Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper
Multiple strategies of imperial statecraft: How empire ruled the world [13.01.2012]
Compared with the six hundred years of the Ottoman Empire and two millennia of (intermittent) Chinese imperial rule, the nation-state is a blip on the historical horizon. The transition from empire has lessons for the present, and maybe the future
Why, in 2011, think about empires? We live in a world of nation-states — over 200 of them, each with their seat in the UN, their flag, postage stamps and governmental institutions. Yet the nation-state is an ideal of recent origin and uncertain future and, for many, devastating consequences.
Empire did not give way to a secure world of nations with the end of Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Romanov or German rule after the first world war or, in the 1940s-1970s, with decolonisation (by the French, British, Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese). Many recent conflicts — Rwanda, Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, ex-Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, the Congo, the Caucasus, Libya, etc — emerged from failures to find viable alternatives to imperial regimes, after 1918, 1945 and 1989.
It is not a question of sinking into imperial nostalgia: sentimental evocations of the British Raj or French Indochina have nothing to offer to our present political thinking. Similarly, imperial name-calling — invoking “empire” or “colonialism” to discredit US, French or other interventions — cannot help us analyse or improve today’s world. But an exploration of the histories of empires, old and new, can expand our understanding of how the world came to be what it is, and the organisation of political power in the past, the present and even the future.
Over a very long time, the practices and interactions of empires configured the contexts in which people acted and thought. Examining the trajectories of empires — their creations, conflicts, rivalries, successes and failures — reminds us of something we have forgotten: that sovereignty in the past, and in many areas today, is complex, divided, layered and configured on a variety of founding principles and practices.
What gave empires their world-shaping force? Partly it was their durability (1). As large political units, expansionist or with a memory of expansion, empires maintained distinctions and hierarchy among people even as they forcefully incorporated them. They recognised and had to manage diversity among their subjects. Their multiple governing strategies gave them adaptability and the ability to control resources over long distances and times. Compared with the longevity of the Ottoman Empire (600 years), and more than two millennia of imperial rule by a succession of Chinese dynasties, the nation-state is a blip on the historical horizon.
Some of the imperial strategies were learned from predecessors or rivals. The Ottoman Empire managed to blend Turkic, Byzantine, Arab, Mongol and Persian traditions; to administer their multi-confessional realm, the Ottomans counted on the elites of each religious community without trying to assimilate or destroy them. The British Empire over time encompassed dominions, colonies and protectorates, with India governed by a separate civil service, a disguised protectorate over Egypt and “zones of influence” where the British engaged in what has been called the “imperialism of free trade”. An empire with a varied repertoire of rule could shift its tactics selectively, without having to face the problem of assimilating and governing all its parts according to a single model.
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