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Early empires. Achaemenid Empire of Persia at its zenith. Maurya Empire of India at its greatest extent under Ashoka the Great. See also: Sino-Roman relations. Empires of the Classical period.

Roman Empire under Trajan 98— This would be the peak of the empire's territorial extent. Han Empire of China in 2 AD. Empires of the Post-classical period. Eastern Roman Empire in The expansion of the Rashidun Empire. The territory directly held by the Tang Empire of China and its sphere of influence. Mongol Empire in the 13th century. Serbian Empire in Almohad Empire — Bulgarian Empire in Main article: Colonial empire.

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. April Learn how and when to remove this template message. Empires of the Modern period. Red shows self-governing North American British colonies and pink shows claimed and largely indirectly controlled territories in Ottoman Empire at its greatest extent.

Spanish — Portuguese Empire of the Iberian Union — was the first global imperial entity. The map includes all Spanish territories, but only territories Portugal had during the Iberian Union. Russian Empire in became the second largest contiguous empire to have ever existed. The Russian Federation is currently the largest state on the planet.

In , the British Empire was the largest empire in history. Evolution of the French Empire in the 18th to the 20th century. German Empire in China's Great Qing Empire in Further information: Fall of the Western Roman Empire. Main article: Imperialism. The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met.

May Learn how and when to remove this template message. Main article: Carneiro's circumscription theory. Main article: American empire. See also: Pax Americana. List of empires List of largest empires List of former sovereign states List of transcontinental countries List of Hindu empires and dynasties.

Individual Rights and the Making of the International System. Cambridge University Press. ISBN Oxford Dictionary Online. Retrieved 21 October Retrieved In later use also: an extensive group of subject territories ultimately under the rule of a single sovereign state.

Cornell University Press. I favor the behavioral definition of empire as effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society. Social Science History. JSTOR The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 26 October Your Dictionary.

LoveToKnow, Corp. Collins English Dictionary. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. American Journal of Sociology. ISSN S2CID Kasperson, Roger E. University of Toronto Press. Archived from the original on September 29, Retrieved September 23, Stanford Report. World History Encyclopedia. Encarta Historical Essays. Somali Sultanate: the Geledi city-state over years. Transaction Publishers. Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Psalter and the Book of Prophets were adapted or "modernized" with special regard to their use in Bulgarian churches, and it was in this school that glagolitic writing was replaced by the so-called Cyrillic writing , which was more akin to the Greek uncial , which simplified matters considerably and is still used by the Orthodox Slavs. Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, — Cambridge Medieval Textbooks. Cyrillic preslav. Hussey, Andrew Louth Oxford History of the Christian Church.

Oxford University Press. Guzman, "Were the barbarians a negative or positive factor in ancient and medieval history? Morality and Justice in Islamic Economics and Finance. Edward Elgar Publishing. Harrison , Peter L. Berger Developing cultures: case studies. Edward G. London: Packard Humanities Institute. Archived from the original on The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2 August Retrieved 10 August A History of State and Religion in India. Stanford University Press.

Retrieved 16 February World civilization : a brief history 2nd ed. By common law, trail by jury, the King James Authorized Version of the Bible, the English language, and the British navy had been spread around the globe.

National Book Trust, India. Nation-states and nationalisms organization, ideology and solidarity. Polity Press. Prestowitz 's version it also "quacks" like a duck. Theory and Society. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The Journal of General Education. History of the Later Roman Empire. New York: Dover Publications. BBC News. December 13, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans. Hurt Third World Quarterly.

Belgian Science Policy. Archived from the original PDF on Oxford: Oxford University Press. European Union. Oxford Union. Economic and Political Weekly. Text available here Archived at the Wayback Machine , author link here. No Need to Run Away from Label". Archived from the original on January 23, Back cover. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Bibcode : BuAtS Translated by J. Theory, Culture, Society 11 : Wright, Moorhead ed.

Characteristics of the Present Age. The Frontier in American History. Murray, London, Putnam's Sons, , p Thompson, Lawrence G. Putnam's Sons, , p XI. Knopf, , pp. October Knopf, , p IX, p. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, , pp. Brill, , p XXI. I, pp. Brill, Peter J. Taylor, London: Belhaven Press, Gordon, Philip H. March 24, ". Reyna, Stephen P.

