Blackwell Reference Online

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In its broadest transhistorical sense empire refers to a large-scale, multi-ethnic political unit (usually with a state at its core) that directly or indirectly rules over, and therefore encompasses, smaller political units that were previously independent. Hence, empire always involves relations of domination and subordination between core and peripheral areas and their populations, which are most often established by conquest and maintained, in the last instance, by the exercise or threat of force. Nevertheless, empire may fall short of direct colonial rule and instead be implemented through informal mechanisms of political control based on indigenous elites and indirect methods of cultural domination and economic exploitation. These formal and informal practices of empire, and the ideologies that justify them, constitute imperialism . Both terms have their etymological roots in the Latin imperium . In ancient Rome, the meaning of imperium was originally restricted to the authority of Roman magistrates to act in the name of Rome and its citizens, at home ( imperium domi ) and abroad ( imperium militiae ). With the territorial expansion of Roman rule around the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus, the term came to connote authority abstracted from any particular bearer of that authority; the distinction between imperium domi and militiae progressively collapsed; and the ... log in or subscribe to read full text