I recently discovered a fun blog "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry", and it's been very enjoyable reading, but one of the posts is so wrong I need to write a rebuttal.
The author in Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires? comes up with the following thesis:
An empire is a state where the core ruling population exercises control and extracts resources from a periphery which is composed of people other than the core group (linguistically/culturally/ethnically/religiously distinct). So an empire is a state where one set of people (the core) extract resources (typically by force) from another set of people (the periphery).
And so...
And that's how we know that "United States" is really a Puerto Rican Empire, as Puerto Rico is sure sucking up vastly greater flow of resources than it's ever getting back. The ruling Puerto Rican elite is literally not even paying income tax like those exploited mainlanders!
The so called "Russia" is really Great Chechen Empire, they sneakily conquered it by losing the war.
The so called "China" is really Greater Tibetan Empire.
The "United Kingdom" is really Scottish Empire, just look at all the money they're extracting from England!
And the earlier so called "British" Empire was really ran by the Americans - the exploited Brits were paying 10x as much in tax per capita than the ruling Americans.
And during Scramble for Africa, Africans managed to colonize Europe, as sure as hell average European was paying for all that elite map painting, and didn't benefit in any way whatsoever.
And so on.
This is all nonsense
If you look at any actual empires, especially recently, the overwhelming pattern is that burden of maintaining the empire - in terms of both money and manpower - falls disproportionately on core population, and peripheral populations are mostly expected to not cause trouble, and are otherwise net economic drain.
Exceptions happen, and occasionally core areas find some place extremely exploitable, but they're just that - rare exceptions. Like in 1700s' French colonial empire, tiny Guadeloupe was somehow economically worth far more than a quarter of North American continent.
Most of the time, those peripheral taxes are far less than core population pays, and far less than costs of holding those places in the Empire.
Foreign elites
There's a distinct and far more common situation where foreigners conquer some place, displace local elite, and rule as a dynasty or nobility over far more numerous locals.
This would actually fit in the original definition, except as a general rule the conquerors move to their conquered lands, so it feels a bit silly to talk about "Norman Empire" which lost Normandy rather quicky, or "Manchu Empire", which was absolutely ruled from within China, and is generally labelled "China" in history books, or such.
Exceptions proving the rule
Perhaps if one keeps looking, it's possible to find some "empires" where core successfully and sustainably extracts resources from periphery, especially in more ancient times.
Roman Empire is actually halfway there, as it managed to exploit places like Greece and Egypt pretty damn well, but even Romans admitted that their periphery like Britain were a net drain. Eventually the ruling center of Roman Empire moved to its richest province, and the usual pattern was restored.
In any case, such exceptional cases cannot possibly be used as definition of an empire.
So the empire is just for the benefit of the few individuals who do profit, like the generals or the East India Company?
ReplyDeleteYeah, parts of the ruling elite often profits economically, but most of the time it seems to be mostly about seeking power for power's sake, and not about any specific economic benefits.
ReplyDeleteAverage core population member almost never sees any benefits whatsoever.
Weirdly another group that often seems to benefit are people who really want to move into periphery of an empire, for protection or economic advantage.
Whenever Europeans setup some tiny port in middle of nowhere, natives were rushing to be inside their empire in droves (Hong Kong for most extreme case, but a lot of cities in Africa, India, and elsewhere did this). Barbarians from outside Roman Empire were literally going to war to be allowed to settle there.
And for all the talk about "oppressed" minorities in the West, those same minorities outside the West want nothing more than to get in to be "oppressed". (this sounds different, but in a sense, modern states exploit their "middle class" core population and make very little demands to their "poor / minority" periphery population - somewhat similar pattern just without geographic separation)
To be honest I don't think this phenomenon is anywhere near universal, but it keeps showing up every now and then.
Empires are simply large states that have vast geographic ranges. The fact that people even try to come up with these wacky ideological explanations for why a King would want more land is just silly.
ReplyDeleteElephantofDoom: I totally agree with you.
ReplyDeleteUh... are you forgetting about resource extraction? Do you really think european empires fully bought into "free trade" would justify such a drain on their own resources if it didn't net them anything?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: Resource extraction story is basically a fiction. There weren't even any extractable resources out there, value of raw resources was always insignificant part of the economy, and colonies barely had any to begin with - vast majority of extractable resources (coal, iron, other metals) in era of empires was at home.
ReplyDeleteThe closest to extractable resource would be oil, but oil only started being important after empires were all dismantled, and pretty much none of it was in any kind of imperial territory.
Can you please provide any sources? I would actually like to read about this.
ReplyDelete