Crusade for Pan-Europe. A Study of History. London: Oxford University Press. Political Science Quarterly. The United States and Western Europe, —". Journal of Peace Research. These are controlled by the Moffs and Grand Moffs, who exercise power in the disparate regions of the galaxy. The planets of the Empire ware no longer given a say in the government, but now kept in line through fear of force.

While Palpatine is Emperor, it is the Imperial Ruling Council, a group of Imperial advisors, that run the Empire day to day and carry out Palpatine's will. The real power below the Emperor and his Advisers is in the hands of the Grand Moffs, like Wilhuff Tarkin, and the regional governors. This exercise of power is backed up by the use of state terrorism in the form of the Tarkin Doctrine, named for Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin.

The Doctrine threatens force rather than the use of force to control dissent; the Ghorman Massacre was an example. The justification for the Tarkin Doctrine was the excessive cost and impracticality of the use of pure terror in the form of billions upon billions of troops and spaceships to maintain order.

The instrument of enforcing the Doctrine is the Imperial Military, which includs the stormtroopers and a large fleet of intimidating warships like the Star Destroyers of the Imperial Navy and the All Terrain Armored Transports of the Imperial Army, all of which are intended in part to spread fear as well as destroy the enemy. This policy reached its zenith with the construction of the world-destroying Death Star.

But unlike the Galactic Senate, which had held both legislative and executive power, the Imperial Senate holds only legislative power and even with much of that held by the Galactic Senate now in the hands of the Emperor by orders of the Senate Constitution. The Senate can advise the Emperor and work on the Imperial budget. However, the Emperor can both introduce and veto Senate legislation, and both call and dismiss the Senate to meeting.. The Procurator of Justice is the head of the Imperial criminal justice system, charged with prosecuting political prisoners and administering sentences on entire worlds.

Though it is not known how many have held the post since it was established, the most famous Procurator was Hethrir, one of Darth Vader's greatest students. Ripperda accompanied this unexpected refusal, with a laboured epistle to his imperial friend. The hour was beyond the time in which he ought to have been in the imperial boudoir, to await the hand of his intended bride. Vienna capitulated to the French, and Napoleon established his head quarters in the imperial palace of Schoenbrunn.

The Imperial Parliament will never concede that right, nor will any Legislature similarly constituted. This chapel is situated near the Imperial Palace, to which it is connected by means of a covered gallery. New Word List Word List. Save This Word! During this time, European merchants had the ability to "roam the high seas and appropriate surpluses from around the world sometimes peaceably, sometimes violently and to concentrate them in Europe".

European expansion greatly accelerated in the 19th century. To obtain raw materials, Europe expanded imports from other countries and from the colonies. European industrialists sought raw materials such as dyes, cotton, vegetable oils, and metal ores from overseas.

Concurrently, industrialization was quickly making Europe the centre of manufacturing and economic growth, driving resource needs.

Communication became much more advanced during European expansion. With the invention of railroads and telegraphs, it became easier to communicate with other countries and to extend the administrative control of a home nation over its colonies. Steam railroads and steam-driven ocean shipping made possible the fast, cheap transport of massive amounts of goods to and from colonies. Along with advancements in communication, Europe also continued to advance in military technology.

European chemists made new explosives that made artillery much more deadly. By the s, the machine gun had become a reliable battlefield weapon. This technology gave European armies an advantage over their opponents, as armies in less-developed countries were still fighting with arrows, swords, and leather shields e. Anglophone academic studies often base their theories regarding imperialism on the British experience of Empire.

The term imperialism was originally introduced into English in its present sense in the late s by opponents of the allegedly aggressive and ostentatious imperial policies of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Supporters of "imperialism" such as Joseph Chamberlain quickly appropriated the concept.

For some, imperialism designated a policy of idealism and philanthropy; others alleged that it was characterized by political self-interest, and a growing number associated it with capitalist greed. Hobson developed a highly influential interpretation of imperialism that expanded on his belief that free enterprise capitalism had a negative impact on the majority of the population. In Imperialism he argued that the financing of overseas empires drained money that was needed at home.

It was invested abroad because of lower wages paid to the workers overseas made for higher profits and higher rates of return, compared to domestic wages. So although domestic wages remained higher, they did not grow nearly as fast as they might have otherwise.

