Empire's Enduring Appeal

​In American pop culture, empire is a signifier of tyranny. We knew everything we needed to know about the Klingons because they were part of a Klingon empire. Likewise the Romulans. It was enough to place Darth Vader at the head of an intergalactic empire; no further backstory was needed to comprehend him fully. Anti-imperialism seems to be hard-baked into our freedom-loving republican sensibilities. Yet empires still persist in the contemporary world, and this blog asserts that the United States is one of them. Clearly there remains some enthusiasm for empire, perhaps more widespread than what at first glance appears. What is happening here? Are the Americans alone in their disdain for empire? Or are Americans deluded? Why would anyone want an empire if, as Americans continually tell themselves, empires are engines of bondage, blood, and anguish?

We will discuss later pop culture’s anti-imperialism as a deeply ironic, though understandable, ideological artifact of American empire. The fact is that empires are not always, or at least, not only, nefarious in the ways depictions of Darth Vader or the Klingons insist. In fact, we make a mistake to consider empire in purely negative terms for in so doing we miss the important ways in which empires deliver a wide array of advantages to their constituents. Whether those benefits outweigh the costs of empire remains to be seen, but we will not understand empire’s enthusiasts if we do not first reckon with both sides of the balance sheet.
 
Empires provide tangible benefits, including resources, markets, and other economic benefits. They provide order and stability. And empires provide an affiliative ideology, an identity, indeed a sense of belonging. Whether an individual, group, or community is a beneficiary of any one of those benefits is an altogether different story, of course.
 
The economic advantages of empire should be clear enough. Empires provide wealth and luxury to a select group of metropolitan elites. But beyond that narrow core of the ultra-privileged, empires also provide tangible economic benefits to broader swaths of the imperial public. Consider the consumer opportunities afforded by empire that would not have existed otherwise. This is true of ancient empires, such as Athens or Rome, whose commercial channels imported a wealth of items and resources that would have been unavailable otherwise, and created prosperous mercantile and agricultural classes in the bargain. These economic benefits are even more true of modern empires such as Great Britain and the United States, whose democratic social order allows import and export markets and broad commercial possibilities to be enjoyed well beyond the confines of the metropolitan elite. The enthusiasm for empire becomes much more intelligible in this context.

​Second, empires provide order, stability, and security. The empire’s provision of social and political order and stability within the imperial borders, and international security beyond, depend, of course, on where one is positioned. Beyond the empire’s frontiers violence is a regular feature. But within those frontiers, members of the empire enjoy a relative tranquility they would not otherwise. The safeguarding of territory from brigands and invaders, the policing and securing of trade routes, the suppressing of violent domestic political dissent: these are enormous advantages. Empires can also untangle – through imposition, often, to be sure – vexing and otherwise bloody local political rivalries. Modern-day enthusiasts for empire such as Niall Ferguson indict the United States precisely for the abdication of imperial order in places such as Haiti and Somalia, for example -- so Ferguson contends – where only an empire such as the U.S., and not a dithering international body such as the UN, can bring the political will and military power necessary to impose an enduring order. Perhaps the view is mistaken but our purpose here is to highlight empire’s enduring appeal to its enthusiasts such as Ferguson.
 
Finally, empires offer community. Empires necessarily tender an ideological vision that is appealing to many and which can offer a sense of purpose and belonging. Even if misguided, and especially in our democratic age, empires promise to bring liberty and order in tow. One need only glance at contemporary Russia to see the appeal, however misguided, of such historical missions. Utopianism is an enticing promise to many people. Empires offer belonging in their social hierarchies, imperial citizenship being for many the highest identity to which one could aspire. Empires often style themselves as communities of the elect, the privileged, the hand-picked. This was the case with the Muslim empires and their promise of ummat al-Islām. Even if we disdain other empires’ ideological claims, it has to be admitted that mission and community are powerful incentives and invitations to identity for many, many people.
 
It’s impossible to know which of these imperial advantages is most important. Different benefits appeal to different groups and classes within imperial society. Consider three distinct social classes that might be found in any given empire: farmers, religious groups, and recent immigrants. Then consider how each might gain from a larger imperial project: markets, converts, and belonging would all converge to catalyze powerful domestic support. Different groups might perceive different benefits to be won through imperial progress. Empires stitch together domestic coalitions, even among groups ostensibly at odds with each other, in politically powerful common cause.
 
Imperial benefits are most available for those within the empire: the imperial elite, an imperial citizenry, and others located within the frontiers. But in a theme that will be considered often and at length later, these benefits may also be available to those positioned outside of the empire’s frontier. There are always local agents, interlocutors, and willing parties to empire’s promises of advancement, stability, and enrichment. We make a mistake not to understand the craving for imperial benefits many on both sides of the frontier express.
 
Benefit, order, and community are real. They may be, and often are, achieved by visiting devastation and violence on others, expunging, as it were, from within the imperial polity the divisiveness and immiseration that then afflict the unfortunates beyond the frontier. Since they are “barbarians” it is an exchange that enthusiasts for empire can well make. We don’t understand empire’s allure if we do not understand that the redistribution of wealth, the pursuit of order, and the bestowal of identity serve the interest of very, very many people, both inside the empire and, crucially, outside of it as well. Vader-esque caricatures may serve well on the silver screen, but they do not get us much closer to understanding empire’s historical appeal.
 
Further reading: Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (Penguin, 2004)

The bicycle craze in Victorian England was fueled by imperial connections to the global south, where rubber for bicycle tires was sourced. Many historians connect the enthusiasm for bicycles among young British (and American) women to the growth of feminist consciousness in the late 19th century.