States and Soviet Union in the Cold War, except with victory reversed.
However, there was a deeper template, from which the Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony arose in part, and that was the long history of classical Greek colonization, a precursor of subsequent settler colonialism.
Essentially, Greek cities founded other cities on a prolific scale throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea coastlines, except in the western Mediterranean where they came up against the Phoenicians and their colonies (in what would become Carthage and its territories), from 750 to 550 BC.
The Greek cities or colonies often became strong city states in their own right, independent of their founding city or cities and often even rivalling them in influence – as in Sicily and southern Italy, to the extent that the Romans called the area Magna Graecia or Great Greece.
I am not familiar enough with the history of Greek colonization to comment on the extent that it was imperial in terms of displacing or dominating any inhabitants in the area of their colonies. However, it certainly had an impact that is occasionally characterized as cultural imperialism – Greek cities spread Greek culture.
However, I would go further – that Western civilization as a whole is effectively a Greek colony.
An analogy that is commonly drawn in modern history is to cast the British and their empire as the Greeks to the Romans of the United States, albeit American imperialism might be styled as closer to that of the Delian League (and its original democratic polity as closer to that of Athens).
RATING: 4 STARS****
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Extent of Attila’s empire based on a map from Empires and Barbarians: The Birth of Europe by Peter Heather 2010 – map by Slovenski Volk for Wikipedia “Huns” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
(10) HUNNIC EMPIRE
A classic nomadic empire founded by horse blitzkrieg of mounted nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes that should be ranked as the fourth great empire of late antiquity and menacing the other three – Persian Empire as well as eastern and western Roman empires – in turn.
(Although I tend to agree with the observation of Youtuber Tominus Maximus that the Huns generally hated the eastern Roman empire but liked the western Roman empire. Well, you know, until they didn’t.)
However, despite its classic status and notoriety, the Hunnic Empire remains somewhat nebulous because like most nomadic empires, they preferred riding to writing – so we are mostly reliant on what other people wrote about them.
Apparently according to tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River. Their origins remain uncertain, other than broadly sweeping across central Asia – with some theories resembling an extent almost as wide as the Mongols, particularly those theories linking them to the Xongniu and other nomadic peoples that menaced China, often stylized as Huns, such as in the Disney version of Mulan.
They are also often linked to other nomadic tribes, sometimes also stylized as Huns, that menaced the Persian Empire and even India. It’s not helped by the tendency, as with the Scythians, to identify or name nomadic tribes across Eurasia as Huns – both before and after the classical Hunnic Empire.
Classical sources have them suddenly appear in Europe or west of the Volga from 370 AD – where they triggered the Migration Period or at least the westward movement of Goths into the Roman Empire and bringing about the latter’s fall.
By 430 AD, they had “established a vast but short-lived empire on the Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire” – with various Germanic or other tribes “either under Hunnic hegemony or fleeing from it”. The Hunnic empire largely crystallized around the charismatic leadership of the most notorious Hun, Attila – and rapidly disintegrated after his death.
Under Attila, the Huns won not just peak empire but also the historical infamy of being extremely barbaric and ruthless towards their adversaries. Although I have to admit Attila being identified as the Scourge of God earns him badass points.
From their empire, the Huns raided the more robust eastern Roman Empire, invading the Balkans and threatening the capital Constantinople, with little to stop them until the emperor opted for the pragmatic policy of paying tribute for peace.
The Huns then invaded the western Roman Empire in 451, with Attila claiming the sister of the western Roman emperor as his bride and half the empire as his dowry – with some fairness, as she had swiped right on him in preference to her betrothal to a Roman senator.
However, there the Huns encountered the general Flavius Aetius, often hailed as “the last of the Romans”. Ironically, Aetius had effectively risen to power by relying on the Huns – with whom he had previously been a court hostage – as his allies. Now he had to face off against his former allies as Attila invaded Gaul, drawing on the waning resources of an increasingly vestigial empire to field one of its last major military operations in alliance with the Visigoths and its other Germanic allies – and won, defeating the Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.
Or not, as historians dispute how conclusive a victory it was. Attila and the Huns withdrew from Gaul, only to invade Italy the following year – and there was little Aetius could do to stop them there, except for the Pope to ask Attila nicely if he would leave without sacking Rome.