Exporting capital, he concluded, put a lid on the growth of domestic wages in the domestic standard of living. By the s, historians such as David K. Fieldhouse [25] and Oron Hale could argue that "the Hobsonian foundation has been almost completely demolished. However, European Socialists picked up Hobson's ideas and made it into their own theory of imperialism, most notably in Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin portrayed Imperialism as the closure of the world market and the end of capitalist free-competition that arose from the need for capitalist economies to constantly expand investment, material resources and manpower in such a way that necessitated colonial expansion.

Later Marxist theoreticians echo this conception of imperialism as a structural feature of capitalism, which explained the World War as the battle between imperialists for control of external markets. Lenin's treatise became a standard textbook that flourished until the collapse of communism in — Some theoreticians on the non-Communist left have emphasized the structural or systemic character of "imperialism".

Such writers have expanded the period associated with the term so that it now designates neither a policy, nor a short space of decades in the late 19th century, but a world system extending over a period of centuries, often going back to Christopher Columbus and, in some accounts, to the Crusades.

As the application of the term has expanded, its meaning has shifted along five distinct but often parallel axes: the moral, the economic, the systemic, the cultural, and the temporal. Those changes reflect—among other shifts in sensibility—a growing unease, even great distaste, with the pervasiveness of such power, specifically, Western power.

Historians and political theorists have long debated the correlation between capitalism, class and imperialism. Much of the debate was pioneered by such theorists as J. While these non-Marxist writers were at their most prolific before World War I, they remained active in the interwar years.

Their combined work informed the study of imperialism and its impact on Europe, as well as contributing to reflections on the rise of the military-political complex in the United States from the s. Hobson argued that domestic social reforms could cure the international disease of imperialism by removing its economic foundation. Hobson theorized that state intervention through taxation could boost broader consumption, create wealth, and encourage a peaceful, tolerant, multipolar world order.

Walter Rodney , in his classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa , proposes the idea that imperialism is a phase of capitalism "in which Western European capitalist countries, the US, and Japan established political, economic, military and cultural hegemony over other parts of the world which were initially at a lower level and therefore could not resist domination. Imperialism has also been identified in newer phenomena like space development and its governing context.

Imperial control, territorial and cultural , is justified through discourses about the imperialists' understanding of different spaces. In Orientalism , Edward Said said that the West developed the concept of The Orient —an imagined geography of the Eastern world —which functions as an essentializing discourse that represents neither the ethnic diversity nor the social reality of the Eastern world.

That cultural differentiation was especially noticeable in the books and paintings of early Oriental studies , the European examinations of the Orient, which misrepresented the East as irrational and backward, the opposite of the rational and progressive West. One of the main tools used by imperialists was cartography. Cartography is "the art, science and technology of making maps" [38] but this definition is problematic.

It implies that maps are objective representations of the world when in reality they serve very political means. To better illustrate this idea, Bassett focuses his analysis of the role of 19th-century maps during the " Scramble for Africa ".

Although cartographic processes advanced through imperialism, further analysis of their progress reveals many biases linked to eurocentrism. According to Bassett, "[n]ineteenth-century explorers commonly requested Africans to sketch maps of unknown areas on the ground. Many of those maps were highly regarded for their accuracy" [39] but were not printed in Europe unless Europeans verified them.

Imperialism in pre-modern times was common in the form of expansionism through vassalage and conquest. The concept of cultural imperialism refers to the cultural influence of one dominant culture over others, i. This means more than just "foreign" music, television or film becoming popular with young people; rather that a populace changes its own expectations of life, desiring for their own country to become more like the foreign country depicted.

For example, depictions of opulent American lifestyles in the soap opera Dallas during the Cold War changed the expectations of Romanians; a more recent example is the influence of smuggled South Korean drama-series in North Korea. The importance of soft power is not lost on authoritarian regimes, which may oppose such influence with bans on foreign popular culture, control of the internet and of unauthorised satellite dishes etc.

Nor is such a usage of culture recent - as part of Roman imperialism ,local elites would be exposed to the benefits and luxuries of Roman culture and lifestyle, with the aim that they would then become willing participants.

Imperialism has been subject to moral or immoral censure by its critics [ which? An empire mentality may build on and bolster views contrasting "primitive" and "advanced" peoples and cultures, thus justifying and encouraging imperialist prractices among participants. The political concept social imperialism is a Marxist expression first used in the early 20th century by Lenin as "socialist in words, imperialist in deeds" describing the Fabian Society and other socialist organizations.

