That polity over which the ruler reigns logically becomes an "empire", despite having no additional territory or hegemony. However, sometimes an empire is only a semantic construction, such as when a ruler assumes the title of "emperor". Stephen Howe notes that empires by land can be characterized by expansion over terrain, "extending directly outwards from the original frontier" while an empire by sea can be characterized by colonial expansion and empire building "by an increasingly powerful navy". The terrestrial empire's maritime analogue is the thalassocracy, an empire composed of islands and coasts which are accessible to its terrestrial homeland, such as the Athenian-dominated Delian League.įurthermore, empires can expand by both land and sea. Rein Taagepera has defined an empire as "any relatively large sovereign political entity whose components are not sovereign".
Tom Nairn and Paul James define empires as polities that "extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces for the purpose of extracting or accruing value". Doyle has defined empire as "effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society". 'Empire' and 'colonialism' are used to refer to relationships between a powerful state or society versus a less powerful one Michael W.
Empires are typically formed from diverse ethnic, national, cultural, and religious components. It might be a state affecting imperial policies or a particular political structure. An empire is a large polity which rules over territories outside of its original borders.ĭefinitions of what physically and politically constitute an empire vary. This is in contrast to a federation, which is an extensive state voluntarily composed of autonomous states and peoples. Īn empire is an aggregate of many separate states or territories under a supreme ruler or oligarchy. Empire is often used as a term to describe displeasure to overpowering situations.
The concept of empire is associated with other such concepts as imperialism, colonialism, and globalization, with imperialism referring to the creation and maintenance of unequal relationships between nations and not necessarily the policy of a state headed by an emperor or empress. a transnational corporation), a political organisation controlled by a single individual (a political boss), or a group (political bosses). Aside from the more formal usage, the word empire can also refer colloquially to a large-scale business enterprise (e.g. An important distinction has been between land empires made up solely of contiguous territories, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Russian Empire and those created by sea-power, include territories which are far remote from the 'home' country of the empire, such as the British Empire. There have been "ancient and modern, centralized and decentralized, ultra-brutal and relatively benign" Empires.
Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state called an empire and whose head of state is an emperor, (an example being the Roman Empire) but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or ruled by an emperor nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians (the Central African Empire, and some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in early England being examples). An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries".
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