Empire

===Empire versus nation state===
Empires have been the dominant international organization in [[Human history|world history]]:
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The fact that tribes, peoples, and nations have made empires points to a fundamental political dynamic, one that helps explain why empires cannot be confined to a particular place or era but emerged and reemerged over thousands of years and on all continents.{{Sfn|Burbank|Cooper|2010|page=8}}}}
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Empires ... can be traced as far back as the recorded history goes; indeed, most history is the history of empires ... It is the nation-state—an essentially 19th-century ideal—that is the historical novelty and that may yet prove to be the more ephemeral entity.<ref>[[Niall Ferguson]], "The Unconscious Colossus: Limits of (Alternatives to) American Empire", ''Daedalus'', 134/2, (2005): p 24.</ref>}}
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Our field's fixation on the Westphalian state has tended to obscure the fact that the main actors in global politics, for most of time immemorial, have been empires rather than states ... In fact, it is a very distorted view of even the Westphalian era not to recognize that it was always at least as much about empires as it was states. Almost all of the emerging European states no sooner began to consolidate than they were off on campaigns of conquest and commerce to the farthest reaches of the globe... Ironically, it was the European empires that carried the idea of the sovereign territorial state to the rest of the world ...<ref>[http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/9/9/0/5/pages99056/p99056-9.php Yale H. Ferguson & Richard W. Mansbach, "Superpower, Hegemony, Empire," San Diego: Annual Meeting paper, The International Studies Association, March 22–26, (2006: 9)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161124093803/http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/9/9/0/5/pages99056/p99056-9.php |date=2016-11-24 }}</ref>}}
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Empire has been the historically predominant form of order in world politics. Looking at a time frame of several millennia, there was no global anarchic system until the European explorations and subsequent imperial and colonial ventures connected disparate regional systems, doing so approximately 500 years ago. Prior to this emergence of a global-scope system, the pattern of world politics was characterized by regional systems. These regional systems were initially anarchic and marked by high levels of military competition. But almost universally, they tended to consolidate into regional empires ... Thus it was empires—not anarchic state systems—that typically dominated the regional systems in all parts of the world ... Within this global pattern of regional empires, European political order was distinctly anomalous because it persisted so long as an anarchy.<ref>[http://www.scholar.princeton.edu/sites/.../am-impact-dd-gji-final-1-august-2015.pdf Daniel Deudney & G. John Ikenberry, "America's Impact: The End of Empire and the Globalization of the Westphalian System", working paper, Princeton University, 2015, pp. 7–8] {{Dead link|date=August 2019 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>}}
Similarly, [[Anthony Pagden]], [[Eliot A. Cohen]], [[Jane Burbank]] and [[Frederick Cooper (historian)|Frederick Cooper]] estimate that "empires have always been more frequent, more extensive political and social forms than tribal territories or nations have ever been."<ref>{{Cite journal |first=Anthony |last=Pagden |title=Imperialism, Liberalism & the Quest for Perpetual Peace |journal=Daedalus |volume=134 |issue=2 |date=2005 |page=47|doi=10.1162/0011526053887301 |s2cid=57564158 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Many empires endured for centuries, while the age of the ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Japanese Empires is counted in millennia. "Most people throughout history have lived under imperial rule."{{Sfn|Cohen|2004|page=50}}
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Empires have played a long and critical part in human history ... [Despite] efforts in words and wars to put national unity at the center of political imagination, imperial politics, imperial practices, and imperial cultures have shaped the world we live in ... Rome was evoked as a model of splendor and order into the Twentieth century and beyond... By comparison, the nation-state appears as a blip on the historical horizon, a state form that emerged recently from under imperial skies and whose hold on the world's political imagination may well prove partial or transitory... The endurance of empire challenges the notion that the nation-state is natural, necessary, and inevitable ...{{Sfn|Burbank|Cooper|2010|pages=2–3}}}}
Political scientist [[Hedley Bull]] wrote that "in the broad sweep of human history ... the form of states system has been the exception rather than the rule".<ref>''The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics'', London: Macmillan, 1977, p. 21).</ref> His colleague [[Robert Gilpin]] confirmed this conclusion for the pre-modern period:
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The history of interstate relations was largely that of successive great empires. The pattern of international political change during the millennia of the pre-modern era has been described as an imperial cycle ... World politics was characterized by the rise and decline of powerful empires, each of which in turn unified and ordered its respective international system. The recurrent pattern in every civilization of which we have knowledge was for one state to unify the system under its imperial domination. The propensity toward universal empire was the principal feature of pre-modern politics.<ref>Gilpin ''War and Change in World Politics'', (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 110–116).</ref>}}
Historian Michael Doyle who undertook an extensive research on empires extended the observation into the modern era:
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Empires have been the key actors in world politics for millennia. They helped create the interdependent civilizations of all the continents ... Imperial control stretches through history, many say, to the present day. Empires are as old as history itself ... They have held the leading role ever since.<ref>''Empires'', (London: Cornell University Press, 1986, pp. 12, 51, 137).</ref>}}
The author of ''[[The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background]]'', [[Hans Kohn]], acknowledged that it was the opposite idea—of imperialism—that was, perhaps, the most influential single idea for two millennia, the ordering of human society through unified dominion and common civilization.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/worldorderinhist0000kohn/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater Kohn, Hans, (1942). ''World Order in Historical Perspective'', (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), p 113]</ref>