Empire - A World History:Anatomy and Concept, Theory and Synthesis

This chapter attempts a synthesis of the imperial experience in world history. Setting out from an in-depth comparison of two incidents, one from the US occupation of Iraq, the other from the Jewish uprising against Nero (66–70 CE), cooperation with local elites is identified as the key to imperial government. The chapter proceeds to discuss current definitions of empire, followed by a wide-ranging survey of modern theories of empire. Most of these can be grouped within four discourses that originate in societal debates from the early 1900s: about monopoly, capitalism and empire; about empire as predatory networks of aristocratic elites; about empire and national identity; and about geopolitics and the balance of power. These four theoretical discourses provide the four dimensions of an analytical matrix that, finally, structure an attempt at synthesizing the imperial experience in world history, from the third millennium BCE Levantine Bronze Age until the present.