thesis statement of european imperialism

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AP World DBQ Contextualization and Thesis Practice

11 min read • january 2, 2021

Eric Beckman

Evan Liddle

Melissa Longnecker

Practicing DBQ prompts is a great way to prep for the AP exam! Review practice writing samples of the opening paragraph of a DBQ and corresponding feedback from Fiveable teachers Melissa Longnecker, Eric Beckman, and Evan Liddle.

The DBQ Practice Prompt

This is the type of paragraph that can open a DBQ. But, I recommend outlining how you will use the documents as evidence  before  writing your thesis.

As you read the document-based question, I recommend taking brief notes on the prompt and each document. Record what the prompt is asking, how each document relates to the prompt, and how the sourcing affects the document and/or a response to the prompt. Don’t write too much, but you will find these notes useful when while composing your answer.

Evaluate the extent to which rulers of early modern empires, c. 1450 - c. 1750, used traditional methods to consolidate their power.

Use the documents and your understanding of World History to write ONE (no more!) paragraph with

• Broader historical context for the prompt
• A thesis in response to the prompt

Illustration of the First Battle of Panipat (1526), near Delhi, in the Baburnama, the autobiography of Babur. Manuscript prepared for his grandson, Emperor Akbar after Baur’s death, c. 1590

DBQ Writing Samples & Feedback

Dbq student practice sample 1.

From 1200 to 1450, the rulers of empires came up with several methods conssolidating power. An example of this is the Mongol’s implementation of trade and tolerance of the spread of religion. This paved the way for future rulers to hold power while ensuring that their empire would thrive. Rulers of empires between 1450 and 1700 relied heavily traditional methods such as an trade and an established currency system to consolidate their power.

Teacher feedback:

This is an excellent first step, I can tell from your answer you do have the basic idea of what context is supposed to be.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 2

The Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid Empires, formerly known as the “Gunpowder Empires”, were spreading rapidly. The Qing Dynasty was also spreading Europe is trying to expand and build maritime empires, and trade routes are connecting the Americas to Europe. Rulers of early modern empires circa 1450-1750 very effectively used traditional methods to consolidate power, for example, Suleiman I, a former ruler of the Ottoman Empire conquers Tripoli in North Africa and starts a period of reform called the Devishrime; in the Safavid Empire, Shah Abbas comes to power in 1588 and tries to modernize the empire through encouraging trade and building bureaucracy, and in the Mughal Empire, Akbar establishes Divine Faith in attempts to normalize religious tolerance.

Context can be focused on the time period under discussion but context usually branches out into time before and possibly even after the prompt’s time period. You do have an excellent, if narrow, thesis.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 3

Before the time period of 1450-1700,the Mongols contributed to the downfall of the Abbasid caliphate as they invaded it and weakened its political influence.This caused the development of network exchanges like the silk road and Indian ocean trade routes. As a result,religions like Christianity and Islam spread and diffused but it is not always tolerated.Rulers of early modern empires used traditional methods to consolidate power like in the ottoman empire, the sultan Suleiman ,was obeyed by janissaries so this is how he got a bigger military and smarter government,in the safavid empire the ruler attempts to build a bureaucracy and modernize

Something to keep in mind is that while connecting to other events keep in mind connections and causation. For example how is the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate connected to the Silk Road. The common denominator is the Mongols, but it does not read as such. You end your context by discussing tolerance which might be a nice transition to discussing the tolerance of the Gunpowder Empires, keep that in mind.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 4

Although the potency of empires and dynasties apart of the early modern era was composed through more-novelty methods such as sabotage and social hierarchy change, because consolidation was implemented through pervasive conversions such as how the Ottomans used the Hagia Sophia and the use of trade such as the Portuguese assimilating dominance across the trading route of the Indian Ocean methodization for imperialism between 1450 and 1700 tends to take on more traditional forms, therefore religious legitimization and commerce were attractive for gaining power to empire rulers. The differentiation of methods was promoted during the postclassical era (1200-1450). This is shown in how the Song Dynasty brought out power through advancement in multiple fields; through the allowance of varying methods power was well achieved, almost acting as a model for future imperial powerholders.

