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This seems a very broad definition. I can't think of many political entities that weren't/aren't empires under this rule?
Call a spade a spade. This is crap. NPOV is entirely lacking here. I'll work on it tomorrow if nobody else does. -Hephaestos
There are aspects of this article which pose some interesting problems, which probably give rise to a sense of POV.
Coercion and multi-ethnicity, whilst being perfectly reasonable attributions of historical empires (past and present) constrain the use of the term, such that there is a confusion about what constitutes an 'essential feature' of an empire.
An empire would not be an empire if it did not have 'subject states', although there are examples of 'single state empires', such as the former 'Central African Empire' (which became the Central African Republic) and Abyssinia (which had an Emperor, Haile Selassie) and it becomes an issue as to whether the 'subject states' are or have ever been recognised as independent sovereign bodies, such that self-proclaimed 'empiredom' determines the nature of the state in question.
Almost all current recognised sovereign states consist of a collection of subordinate 'non-sovereign' geographical entities (towns, cities, regions and provinces, some of which are sometimes even called 'states', as in the USA) and the relationship between the sovereign state and its constituent subordinate geographic components and subdivisions can be claimed to be 'imperialist' if one of the subordinate entities seeks independence and meets with resistance from the sovereign state body, or even where a sovereign state redesignates a subordinate entity as having either some form of autonomy or some kind of title befitting a sovereign state (such as 'principality' or 'republic') but without actually allowing or encouraging sovereign independence to be sought or granted (such redesignation therefore merely having been enacted for the sole purpose of aggrandizing the perception of the sovereign state or appeasing the ambitions of the subordinate, such that it would be seen to be made up of actual countries, rather than mere regions, and thus be an empire, ruled by emperors, rather than merely a nation, ruled by kings).
It is conceivable that an empire could be less coercive that a particular non-imperial state, but the issue of coercion would not necessarily have a bearing on whether or not the states in question referred to themselves as, or were deemed by anyone else to be empires.
Similarly, the ethnicity of the empire or subject states, whether it be uniform or diverse, would not be decisive in determining imperial status.
There is a supposedly defining feature of empires (no less problematic) which constitutes a 'policy of conquest'.
This tends to manifest itself as 'territorial aggrandisement' which essentially constitutes 'extending the boundaries of the state'.
But states which indulge in such initiatives are not necessarily bound to call themselves, nor behave like empires.
There are historical precedents for situations where, left with the option for self determination, a formerly subordinate ('colonial') state opts democratically for continued subordination within the sovereignity of the former colonial power.
Thus modern day empires can present the complexities of no longer calling themselves empires, yet posessing colonies, some of which treat the arrangement with the mututal consent of a federation, yet there are other colonies of the same former empire seeking and being granted release from colonial status and yet other subsidiary proto-states pursuing and not necessarily being granted autonomy.
Empires, despite appearing to be obsolete remnants of a bygone age of deference to historical authority enforced by invasion, occupation and enslavement, are in fact an extremely diverse set of manifestations of government, governance and governed, no less differentiated in their construction than any other.
As a test of the meaning of the word, to what extent is the UN not an imperial power?
Ericross
I would agree with Hephaestos and Ericross: this does not read as NPOV. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that an Empire is something which calls itself an Empire, and that they can be structured in so many different ways that generalisations are difficult.
I would have thought it probably involved a sovereign or sovereign power, with the power/right/ability to impose some or all decisions in different parts of the empire. I would expect it to be multi-national (rather than multi-ethnic) and that there would be a degree of local government (whether by a centrally appointed governor or by some form of self-rule), in contrast to a unified nation state.
A better article would then highlight typical features of empires (possibly with examples) and then show examples which showed this was not universal. --Henrygb 19:13, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
IMHO distinction should be made between two different meanings of the word empire:
- a multiethnic coercive state, whether it claims to be one or not (eg Soviet Union),
- a country whose leader holds an imperial title (eg Japanese Empire).
I think splitting this article in two would be a good idea. One which would explain the socio-political definition of an empire and link to the article on imperialism; and the other one which would show how some rulers (notably in Europe) adopted the imperial titles (Empereur, Kaiser, Tsar, etc) to create historical associations with the ancient Roman Empire. Kpalion 01:32, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The term empire, when examined objectively, is quite helpful in exposing the perhaps surprisingly counter-intuitively arbitrary and contingent nature of the designation of 'categories' of sovereign geographic entities.
At first the coercion/non-coercion criterion seems to be decisive.
But what about the 'currency/recency' of coercion?
If a state was coerced into becoming part of another state thousands of years ago and no longer harbours any resentment nor sustains any seperatist ambitions, does the current ruling sovereign state nontheless 'inherit' the 'criminal imperialist mantle', despite inveriably granting full autonomy or independence to all those colonies or conquests who seek it?
Here's an even more troublesome to the notion of empire.
Almost all sovereign states (with the exception of phenomena like the Vatican State) are comprised of a hierarchy of villages, towns, cities and provinces.
To what extent are these elements NOT constituent parts of an empire?
If one were to posit aspects of scale as a criterion of imperial status, such as geographic size or population, these prove to be unhelpful, as some of the world's largest cities have much larger populations than many sovereign states.
Which sovereign entities can claim that none of their current roster of place names and subordinate geographic or jurisdictional elements were ever frustrated in their attempts at preserving their autonomy at any time throughout history?
Ericross
- IMO many your worries are because you possibly have a pre-defined connotation with the word "empire". Per se, the term doesn't bear 'criminal imperialist mantle'. The article laready distinguishes three types of empire: "classical" empire, colonial empire, and infromal meaning.
What is missing, is the notion of metropoly, i.e., the center of the empire and the source of the coercion, which replaced the role of emperor in more recent empires. If it were in in goood circulation, as a noun derived from metropolitan (in the meaning relating to, or constituting the home territory of an imperial or colonial state) (or is it?), it could have been used in the definition of the Empire, and it would not have required the reservation made in the definition: "..., though note the American civil war". And the article could have honestly said: yes, federation is also based on the coersion, but the coercion is mutual, rather than centralized. Mikkalai 00:20, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)