At least some of the great modern empires — the British, French, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and even the Ottoman — have virtues that have been too readily forgotten. They provided stability, security, and legal order for their subjects. They constrained, and at their best, tried to transcend, the potentially savage ethnic or religious antagonisms among the peoples. And the aristocracies which ruled most of them were often far more liberal, humane, and cosmopolitan than their supposedly ever more democratic successors.

A controversial aspect of imperialism is the defense and justification of empire-building based on seemingly rational grounds. In ancient China , Tianxia denoted the lands, space, and area divinely appointed to the Emperor by universal and well-defined principles of order.

The center of this land was directly apportioned to the Imperial court, forming the center of a world view that centered on the Imperial court and went concentrically outward to major and minor officials and then the common citizens, tributary states , and finally ending with the fringe " barbarians ". Tianxia's idea of hierarchy gave Chinese a privileged position and was justified through the promise of order and peace. Hobson identifies this justification on general grounds as: "It is desirable that the earth should be peopled, governed, and developed, as far as possible, by the races which can do this work best, i.

Friedrich Ratzel believed that in order for a state to survive, imperialism was needed. Halford Mackinder felt that Great Britain needed to be one of the greatest imperialists and therefore justified imperialism. Under this doctrine, the French politician Jules Ferry could declare in that "Superior races have a right, because they have a duty.

They have the duty to civilize the inferior races. The Royal Geographical Society of London and other geographical societies in Europe had great influence and were able to fund travelers who would come back with tales of their discoveries. Geographical theories such as environmental determinism also suggested that tropical environments created uncivilized people in need of European guidance. Technology and economic efficiency were often improved in territories subjected to imperialism through the building of roads, other infrastructure and introduction of new technologies.

The principles of imperialism are often generalizable to the policies and practices of the British Empire "during the last generation, and proceeds rather by diagnosis than by historical description". The country of Australia serves as a case study in relation to British settlement and colonial rule of the continent in the 18th century, that was arguably premised on terra nullius , as its settlers considered it unused by its original inhabitants. The concept of environmental determinism served as a moral justification for the domination of certain territories and peoples.

The environmental determinist school of thought held that the environment in which certain people lived determined those persons' behaviours; and thus validated their domination. For example, the Western world saw people living in tropical environments as "less civilized", therefore justifying colonial control as a civilizing mission.

Across the three major waves of European colonialism the first in the Americas, the second in Asia and the last in Africa , environmental determinism served to place categorically indigenous people in a racial hierarchy.

This takes two forms, orientalism and tropicality. Some geographic scholars under colonizing empires divided the world into climatic zones. These scholars believed that Northern Europe and the Mid-Atlantic temperate climate produced a hard-working, moral, and upstanding human being. In contrast, tropical climates allegedly yielded lazy attitudes, sexual promiscuity, exotic culture, and moral degeneracy. The people of these climates were believed to be in need of guidance and intervention from a European empire to aid in the governing of a more evolved social structure; they were seen as incapable of such a feat.

Similarly, orientalism could promote a view of a people based on their geographical location. Anti-imperialism gained a wide currency after the Second World War and at the onset of the Cold War as political movements in colonies of European powers promoted national sovereignty.

Some anti-imperialist groups who opposed the United States supported the power of the Soviet Union , such as in Guevarism , while in Maoism this was criticized as social imperialism. The Roman Empire was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe , North Africa , and Western Asia , ruled by emperors.

The Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries was the largest contiguous land empire in history. England's imperialist ambitions can be seen as early as the 16th century as the Tudor conquest of Ireland began in the s. Between and , the Kingdom of Scotland authorised several colonies in the Americas. Most of these colonies were either aborted or collapsed quickly for various reasons.

Under the Acts of Union , the English and Scottish kingdoms were merged, and their colonies collectively became subject to Great Britain also known as the United Kingdom. The empire Great Britain would go on to found was the largest empire that the world has ever seen both in terms of landmass and population.

Its power, both military and economic, remained unmatched for a few decades. In , the Anglo-Mysore Wars and other political activity caused exploitation of the East India Company causing the plundering of the local economy, almost bringing the company into bankruptcy.

