Hawk1981
VIP Member
- Apr 1, 2020
- 209
- 270
- 73
When the country gained its independence the term "empire" was relatively value-free. In the final year of the American Revolution, George Washington described the newborn republic as a “rising empire.” A few years later in comments he made to his former comrade-in-arms, the Marquis de Lafayette, Washington tempered the remark by stating that America was but an “infant empire,” under the restraints imposed by the Articles of Confederation and the constraints imposed by the European powers. Nevertheless, Washington offered this prediction “However unimportant America may be considered at present, there will assuredly come a day, when this country will have some weight in the scale of Empires.”
While the precise definition of the word empire is elusive because of the problem of translation, it derived from the Latin imperium, which in English approximates the words rule and sovereignty. The Greeks used it to describe the relationship between the city-states that united to oppose the Persians (who also comprised an entity called an empire). But Athens exercised leadership over its fellow city-states; it did not really rule them.
The term empire gained greater currency during the Roman era when Augustus implemented a range of administrative reforms that centralized the imperial state. Cities, provinces, the army, government appointees, economic decision-making, even the granting of citizenship, along with other functions all came under the control of the emperor. Reaching beyond the limited concepts of sovereignty and rule, the Roman Empire incorporated administrative centralization and political integration.
In the later Roman era, "empire" came to envelope another dimension—size. This addition produced a combustible mix of centralized control, class and regional inequality, and an expansiveness that created the conditions for the Roman Empire’s fragmentation and collapse.
The Roman Empire’s experience, despite the negative outcome, explains the definition of empire inherited by the British and later embraced by classically educated Americans. As contributors to the growth of the British Empire, Americans embraced this definition at the time of their War of Independence. When Washington used the word empire, he meant a polity that exercised sovereignty over and was responsible for the security of a large expanse of territory that was composed of previously separate units now subordinate to the new constitutional authority. The empire included many diverse peoples and nationalities. Not all the people within the population could qualify as citizens due to the historic role of violence in the establishment of empires, not all were equal, not all could or would assimilate, and not all consented to the rule of the sovereign.
The British left a substantial legacy of empire building to the Americans. At regular intervals in the 17th and 18th centuries, the British violently added territory to their North American empire with the enthusiastic assistance of American colonists. Benjamin Franklin in demanding more living room for a rapidly increasing American population, admonished the British that a prince "that acquires new Territory, if he finds it vacant, or removes the Natives to give his own people Room" deserves to be remembered as the father of his nation.
The Founding Fathers conceived of the United States even in its infancy as expanding prodigiously—certainly across the North American continent, perhaps southward to Cuba and beyond. Under the Articles of Confederation Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 to prepare for this eventuality. Americans of that era did not consider war-making and the extension of rule over Indian tribes and their lands as conquest, in part because the indigenous peoples were so few in number as to be virtually swallowed.
Alexander Hamilton captured the complexity of what would become the American experience. In the lead Federalist Paper, Hamilton characterized the United States as "an empire in many ways the most interesting in the world.”
Through much of the nineteenth century Americans considered the word empire benign. Though the means by which the United States expanded across the continent may at times have appeared unsavory, the prevalent opinion was American goals and motives were consistently benevolent or defensive, and not imperialistic (a concept which did not even come into vogue until the later 19th century). The terms empire and state were still largely synonymous, and US behavior was acceptable for a state with its capabilities, and because U.S. expansion remained continental and restricted to contiguous territory within its "natural" boundaries. Since the Constitution required the incorporation of added territories as states, and the populations of these states were invariably eager to apply for membership, reinforced the consensus that Americans should be proud of their empire.
The rhetoric began to change after the American Civil War. Americans became increasingly defensive about their “status” as an empire after, combining force (primarily) and diplomacy (secondarily), they acquired uncontested political control across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson recognized the baggage that accompanied the term empire. By their time Americans had divided between anti-imperialists and imperialists.
In contrast to empire, imperialism, was a much more value-laden term, weighed down negatively. Imperialism was tied to militarism, the selfishness and greed of special interests and monopoly capitalism. Advocates of American expansion in the late nineteenth century were not “merely” empire-builders, but also imperialists. American expansion with the acquisition of such far-flung non-contiguous territories as Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Panama, none of which at the time was considered by virtually any American as qualified for statehood, fit the definition of imperial behavior.