Surprisingly, it worked. Attila left Italy – albeit probably more for lack of supplies or expectations of tribute as well as an eastern Roman campaign against the Huns in their homeland. He died the following year, aborting his plans for further campaigns against either empire – as with the Mongols, Europe was saved from invasion by a fortunately timed death (from Attila partying too hard celebrating his latest wedding to his hot new bride).
The Huns took one last shot at the eastern Roman Empire under one of Attila’s sons in 469, vanishing from history with their defeat.
However, much about the Hunnic Empire remains mysterious, even the empire’s full territorial extent – some maps tentatively suggest their empire extended to the Baltic, but we just don’t know. Similarly, we can only speculate on why Attila agreed to leave Italy, setting aside papal mojo. We only have glimpses of fascinating aspects of the Huns such as their practice of cranial deformation, with their subsequent appearance no doubt adding to their fearsome reputation.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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The Republic of Venice with its Domini de Terraferma and Stato da Mar – its main territories in Italy and overseas by Ariel196 for Wikipedia “Venice” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
(11) VENETIAN EMPIRE (697 – 1797)
Technically the Venetian Republic – La Serenissima or the Most Serene Republic of Venice – it was another imperial republic in the style of Rome, indeed with quite the few parallels between them.
Of course, the world had moved on from the days that an Italian city-state could dominate the peninsula and then the Mediterranean (and beyond) in the style of Rome, but Venice took a damn good swing at it, punching remarkably above its weight.
The parallels with Rome extend to a similarly legendary founding – the Republic dated its founding back to 697 AD (hence my starting date for the Venetian Empire), albeit predated by Venice itself reputed to have been settled by refugees from the Huns and Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire seeking the safety of its islands.
The Republic was founded as the Duchy of Venetia within the eastern Roman Empire’s Exarchate of Ravenna – its leader’s title of Doge originating from the Latin for dux (or duke) as an imperial provincial title. It became increasingly independent as the exarchate crumbled, until effectively achieving de facto independence because of an agreement between the Holy Roman Empire and the eastern Roman Empire.
Its independence corresponded with its rise as imperial republic in its own right. Venice relied on the tried-and-true methods of a smaller state – particularly city and island states – to punch above its weight, namely naval power fuelled by wealth from maritime trade, as well as cunning and sharp practice in diplomacy. That wealth was also fuelled by its art, craft and manufacture – historian Geoffrey Blainey’s observation that Venice was like the Silicon Valley of its time, in things like glassmaking, has always stuck in my mind.
Indeed, while it resembled Rome’s classical (and imperial) republic, it also followed the classical Greek model of a maritime colonial empire with a focus on its naval power and trade, while in many ways pre-empting the European colonial – and neocolonial – empires of which it was a predecessor.
And like all empires, even maritime or mercantile ones, it was in the business of territorial expansion – “During its history it annexed a large part of north-east Italy, Istria, Dalmatia, the coasts of present-day Montenegro and Albania as well as numerous islands in the Adriatic and eastern Ionian seas. At the height of its expansion, between the 13th and 16th centuries, it also governed the Peloponnese, Crete and Cyprus, most of the Greek islands, as well as several cities and ports in the Mediterranean”.
Of course, its rise as imperial republic caused it to come into conflict with rival Italian city-states, notably Genoa, but also the eastern Roman empire. Venice had a weird love-hate symbiotic-parasitic relationship with the eastern Roman Empire – evolving from an imperial province and vassal in the empire’s reconquest of Italy, to ally and close associate of the empire effectively as its navy and trading house, and ultimately to rival and perfidious adversary in the Fourth Crusade.
In some ways, that symbiosis involved Venice as almost the inversion of Constantinople – the heart of a mercantile empire which waxed and rose, sucking from the blood of the latter as it waned and fell. Although ironically, Venice found its fortune to be little more symbiotic with Constantinople than it would have liked after all – as the rival declining eastern Roman empire was replaced by the new rival rising Ottoman Empire.
Even then, its remarkable to think that Venice as a city-state held its own going toe-to-toe with the Ottoman superpower for four centuries or so of Ottoman-Venetian Wars (that commenced even before the fall of Constantinople), albeit inevitably losing territory to the Ottomans.