This competition was evident in the colonization of what is now known as Canada. Lawrence River and claiming it as "New France". Following the proto-industrialization , the "First" British Empire was based on mercantilism , and involved colonies and holdings primarily in North America, the Caribbean, and India. Its growth was reversed by the loss of the American colonies in Britain made compensating gains in India, Australia, and in constructing an informal economic empire through control of trade and finance in Latin America after the independence of Spanish and Portuguese colonies in about Following the defeat of Napoleonic France in , Britain enjoyed a century of almost unchallenged dominance and expanded its imperial holdings around the globe.

Unchallenged at sea , British dominance was later described as Pax Britannica "British Peace" , a period of relative peace in Europe and the world — during which the British Empire became the global hegemon and adopted the role of global policeman.

However, this peace was mostly a perceived one from Europe, and the period was still an almost uninterrupted series of colonial wars and disputes. The British Conquest of India , its intervention against Mehemet Ali , the Anglo-Burmese Wars , the Crimean War , the Opium Wars and the Scramble for Africa to name the most notable conflicts mobilised ample military means to press Britain's lead in the global conquest Europe led across the century. In the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution began to transform Britain; by the time of the Great Exhibition in the country was described as the "workshop of the world".

Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, British dominance of much of world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many regions , such as Asia and Latin America. During this century, the population increased at a dramatic rate, accompanied by rapid urbanisation, causing significant social and economic stresses.

Canada, Australia, and New Zealand became self-governing dominions. A resurgence came in the late 19th century with the Scramble for Africa and major additions in Asia and the Middle East. The pseudo-sciences of Social Darwinism and theories of race formed an ideological underpinning and legitimation during this time. But British power was fading, as the reunited German state founded by the Kingdom of Prussia posed a growing threat to Britain's dominance. As of , Britain was the world's fourth economy, behind the U.

S, Russia and Germany. Britain now had a practically continuous line of controlled territories from Egypt to Burma and another one from Cairo to Cape Town. However, this period was also the one of the emergence of independence movements based on nationalism and new experiences the colonists had gained in the war. World War II decisively weakened Britain's position in the world, especially financially. Decolonization movements arose nearly everywhere in the Empire, resulting in Indian independence and partition in , the self-governing dominions break away from the empire in , and the establishment of independent states in the s.

British imperialism showed its frailty in Egypt during the Suez Crisis in However, with the United States and Soviet Union emerging from World War II as the sole superpowers , Britain's role as a worldwide power declined significantly and rapidly. China was one of the world's oldest empires. Due to its long history of imperialist expansion, China has been seen by its neighboring countries as a threat due to its large population, giant economy, large military force as well as its territorial evolution throughout history.

Starting with the unification of China under the Qin dynasty , later Chinese dynasties continued to follow its form of expansions. The most successful Chinese imperial dynasties in terms of territorial expansion were the Han , Tang , Yuan , and Qing dynasties. Denmark—Norway Denmark after possessed overseas colonies from until In the 17th century, following territorial losses on the Scandinavian Peninsula , Denmark-Norway began to develop colonies, forts, and trading posts in West Africa , the Caribbean , and the Indian subcontinent.

Christian IV first initiated the policy of expanding Denmark-Norway's overseas trade, as part of the mercantilist wave that was sweeping Europe. Denmark-Norway's first colony was established at Tranquebar on India's southern coast in Admiral Ove Gjedde led the expedition that established the colony. After , when Norway was ceded to Sweden, Denmark retained what remained of Norway's great medieval colonial holdings. One by one the smaller colonies were lost or sold.

Tranquebar was sold to the British in Iceland became independent in Today, the only remaining vestiges are two originally Norwegian colonies that are currently within the Danish Realm , the Faroe Islands and Greenland ; the Faroes were a Danish county until , while Greenland's colonial status ceased in They are now autonomous territories.

Some analyses portray the geographical expansion and global influence of the European Union in terms of imperialism. During the 16th century, the French colonization of the Americas began with the creation of New France. Its "Second colonial empire" began with the seizure of Algiers in and came for the most part to an end with the granting of independence to Algeria in France also twice attempted to make Mexico a colony in —39 and in see Pastry War and Second French intervention in Mexico.

French Republicans, at first hostile to empire, only became supportive when Germany started to build her own colonial empire. As it developed, the new empire took on roles of trade with France, supplying raw materials and purchasing manufactured items, as well as lending prestige to the motherland and spreading French civilization and language as well as Catholicism. It also provided crucial manpower in both World Wars. In the leading exponent of colonialism, Jules Ferry declared France had a civilising mission : "The higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilize the inferior".