Empire, a word that gets bounced around quite a bit in reference to corporations, popularity, and nation states. Ok, so what is an empire after all? For me, the word empire makes me think of stodgy Brits in red costumes (hehe, I mean uniforms) talking about the “white man’s burden.” So obviously, looking back in history we have the Roman empire, the Muslim empire, the Greeks, the British, etc. etc. etc. All of these examples of empires have military conquest at their center, yet, seem to have more factors involved than mere conquest. Would Rome be considered an empire if they had merely taken some lands? Rather we see a sort of cultural hegemony where conquested territories had local puppet rulers who worked with Roman administrators and basically conformed to Roman culture. People spoke Latin and Greek and generally tried to “do as the Romans do” because it enabled one to better climb the social ladder. Thus, there seems to be more involved with being an empire than mere conquest and rule. Read the rest of this entry »