Your context is well done. While using advanced language is fine, just be sure you are clear on the meaning of these words. Your thesis, which is excellent, seems to come in the middle of the paragraph. This works, though it is a bit hard to follow.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 5

In the years leading up to 1450, The Mongols gained power all over Afro-Eurasia through their harsh warfare lead by Genghis Khan. The Mongols controlled many of the trade routes such as the Silk Roads. When they eventually fell they split up into 4 Khanates spread out over Afro-Eurasia. With these new empires forming, emperors needed to have complete power over these territories. Although few rulers created new ways to control their conquered people such as new economic advantages in Western Europe, during the period 1450-1750, rulers used traditional methods to consolidate their power by warfare, adapting/keeping previous cultures in the Middle East and Asia, and controlling international trade.

Your Context while detailed and provides a timeline to follow it does not transition smoothly into your thesis. Consider mentioning the Mongols, but in a way that dovetails into what your thesis will be about such as Mongol ruling policy or warfare. Also your thesis can be made stronger with a specific reference to a previous culture or an example of controlling international trade.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 6

Prior to 1450, vast trade networks such as the Silk Roads and the Indian Ocean networks arose, increasing interregional connection across Afro-Eurasia. This increase in connection between cultures and peoples and the use of newer technologies such as gunpowder facilitated the growth of large empires throughout the entirety of Afro-Eurasia. After the rulers of these empires had conquered enough territory, they had to find ways to solidify, or consolidate, their power over these large, culturally diverse areas of land. Although some empires used traditional religious ideals to consolidate their power, most empires turned to radical changes in the way in which trade was conducted and the unprecedented strengthening of military assets in order to accomplish this goal.

Your context is excellent, and it dovetails nicely into your thesis. Your thesis could be a bit more specific. What military assests? What trade? One good specific example really helps.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 7

Previously, in 1200-1450, empires like the Abbasid Empire and Mongol empire expanded and consolidated power through developments in technology like caravans and saddles, and also through military conquests like the implementation of the Mongolian Khanates. These approaches characterized how empires consolidated power during the postclassical era. Starting in 1450-1750 rulers of early modern empires shifted to a more traditional approach to consolidating their power through the use of religious tolerance and military conquest . Specifically, the gunpowder empires used both religious worship and militaristic conquering to expand consolidate and legitimize. Also, empires in a East Asia like the powerful Ming Dynasty expanded vastly through the conquering of lands in Mongolia and Central Asia. Lastly empires in Europe consolidated power through the development on new monarchies that centralized power through controlling taxes, army and religion. Through conquest, religious tolerance and centralized government, rules in the modern era were able to successfully consolidate power.

Your context is well done, balancing specific evidence with general trends. Your thesis is a bit long though. May I suggest combining the last three sentences into one using commas to list ideas. For example the Ming conquest of Mongolia, New Monarchs in Europe. et all

DBQ Student Practice Sample 8

In the late 14th century the Ottoman Empire developed a system called devshirme that staffed their military and government. This system expanded in the 15th and 16th centuries and continued to build up the Ottoman military. Christian boys were recruited by force to serve in the Ottoman government. The most well known group were Janissaries, which formed elite forces in the Ottoman army. The other Christian boys that were forcibly removed from their families had to be completely loyal to the sultan and some of them served as bodyguards. Janissaries were able to gain more power in the Ottoman Empire and some families wanted their sons to become a part of the service. The Ottomans could control the conquered Christians through the use of Janissaries in their armies. In 1450-1750, rulers of early modern empires used traditional methods such as improved military forces to consolidate their power.