The rise of the Ottoman Empire also indirectly prompted one of the primary factors behind the decline (and fall) of the Venetian Republic and the Mediterranean in general – the decline of Mediterranean trade relative to the Atlantic as the latter opened in the European Age of Discovery and conquest of the Americas. Even so, the Venetian Republic endured until 1797 when it finally fell to the French under Napoleon.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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Map of the Carolingian in 814 AD – Wikipedia “Holy Roman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
(12) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE (800 / 962 – 1806 AD)
The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
The thousand year Reich, subsequently styled as the First Reich – which means I’ve featured all three Reichs in my special mentions.
Or as Voltaire famously quipped – neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.
The Holy Roman Empire had some substance to it, but also embodied an idea – or worse, a snub by Pope Leo III to the eastern Roman Empire and its empress Irene by crowning Charlemagne as Roman emperor, in Rome no less, in what must surely rank as a medieval meme.
Of course, underlying that idea was the enduring influence or template of the western Roman Empire, a legacy which many in the European kingdoms or nations subsequent to it sought to revive, even at the expense of the eastern Roman Empire.
That idea had some force to it under Charlemagne, who had achieved the largest unified polity in western Europe since the Roman Empire – although his empire should more accurately be styled as the Frankish Empire- but it soon fell apart after it was divided between his sons.
From that division, Germany emerged as a separate realm from the Frankish Empire, largely from the eastern Frankish empire, and it was from Germany that the Holy Roman Empire truly arose. Historians tend to distinguish the Frankish Empire from the Holy Roman Empire proper, with Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962, even if that cuts down that thousand year Reich (from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800) to a mere 844 years.
Again, the idea had some force to it under Otto and his successors, even if it oscillated between that idea as reflected in its title as Roman Empire and the reality as reflected in its title as Empire or Kingdom of the Germans. It was still a snub to the eastern Roman empire, who were deeply insulted by the Pope crowning Roman Emperors – although in fairness, “the Pope was the only one of these people who actually lived in Rome itself” so “it could be argued he was the most entitled to decide who was Emperor of the Romans”.
The actual term Holy Roman Empire began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich or Frederick Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later, and under him, the idea had some teeth to it (as well as transforming him into a legendary figure) and continued to do so until his grandson Friedrich II, who attempted to run an Italian-German empire from Sicily.
That reflected the internal struggles within the Empire – with German nobles, with Italian cities or communes, and above all, with the Papacy. “The Empire and the Papacy, both competing for secular and religious power over all Christendom without the means to enforce it, essentially destroyed each other’s credibility. This was not helped by a fairly consistent policy of Emperors to neglect the basis of their power in Germany to grasp at its shadow in Italy – because in order for a German king to become Emperor, he had to go to Italy and be crowned by the pope”.
From there, the empire that had originated as a meme essentially devolved back into one – falling into irrelevancy or worse, the joke of an empire “that mostly clung to life because the ruler of Austria wanted to call himself an emperor and the rest of Europe was willing to humor him”. As Marx quipped, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
And above all, it was incredibly convoluted, both in history and structure – an emperor elected by powerful regional lords and clergy, in an empire that went from 300 to 1800 “sovereign kingdoms, duchies, free cities, and other entities”.
Hence Voltaire’s famous quip about it – and Napoleon doing away with the whole dog’s breakfast of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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Map of the Teutonic Order around 1300 by Marco Zanoli for Wikipedia “Military order (religious society)” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
(13) TEUTONIC KNIGHTS (1190 -1810)
It’s time to splash out with some wilder entries, as I usually do in my special mentions – although this entry is not as wild as you might think.
Yes – it’s pretty wild to think of a religious order, even one founded as a military society during the Crusades, as an empire. The Teutonic Knights or Teutonic Order was founded as the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem.
But perhaps not that wild – after all, the Crusaders and their states or military orders served as precursors of European imperialism, as for example with the Reconquista leading directly into the Spanish Conquest of the Americas.
And the Teutonic Knights were arguably the most imperial of military orders, even carving out their own state – the State of the Teutonic Order – in the Baltic during the Northern Crusades. Although let’s not get too much in the past tense as the Teutonic Order still exists, albeit purely religious since 1810 after the military order was disbanded by Napoleon.
Also, I’m on a roll with German imperialism – I’ve managed to include all three German empires (from First to Third Reich) in my special mentions, so this is a bonus round for the imperialism of this definitively German military order, reflected in its very name. That’s pretty much it for German imperialism, except for a few weird African or American colonial ventures by German states prior to modern Germany (Brandenburg-Prussia, Augsburg, and so on).
