Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Political thought after the French Revolution
- II Modern liberty and its defenders
- III Modern liberty and its critics
- IV Secularity, reform and modernity
- 18 Church and state: the problem of authority
- 19 The politics of nature
- 20 Conservative political thought from the revolutions of 1848 until the fin de siècle
- 21 Modern liberty redefined
- 22 Political economy
- 23 German socialism and social democracy 1860 –1900
- 24 Russian political thought of the nineteenth century
- 25 European political thought and the wider world during the nineteenth century
- 26 Empire and imperialism
- Epilogue
- Biographies
- Bibliography
- Index
26 - Empire and imperialism
from IV - Secularity, reform and modernity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Political thought after the French Revolution
- II Modern liberty and its defenders
- III Modern liberty and its critics
- IV Secularity, reform and modernity
- 18 Church and state: the problem of authority
- 19 The politics of nature
- 20 Conservative political thought from the revolutions of 1848 until the fin de siècle
- 21 Modern liberty redefined
- 22 Political economy
- 23 German socialism and social democracy 1860 –1900
- 24 Russian political thought of the nineteenth century
- 25 European political thought and the wider world during the nineteenth century
- 26 Empire and imperialism
- Epilogue
- Biographies
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Empire is one of the most contested terms in the modern political lexicon. Over the centuries it has carried a multiplicity of meanings; today it still lacks a clear and consistent definition. Like so much of our political vocabulary, its etymological roots lie in the ancient world. It originates with the Latin term imperium, which designated initially the right of command (held by magistrates) within the Roman state, and which was subsequently extended to denote, in the age of Julius Caesar and Augustus, the physical space occupied by the territorial acquisitions of Rome, the Imperium Romanum (Richardson 1991). Subsequent European empires never fully escaped the obsession with ritual, virtue and glory, the sanction of religion, or the claims about spreading civilisation, which had been central to the Roman vision. Until the eighteenth century, when it began to be applied to foreign conquests and modes of rule, the term was employed almost exclusively in European political thought to encompass either the Holy Roman Empire or to designate the sovereign territories of individual states. However, the conceptual field of empire has mutated over time, as have the practices associated with it, assuming different forms across diverse national and regional contexts.
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- The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought , pp. 864 - 892Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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