This is an excellent description of how the system helped strengthen the Ottoman Empire, but in terms of either Contextualizing Units 3/4 or serving as a Thesis this would not work, it is too narrow, only one idea. A good thesis would have 2-3 ideas.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 9

There were three important ways that the leaders of states and empires consolidated their rule before 1450: the conquering of new lands, the proliferation of certain religions or religious tolerance, and by proliferating trade along the Indian Ocean, the Silk Road, and the Trans-Saharan trade network. Religions such as Islam and syncretic sects spread across the Trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean, and Silk Road trade networks. Empires from 1200-1450 often instritued currencies and encouraged trade to spread their empire’s religion. The Mongols controlled much of the Silk Road during the 13th and early 14th centuries. However, theMongols’ rule fell in the 14th century due to the fragmentation of the empire; the Ming, Ottoman, and Russian empires subsequently sprang up. The Ottoman, Mughal and Russian empires conquered other lands from 1450-1750 and either proliferated a certain religion or they instituted a religious tolerance policy within their empires. European empires arose in 1450-1750 by conquering trade ports and lands from around the world. Explorers also tried to proselytize others. European conquerers administered these lands by controlling the production and exportation of valuable agricultural goods to Europe, and by using forced labor systems to produce goods such as sugar and tobacco. Although rulers of early modern empires in 1450-1750 conquered foreign lands and proliferated a religious policy by emphasizing religious tolerance or by encouraging the conversion of others to one religion, European empires used maritime technologies to aid them in conquering other lands worldwide. Empires in Africa and Asia in 1450-1750 still conquered empires on land, and religious tolerance was an idea that was much more common there than in European conquests of foreign lands.

Your context is quite excellent and blends nicely into the thesis. For your thesis, it could be shorter and be strengthened by adding a specific technology such as one maritime technology or a religious that was spread by an empire. That last sentence is not nessessary unless thats part of your consolidation argument.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 10

Before the 15th century, many different empires have shown highly traditional values that have been used to cosolidate power. Among these states are the Mongols who showed major tolerance to other cultures and helped to expand trade. The Byzantine empire was also a nation that resisted up to the 15th century and, despite the constant Islamic attempts of invasion, they had religious tolerance and were open to negotiate with various merchants and leaders including Muslims. Although the empires that remained and emerged during 1450-1750 used new innovations to maintain their power and keep as well as protect their people, being tolerant to new cultures and encouraging the expansion of trade was also important to consolidate their power.

Your paragraph shows understanding of the time period before and during this DBQ. Specifically:

1. Describes a broader historical context relevant to the prompt :  maybe , the Mongols and the Byzantine empire were context for early modern empires, but this would be stronger with a clear link to the developments you will discuss in your essay. Did later Empires adopt these techniques from the Mongols and Byzantines?

2 . Responds to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis/claim:  yess you have an evaluation, although this could be more clear, and you lay out a line of reasoning.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 11

Prior to 1450 many empires consolidated powers through multiple ways. For example, China used Confucianism to create a bureaucracy through the civil service on Confucian ideals. On the the other hand, the Mongols consolidated power through heavy secure control of the silk roads through large khanates and the policy of Pax Mongolica (Mongol Peace). In addition, they used religious tolerance since they really didn’t have a culture of their own and also to avoid any attempted cultural revolts. Although belief systems were a traditional way to consolidate power, such as China’s use of Confucianism, many nations used military expansion through gunpowder weaponry and also through expansion of trade

Be careful with claiming that societies lacked culture, that is essentially impossible, even if in societies which adapt elements of other cultures.

1. Describes a broader historical context relevant to the prompt:   attempted  , Confucianism and the Mongols are elements of context, but this needs a clear connection to the prompt. How did these developments create the context for the growth of early modern empires?

2. Responds to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis/claim:  attempted -you outline a couple of reasonable claims&mdash:which is good—this lacks an evaluation. How much do did early modern empires rely on traditional, as opposed to innovative, means? This requires a qualifier, such as strongly or secondarily.

DBQ Student Practice Sample 12

In the 13th century, the Mongols marched across Eurasia and soon became the largest continuous land empire in history. Throughout their rule, they revitalized international trade and built a system of roads which they maintained and guarded. The Mongols ruled successfully due to their understanding of centralized power which was soon spread and copied by other empires. After their fall in the mid 14th century, other empires like the Ottomans and the Safavids, rose to power as a result of their own military might along with the weakness and corruption of the regimes that they replaced. Although wealth and religious ideals were essential to early modern empires, traditional methods like increased trade and advancements in the military were used to consolidate power in the period of 1450 to 1750.