Anyway, “after Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East”, the Order moved to Transylvania, where it got the taste for blood as an empire (heh) – attempting to build their own state before the Pope and the King of Hungary intervened to boot them out.
If at first you don’t succeed – try, try again. Which the Order did in Prussia as well as the present-day Baltic states, creating the aforementioned State of the Teutonic Order during the Northern Crusades (merging with the Livonian Brothers of the Sword)
From there, the Teutonic Knights “initiated numerous campaigns against its Christian neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic…and they also became a naval power in the Baltic Sea” but waned in power after being decisively defeated by a Polish-Lithuanian army at the Battle of Grunwald.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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(14) EAST INDIA COMPANY (1600 – 1874)
It’s strange to think that most of the heavy lifting of the British Empire in India was done not by the British Crown or government, but by a company – indeed, to the extent that the British Empire in India was effectively that company. But what a company!
That is of course the East India Company – the British East India Company that is, not the Dutch East India Company or one of the other prolific East India Companies established in Europe (Danish, Portuguese, Genoese, French, Swedish and Austrian).
At its peak, the British East India Company was the largest company in the world and accounted for half the trade in the world.
So yes, you might say, that’s big – reflecting that they started with a Crown charter giving them a monopoly on English trade east of Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan – but it was just a company doing company things like trade, wasn’t it?
Well, for the East India Company, company things included having its own armed forces, including its own navy – the Bombay Marine – and three ‘presidency’ armies – the Bengal Army, the Madras Army and the Bombay Army – “totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time”.
They also included that the company “eventually came to rule large areas of present day Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions”, either directly or indirectly through “princely states tied to it by treaty”.
That was particularly so after the Battle of Plassey – the Anglicized form of Palashi or Polashi – when the Company, under the leadership of the famous Robert Clive or “Clive of India”, won against the Nawab of Bengal and the Nawab’s French allies in 1757.
However that all fell apart literally a century later, with the Indian or Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-1858, named for the sepoys that were the mainstay of the East India Company’s power – “locally raised, mostly Muslim, western trained and equipped soldiers that changed warfare in present day South Asia…a few thousand company sepoys, time and again, took on vastly superior Mughal forces numerically and came out victorious”.
Following this rebellion, the British Crown effectively took over the East India Company in India (by the Government of India Act 1858) – “assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies” – although the company survived as a financial shadow of its former self until it was formally dissolved (by the East India Stock Redemption Act 1874).
The Company also had its hand in Asia beyond the Indian subcontinent, not least competing with the Dutch for spice from Indonesia – and trading opium to China, prompting the Opium Wars.
“Wait – it’s all companies?”
“Always has been.”
As I said, it is strange to think of a company as the vanguard of British imperialism in India, but it might be observed how often that was the case in Western imperialism – and indeed, some might observe even more so for Western neo-imperialism. United Fruit and banana republics, anyone?
But yes – it was deeply ingrained in the DNA of European or Western imperialism that much of it was effectively private entrepreneurial rather than public governmental. That is, it was done by private individuals – including literal privateers or pirates – and corporations or organizations, albeit typically under government charters.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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The Ethiopian Empire in 1952 by Amde Michael – Wikipedia “Ethiopian Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
(15) ETHIOPIAN EMPIRE (1270 – 1974)
“By the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Elect of God”
Iron like a Lion in Zion!
Special mention shout-out for the empires of sub-Saharan Africa – of which there are a plethora from which to choose.
The Ethiopian Empire may not seem an obvious first choice – with the Mali Empire, under Mansu Musa, reputed to be the richest man in history, and the Songhai Empire, vying for the wealthiest and largest empires in Africa respectively.
However, the Ethiopian Empire was the longest lasting empire in Africa, enduring seven centuries from the Middle Ages in 1270(!) to the Cold War, with its messianic emperor Haile Selassie one of the last reigning emperors in history, deposed in 1974(!!) by communist revolution. Ethiopia was one of the last countries in the world to have the title for emperor as its head of state, along with Iran and Japan (as well as another empire we’ll mention later in these special mentions) – which left Japan as the only such nation after the 1970s.
Well longest-lasting apart from its enigmatic predecessor, the kingdom of Aksum, which is said to have lasted eight centuries from 100 AD to 900 AD and was styled as one of the great powers of antiquity.
