Empires and Nation-States

28 Historically Speaking March/April 2007 Empires and Nation-States Anthony Pagden ^^ eepak LaI is surely right in saying that we ^B need a definition—or at least working de- ^^ scription—of "empire." His own, a slight misrepresentation of Thucydides, does not really get us very far. It does not, for instance, adequately describe the situation in British America, where the colonists were, at least until the Stamp Act crisis of 1764-66, held to be responsible for their "internal" spheres of legislation—and of taxation—as were all the Indian "nations" west of the Proclamation Line. Jan Nederveen Pieterse's approach is to assume that the United States is an empire and that, everything the United States does, is eo ipso, imperial. This gets us nowhere at all. Charles Maier provides a far more complex and detailed tally of what kinds of features the United States would have to have if it were to be considered and empire. These include: the presence of a center and periphery, that is, colonies or provinces and a métropole; social hierarchies ; and, crucially, internal allies or, as he calls them, "collaborators," because empires are "not alliances of equals but rather structures of inequality—both domestically and abroad." Empires are also polities that are created and maintained by force and are, therefore , preoccupied by frontiers and the need to maintain them. But they also "expand in pursuit of some big idea." Certainly most empires display some of these properties at some point in their history. But do they all display all of diem? The Delian League— or the Athenian arche—which Maier in Among Empires seems to accept as a true empire (but which, not incidentally, is missing from most subsequent histories of empire, starting with Polybius ) was certainly concerned with frontiers, had a big idea (the defense of Greek freedom against Persian tyranny), and attempted , at least, to create a métropole (by relocating all the financial resources of the League to Athens). Yet it hardly created social hierarchies or relied upon "collaborators." The Persian Achaemenid Empire, defeated by Alexander the Great, had no big idea, created no hierarchies, and only established a métropole late in the day. Alexander himself may have had a big idea—die unification of East and West—but it was probably provided for him by Plutarch, who was looking at Rome, which does indeed fulfill most of Maier's conditions, although it is hard to see, say, Cleopatra as a "collaborator." It is also the case, however, that all of Maier's conditions—with the exception of expansion in pursuit of a big idea—can be met by most post-Westphalian European states. Were then pre-Revolutionary France, Spain after the unification of Castile and Aragon, or Britain before the Act of Union empires, in the sole sense that the executive power—but not necessarily sovereignty—was located in one place? Are empires, as Philip Bobbitt has suggested, merely a particular kind of large state? Two things are missing from Maier's checklist. Empires, like states, have sought to incorporate the conquered, or allied, population into one single, if diverse, polity. This was the big idea of the Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, and, ultimately the British Empire. It is not merely a question of seeking "collaborators" or making friends. It is a question of making, as one Spanish jurist phrased it, all the inhabitants of the Habsburg So, is the United States an empirei Does it, in Maier's words, resemble the "other megastates we term empires"? I think that the answer is ultimately no. Monarchy from Cadiz to Manila "subjects and citizens " of the same monarch. The second point is one of sovereignty. Ever since 1648 sovereignty was conceived witiiin Europe as indivisible. Beyond the nation-state, however, it could only ever be divided between any number of rulers. In most modern empires there did indeed exist a métropole and a periphery. In many cases legislation did indeed originate from the center. But never was the métropole the sole undivided source of executive and legislative authority as it always is in any modern state. Is the United States an...