Empire

This article is about political and historical terms. For other uses, see Empire (disambiguation). "Ancient Empires" redirects here. For the game, see Ancient Empires (mobile game). Not to be confused with Umpire.

An empire is a group of territories controlled by a monarch or a supreme central authority. Within an empire, different groups of people may have different rights and may be governed in different ways.

The word "empire" comes from the Roman idea of Imperium, which means the right to command.

Empires have taken many forms throughout history.

Definition

An empire is a group of many territories under one supreme ruler or a small group of rulers. What counts as an empire can be described in different ways. It might be a state that affects imperial policies or has a particular political structure. Empires are usually made up of different ethnic groups, nations, cultures, and religions. Michael W. Doyle describes an empire as "effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society." For Doyle, Imperialism is the process of setting up and keeping an empire. Rein Taagepera sees imperialism as a policy of conquering and ruling over foreign lands and peoples.

Scholars usually see empires as different from nation-states. In an empire, one group of people is in charge of other groups, and different groups have different levels of rights and status. Josep Colomer describes several differences between empires and states. Empires are much larger, do not have fixed borders, and are made up of many different groups and areas that are linked unevenly to the center. They also have overlapping layers of authority. A state, by contrast, has full authority over its land and people, and it tries to make its people more alike.

Characteristics

Empires are usually formed through military conquest, which brings the defeated states under their control.

Empires can grow over land or over sea. Land empires, such as the Macedonian Empire and the Byzantine Empire, tend to be contiguous areas that spread outward from where they began. The sea version of a land empire is a thalassocracy, made up of islands and coasts that can be reached from its home land. Examples include the Athenian-dominated Delian League and the British Empire. These sea empires often have looser structures and more scattered lands, many of them islands, which needed a strong navy to create and maintain.

Historical empires

Alexander won every battle that he personally commanded. At the Battle of the Granicus in 334 BC, he used a small group of cavalry as a distraction so his infantry could cross a river, followed by a cavalry charge from his companion cavalry. He led another cavalry charge at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC, which forced the Persian king Darius III and his army to flee. Darius III had more soldiers but was again forced to flee at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC. In 330 BC, the Persian king was captured and executed by his own satrap of Bactria and relative, Bessus. Alexander then hunted down Bessus in what is now Afghanistan and had him executed, which secured the region of Sogdia.

At the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC (in modern-day Punjab), the war elephants of King Porus of the Pauravas threatened Alexander's troops. He had his soldiers open their ranks to surround the elephants and knock their handlers off. In 324 BC, his Macedonian troops threatened mutiny at Opis in Babylonia (near modern Baghdad, Iraq). Instead of punishing them, Alexander offered Macedonian military titles and greater responsibilities to Persian officers and units. His troops then had to ask for forgiveness at a staged banquet of reconciliation between Persians and Macedonians. After Alexander's victory over the Achaemenid Empire, he died, and his empire was split up among his generals.

Growth and collapse

Throughout human history, empires have tended to grow larger over time. Building an empire was a way for people to work together across areas bigger than single city states and small territorial states. Cipolla credits an empire's ability to grow to its rising incomes and spending, both by the government and by individual people.

Peter Turchin explains that when people earn less and living conditions get worse, citizens become resentful, which leads to conflict within the country. Wealthier groups then turn to the government for wealth, which makes government spending grow while tax income drops because hardship is spreading. When public funds run out, the state can no longer control its soldiers or police. This allows rivalries among the powerful to grow into civil war and mass uprisings.