Back to the Ethiopian Empire, sometimes styled as Abyssinia, it has a history that is almost literally the stuff of legend and literally the stuff of religion – starting with its imperial dynasty known as the Solomonic Dynasty, claiming descent from the last Aksumuite king and ultimately the Biblical duo of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba themselves, tracing Sheba to Ethiopia.
With that Biblical pedigree, it remained staunchly committed to its ancient form of Christianity, despite being surrounded by hostile forces in the Horn of Africa, often identified as the source of the European legend of the mysterious non-European Christian monarch Prester John.
It’s odd to think of Ethiopian crusades against Islamic armies to become the dominant power of the Horn of Africa but that’s effectively what happened – and not too far in time from European crusades.
It’s also odd to think of Ethiopia in decline after that then warding off Islamic invasions, firstly with the help of the Portuguese – and then on their own against the Ottomans. It lost its Red Sea coast to the Ottomans – but then had its golden age, before falling into its own version of a shogunate.
It’s again odd to think of the Ethiopian Empire as an imperial participant in the Scramble for Africa but it was – an expansionist power like the Zulus earlier, expanding into the modern borders of Ethiopia and defeating a rival European power, the Italians pushing down from Eritrea in the Battle of Adwa in 1896, but making it stick unlike the Zulus and preserving their independence, the only African nation to do so (apart from Liberia).
Of course, the Italians famously took another swing at it under Mussolini and won in a strange throwback to the Scramble for Africa, occupying Ethiopia until being defeated there by the British in the Second World War, which saw Emperor Haile Selassie return from exile.
Finally, it’s odd to see its last emperor – the same Haile Selassie – again become the stuff of legend and religion, as he was hailed as a literally messianic figure, the returned Messiah of the Bible, by the Rastafarian religious movement and reggae, hence the quotes opening this entry. To play on an old gag, they saw the God-Emperor of Mankind – and he was black.
Until of course the less poetically named Derg, essentially a military junta, decided he was not the Messiah but just a very naughty boy – and chose the religion of Marxist-Leninism instead.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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(16) AZTEC & INCA EMPIRES
The preeminent empires of pre-Columbian America, although sadly best known to history (and myself) as foils to the Spanish Empire – albeit because of defeats unparalleled in history for just how few Spanish forces conquered such populous empires in so short a span of time.
I have more knowledge of the Aztec Empire prior to the Spanish Conquest – if only for the lurid horror stories of its imperial religion of human sacrifice on a scale unprecedented in the region, or anywhere else for that matter. However, the nature and extent of Aztec human sacrifice is often disputed as historical propaganda – as indeed is the so-called Black Legend of anti-Spanish history when it comes to the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire – with some fairness on both sides.
The Inca Empire was the largest empire in pre-Colombian America, almost ten times larger than the Aztec Empire and perhaps two or three times as populous but not as brutal. The size of the Inca Empire is quite striking for an empire predominantly in mountainous highlands – “one of the greatest imperial states in human history” created and maintained “without the use of the wheel, draft animals, knowledge of iron or steel, or even a system of writing”. Or largely without money or markets apparently, like Star Trek but without the post-scarcity. Also one without the more characteristic grain cultivation of other agricultural states – instead cultivating potatoes.
Which makes its defeat even more striking than that of the Aztecs, particularly as the Spanish leader Francisco Pizarro started with about a third of the forces of his counterpart Cortes against the Aztecs – a mere 168 soldiers – and was over 60 years of age at the time. Now that’s how to spend your retirement years!
Although Pizarro was perhaps luckier in his timing with a civil war of succession to the Inca imperial throne – as well as capturing and holding the reigning Inca ruler hostage.
Of course, the primary factor for the fall of both empires was the disease or diseases spread ahead of the Spanish who brought them – and which ravaged the native American populations who had no acquired resistance to them. While that would seem to be the greatest scale for the role disease has played in the fall of empires, disease has played a recurring role in the decline or fall of other empires, including the Roman Empire – as is the subject of Plagues and Peoples by historian William H. McNeill.