In the 20th century, it was open to debate about whether the United States continued to rank as an empire. The orthodox definition of empire-building would seem to require the conquest and colonization of alien territory. America, in contrast, fought two wars in the 20th century to defeat empires bent on conquest. Whether represented by Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Franklin Roosevelt’s Atlantic Charter, or the body of Cold War rhetoric, the United States had stood for anti-colonialism.
While the precise definition of the word empire is elusive because of the problem of translation, it derived from the Latin imperium, which in English approximates the words rule and sovereignty. The Greeks used it to describe the relationship between the city-states that united to oppose the Persians (who also comprised an entity called an empire). But Athens exercised leadership over its fellow city-states; it did not really rule them.
The term empire gained greater currency during the Roman era when Augustus implemented a range of administrative reforms that centralized the imperial state. Cities, provinces, the army, government appointees, economic decision-making, even the granting of citizenship, along with other functions all came under the control of the emperor. Reaching beyond the limited concepts of sovereignty and rule, the Roman Empire incorporated administrative centralization and political integration.
In the later Roman era, "empire" came to envelope another dimension—size. This addition produced a combustible mix of centralized control, class and regional inequality, and an expansiveness that created the conditions for the Roman Empire’s fragmentation and collapse.
The Roman Empire’s experience, despite the negative outcome, explains the definition of empire inherited by the British and later embraced by classically educated Americans. As contributors to the growth of the British Empire, Americans embraced this definition at the time of their War of Independence. When Washington used the word empire, he meant a polity that exercised sovereignty over and was responsible for the security of a large expanse of territory that was composed of previously separate units now subordinate to the new constitutional authority. The empire included many diverse peoples and nationalities. Not all the people within the population could qualify as citizens due to the historic role of violence in the establishment of empires, not all were equal, not all could or would assimilate, and not all consented to the rule of the sovereign.
The British left a substantial legacy of empire building to the Americans. At regular intervals in the 17th and 18th centuries, the British violently added territory to their North American empire with the enthusiastic assistance of American colonists. Benjamin Franklin in demanding more living room for a rapidly increasing American population, admonished the British that a prince "that acquires new Territory, if he finds it vacant, or removes the Natives to give his own people Room" deserves to be remembered as the father of his nation.
The Founding Fathers conceived of the United States even in its infancy as expanding prodigiously—certainly across the North American continent, perhaps southward to Cuba and beyond. Under the Articles of Confederation Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 to prepare for this eventuality. Americans of that era did not consider war-making and the extension of rule over Indian tribes and their lands as conquest, in part because the indigenous peoples were so few in number as to be virtually swallowed.
Alexander Hamilton captured the complexity of what would become the American experience. In the lead Federalist Paper, Hamilton characterized the United States as "an empire in many ways the most interesting in the world.”
Through much of the nineteenth century Americans considered the word empire benign. Though the means by which the United States expanded across the continent may at times have appeared unsavory, the prevalent opinion was American goals and motives were consistently benevolent or defensive, and not imperialistic (a concept which did not even come into vogue until the later 19th century). The terms empire and state were still largely synonymous, and US behavior was acceptable for a state with its capabilities, and because U.S. expansion remained continental and restricted to contiguous territory within its "natural" boundaries. Since the Constitution required the incorporation of added territories as states, and the populations of these states were invariably eager to apply for membership, reinforced the consensus that Americans should be proud of their empire.
The rhetoric began to change after the American Civil War. Americans became increasingly defensive about their “status” as an empire after, combining force (primarily) and diplomacy (secondarily), they acquired uncontested political control across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson recognized the baggage that accompanied the term empire. By their time Americans had divided between anti-imperialists and imperialists.
In contrast to empire, imperialism, was a much more value-laden term, weighed down negatively. Imperialism was tied to militarism, the selfishness and greed of special interests and monopoly capitalism. Advocates of American expansion in the late nineteenth century were not “merely” empire-builders, but also imperialists. American expansion with the acquisition of such far-flung non-contiguous territories as Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Panama, none of which at the time was considered by virtually any American as qualified for statehood, fit the definition of imperial behavior.
In the 20th century, it was open to debate about whether the United States continued to rank as an empire. The orthodox definition of empire-building would seem to require the conquest and colonization of alien territory. America, in contrast, fought two wars in the 20th century to defeat empires bent on conquest. Whether represented by Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Franklin Roosevelt’s Atlantic Charter, or the body of Cold War rhetoric, the United States had stood for anti-colonialism.