I have less knowledge of the Inca Empire prior to Spanish Conquest, although that seems apt as it’s an empire that has a quality of mystery or at least mystique to it. That includes the legendary “lost cities of the Incas” to which they retreated as a vestigial empire – the neo-Inca state – as well as “periodic attempts by indigenous leaders to expel the Spanish colonists and re-create the Inca Empire until the late 18th century”.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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(17) COMANCHE EMPIRE & LAKOTA AMERICA
Yes, yes – they are literally book titles by Pekka Hämäläinen, specialist historian of native North Americans but arguably also empires as historical ideas or at least arguments, although I think that overstates both.
Of the two, the Comanche are the clearer imperial candidate. The Comanche tribal nation occupied territory – known to history as Comancheria – in New Mexico, west Texas and surrounding areas. The argument is that Comancheria, at the peak of its power from the 1750s to the 1850s, comprised an empire or form of imperialism while on the periphery of Spanish, Mexican and American power as well as avoiding the diseases that ravaged other native American tribes.
The game-changer was horses, as it was for the Eurasian nomadic tribes or empires before them, which increased their hunting range for buffalo and mobility for military power.
Eventually disease caught up with them and power of other nations, particularly the United States, moved closer to overwhelm them
The Comanche were not an isolated example as other native American tribes, such as the Lakota in the Great Plains, were able to adapt to the literal use of horsepower to similar effect of the Eurasian nomadic tribes or empires.
It is tempting to imagine a counterfactual where such tribes or tribal confederations swept across the North American plains like latter-day Mongols, but even with their adaptation to horses they were too little and too late in the face of the growing industrial power and population of the United States.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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Coronation of Bokassa – by way of fair use as it appears to be one of the few images or only image (by unknown photographer) to depict his coronation (with its Napoleonic inspiration), also referenced as such in J.M. Roberts The Triumph of the West
(18) CENTRAL AFRICAN EMPIRE (1976-1979)
History’s most ridiculous empire.
Also the last empire in Africa, subsequent to the fall of the Ethiopian Empire – and indeed the penultimate country in the world to have a head of state with the title of Emperor, leaving Japan as the last country standing with an Emperor.
The Central African Empire was achieved by the simple expedient of President Bokassa, military dictator of the Central African Republic, declaring himself Emperor and the republic an empire from 4 December 1976 to 21 September 1979.
Sadly, as head of state, he was able to conscript his hapless citizens in his imperial delusions. Also his state’s treasury, as he blew the equivalent of $20 million, a third of the country’s government income, on his coronation ceremony – modelled, like his imperial regalia and regime, on that of Napoleon Bonaparte.
His self-proclaimed empires relied on people playing along with it – not so much his own nation which had little choice about it, but the nation that had actually ruled it as an empire, France. Although that was primarily French President Giscard d’Estaing, who was bafflingly chummy with Bokassa. Of course, that may have had something to do with the diamonds and other gifts Bokassa gave him, ultimately resulting in scandal and election loss for Giscard d’Estaing.
Bokassa proved too embarrassing even for France when school riots led to massacres of civilians, prompting France to withdraw support and Bokassa cosied up to Gaddafi’s Libya instead – France then overthrew Bokassa in what has been called France’s last colonial expedition, Operation Barracuda.
Similarly, there were French and Napoleonic connections to two close runners-up for history’s most ridiculous empires, in the Americas in the nineteenth century rather than Africa in the twentieth – the short-lived Mexican and Haitian Empires.
There are actually two Mexican Empires – the First and Second Mexican Empire. The first is not so ridiculous, although it was short-lived and unique among former Spanish colonies winning independence – a brief monarchy from 1821 to 1823 after Mexico won its war of independence with the Spanish Empire, prompted by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain.
The second occurred from 1864 to 1867 when another Napoleon took another swing at it – this time by Napoleon’s less talented nephew, Napoleon III, who intervened in Mexico (in the Second French Intervention in Mexico) to install a puppet emperor.
These Mexican Empires echoed the earlier Haitian Empires – the first Haitian Empire, briefly created from 1804 to 1806 in its war on independence against Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, and the second from 1849 to 1859, with yet another President inspired by Napoleon declaring himself an emperor. Although at least the Second Haitian Empire did something imperial, invading the Dominican Republic – which had declared independence from Haiti in 1844 – in unsuccessful attempts to reconquer it.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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Emperor Norton in full dress uniform and military regalia, his hand on the hilt of a ceremonial sabre, 1875
(19) EMPIRE OF JOSHUA NORTON (1859-1880)
Emperor Norton I – Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
Joshua Norton – the man who essentially memed himself into being the first and last Emperor of the United States.
No – he’s not fictional but a real historical figure, albeit somewhat obscure these days but one of San Francisco’s most prominent citizens in the nineteenth century and has fascinated me since I first read about him (in the Illuminatus Trilogy).
And his empire…was not entirely fictional either. Sure – the consensus seems to be that he had a complete mental breakdown after he lost his fortune from commodities trading and real estate speculation, which had elevated him to one of San Francisco’s richest citizens, from being financially ruined by a deal gone bad.
And so he declared himself emperor of the United States by imperial proclamation in a letter to the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin newspaper in 1859 – which they published because they thought it was funny. Which it was.
How did the city of San Francisco receive it? That’s the funniest thing – they played along. Restaurants and businesses accepted his self-issued imperial currency, effectively providing their services free of charge in return for being able to proclaim his imperial patronage, as he went about his “duty” inspecting the city. The city did a thriving trade in souvenirs from his eccentric celebrity – even donating him a new imperial uniform to replace his old one, given to him by army officers.
At one point, an overzealous police officer arrested him to commit him for involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. What followed was a massive uproar from the public and newspapers – “let him be emperor if he wants to be” was the public outcry. One paper wrote “that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line”.
The Police Chief ordered him released, with a formal apology – which Emperor Norton graciously accepted by way of an imperial pardon for the officer – and thereafter police officers saluted him in the street.
He also used his imperial powers for good. One story told of him was that he had stopped a violently anti-Chinese race riot by interposing himself between the rioters and the hapless Chinese, praying the Lord’s Prayer. The story went that the rioters were so ashamed or embarrassed that they dispersed – and thereafter the residents of Chinatown were among his most loyal subjects.
After a “reign” of 21 years, he collapsed and died on the street. Despite legends of a hidden imperial fortune, he died in complete poverty – but one of the city’s clubs donated a fund for a casket and funeral procession, which was reported to have lined the streets with thousands of the city’s citizens.
I can only hope that my own breakdowns are accompanied by such imperial delusions of grandeur, published and received so warmly. Of course, it helped that Norton carried himself with a sense of genteel grace and nobility, more than a century removed from the city’s contemporary itinerant street figures – and that he lived modestly within his imperial means donated to him rather than some grift.
One of my favorite adaptations of Joshua Norton was in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman – where Dream gives Norton his imperial dream to ward off Despair and Desire. And as it turns out, Delirium, who observes to Dream “He’s not one of mine, is he? His madness keeps him sane”. Death is similarly charmed by him, telling him that out of all the kings and queens she had met (and she has met all of them), he is the one she liked best.
And to end on a personal note, when I visited Los Angeles and San Francisco, I gave myself a quest in each city, with my quest for the latter to seek out the tomb of Emperor Norton.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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(20) HOLLYWOOD & PLAYBOY
If the Capitol, Pentagon, or White House represents the American empire’s Augustus, then Hollywood is its Virgil. Or some might say, its Caligula or Nero. Or some even more wild voices might say, a decadent American empire all of itself, at odds with the Republic – Hollywood Babylon.
Or the point where the frontier became film, from the American West to the western, that archetype of American film which one might argue that all American films still are at heart. Or where the West became the road, where all roads lead to the road movie.
We might be at the wildest of my wild tier or bottom of my empire iceberg here but aren’t we just talking about the apex of American cultural imperialism or “soft power”? Well yes, but that doesn’t mean Hollywood can’t rank special mention as empire.
Of course, my preceding special mention for Joshua Norton might outrank this one as the wildest tier or bottom of my empire iceberg but perhaps that he made his imperial proclamation from San Francisco demonstrates a consistent Californian or West Coast exuberance when it comes to American empire – or empires.
I’m joking and I’m serious. After all, if a religious military order like the Teutonic Knights or even more so a company like the East India Company can each rank special mention in my top empires, why not the American entertainment industry for which Hollywood is a geographical focus and metonym? And outside Washington DC, the only other metonym of American influence or power as evocative as Hollywood is Wall Street (except perhaps for Silicon Valley, also on the West Coast and indeed in California).
Hollywood may not have the military and political control over territory as the Teutonic Knights, although it has often been the Homer of the Pentagon’s Iliad or overseas odysseys – but there does seem to be a certain metaphorical parallel between crusading military orders carving out their empire in the converted eastern frontier of Europe with American studios doing the same in their settled western frontier.
The better comparison might be with the East India Company – perhaps not quite to the extent of the latter’s monopoly in world trade (or the latter’s military force), but at least a similar dominance of the world entertainment industry and popular culture. Hollywood was fortunate in that its rise overlapped that of the United States to global dominance in the twentieth century.
That prompts a segue to the second part of this entry – Playboy as empire.
Yes – again I’m joking and serious. In jest, I strive to reserve my final special mention for some kinky entry where the subject permits – and I believe this fulfills my obligation.
In seriousness, like Hollywood – with which there is considerable overlap, at least in its magazine interviews, celebrity pictorial features, and guest list at the iconic Playboy Mansion – Playboy is a metonym for the American adult entertainment industry in general.
Some might argue that is essentially synonymous with Hollywood, particularly those who describe the latter as Hollywood Babylon – it even shared much the same Californian geographical focus, most famously San Fernando Valley. I’ve read that American predominance in the world adult entertainment industry is – or at least was – even more pronounced than that of Hollywood for the general entertainment industry, such that it might even rank (or have ranked) as the American East India Company in terms of monopoly and share of world trade. I don’t know how true or accurate that is but if so, it should be a source of patriotic pride – USA! USA! USA!
Setting aside that metonym for the adult entertainment industry in general, there’s something to be said for the corporate holdings of Playboy itself as an empire. Of course, you could say that of many companies or corporations, drawing parallels with empires in financial, economic and even cultural spheres. Indeed, McDonalds or Coca Cola would perhaps be the iconic archetypes, particularly as the symbolic vanguards of American influence or power, the contemporary equivalent of gunboat diplomacy.
But there’s something to be said of the American adult entertainment industry in general and Playboy in particular, as the global vanguard or dare I say it, missionary position, of American sexual liberalism – and libertinism, the American Sexual Revolution.
Also, I can’t help but identify parallels with the rise and fall of the Playboy magazine with the Roman empire, with Hugh Hefner as its founding Augustus – and its Tiberius, albeit in the Mansion rather than Capri and with bunnies instead of minnows.
Of course, that may be because I was raised on Playboy as much as Rome in my youth – literally, if covertly on my part, as my father had the entire collection of Playboy magazines, until my mother descended on them like the Vandals.
That last seems something of a microcosm for the fall of Playboy as print magazine (and clubs) – echoing the fall of the western empire in that, a little like the eastern empire, the Playboy corporate brand and holdings have survived the fall of the magazine, not least as a cultural icon. I believe that much like the Holy Roman Empire and various states claiming succession from the Roman Empire, some international versions of the magazine are still ongoing in print.
Dare I jest that Playboy will always be my Holy Roman Empire? Or like the Last of the Romans, I still hold to the Playboy lifestyle and Playboy philosophy – nay, the Playboy religion, my bacchae and golden ass, my holy grail of adventurous bed and questing beast, so much so I made pilgrimage to the Playboy Mansion when I visited Los Angeles.
RATING: 4 STARS****
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EMPIRES: TOP 10 (SPECIAL MENTION) – TIER LIST
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
(1) EUROPEAN EMPIRES
(2) RUSSIAN & SOVIET EMPIRES
(3) AMERICAN EMPIRE
(4) JAPANESE EMPIRE
(5) NAZI EMPIRE
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(7) MESOPOTAMIAN – AKKADIAN, ASSYRIAN & BABYLONIAN EMPIRES
(8) EGYPTIAN EMPIRE
(9) PHOENICIAN & PUNIC EMPIRES
(10) GREEK – ATHENIAN EMPIRE & SPARTAN HEGEMONY
(11) HUNNIC EMPIRE
(12) VENETIAN EMPIRE
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(13) TEUTONIC KNIGHTS
(14) EAST INDIA COMPANY
(15) AFRICA – ETHIOPIAN EMPIRE
(16) AMERICAS – AZTEC & INCA EMPIRES
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
(17) COMANCHE EMPIRE & LAKOTA AMERICA
(18) CENTRAL AFRICAN EMPIRE
(19) EMPIRE OF JOSHUA NORTON
(20) HOLLYWOOD & PLAYBOY