1. Describes a broader historical context relevant to the prompt :  yes , the Mongol Empire is relevant context, and, more importantly, you connect this to Empire building in the time period of the prompt. This would be even stronger with connection to at least one more empire, besides the Ottomans, from the documents. Safavids would be excellent as outside evidence.

2. Responds to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis/claim :  maybe , this addresses the prompt, but may not be historically defensible because wealth and religious ideals were also traditional methods of imperial rule.

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From Imperialism to Postcolonialism: Key Concepts

An introduction to the histories of imperialism and the writings of those who grappled with its oppressions and legacies in the twentieth century.

Imperialism, the domination of one country over another country’s political, economic, and cultural systems, remains one of the most significant global phenomena of the last six centuries. Amongst historical topics, Western imperialism is unique because it spans two different broadly conceived temporal frames: “Old Imperialism,” dated between 1450 and 1650, and “New Imperialism,” dated between 1870 and 1919, although both periods were known for Western exploitation of Indigenous cultures and the extraction of natural resources to benefit imperial economies. Apart from India, which came under British influence through the rapacious actions of the East India Company , European conquest between 1650 and the 1870s remained (mostly) dormant. However, following the 1884–85 Berlin Conference, European powers began the “ Scramble for Africa ,” dividing the continent into new colonial territories. Thus, the age of New Imperialism is demarcated by establishment of vast colonies throughout Africa, as well as parts of Asia, by European nations.

These European colonizing efforts often came at the expense of other older, non-European imperial powers, such as the so-called gunpowder empires—the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires that flourished across South Asia and the Middle East. In the case of the Ottomans , their rise coincided with that of the Old Imperialism(s) of the West and lasted until after World War I. These were not the only imperial powers, however; Japan signaled its interest in creating a pan-Asian empire with the establishment of a colony in Korea in 1910 and expanded its colonial holdings rapidly during the interwar years. The United States, too, engaged in various forms of imperialism, from the conquest of the tribes of the First Nation Peoples, through filibustering in Central America during the mid-1800s, to accepting the imperialist call of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” which the poet wrote for President Theodore Roosevelt on the occasion of Philippine-American War. While claiming to reject naked imperialism, Roosevelt still embraced expansionism, promoting the creation of a strong US Navy and advocating for expansion into Alaska, Hawaiʻi, and the Philippines to exert American influence .

The Great War is often considered the end of the new age of imperialism, marked by the rise of decolonization movements throughout the various colonial holdings. The writings of these emergent Indigenous elites, and the often-violent repression they would face from the colonial elite, would not only profoundly shape the independence struggles on the ground but would contribute to new forms of political and philosophical thought. Scholarship from this period forces us to reckon not only with colonial legacies and the Eurocentric categories created by imperialism but also with the continuing exploitation of the former colonies via neo-colonial controls imposed on post-independence countries.

The non-exhaustive reading list below aims to provide readers with both histories of imperialism and introduces readers to the writings of those who grappled with colonialism in real time to show how their thinking created tools we still use to understand our world.

Eduardo Galeano, “ Introduction: 120 Million Children in the Eye of the Hurricane ,” Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (NYU Press, 1997): 1 –8.

Taken from the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this classic text, Eduardo Galeano’s introduction argues that pillaging of Latin America continued for centuries past the Old Imperialism of the Spanish Crown. This work is highly readable and informative, with equal parts of impassioned activism and historical scholarship.

Nancy Rose Hunt, “ ‘Le Bebe En Brousse’: European Women, African Birth Spacing and Colonial Intervention in Breast Feeding in the Belgian Congo ,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies  21, no. 3 (1988): 401–32.

Colonialism affected every aspect of life for colonized peoples. This intrusion into the intimate lives of indigenous peoples is most evident in Nancy Rose Hunt’s examination of Belgian efforts to modify birthing processes in the Belgian Congo. To increase birth rates in the colony, Belgian officials initiated a mass network of health programs focused on both infant and maternal health. Hunt provides clear examples of the underlying scientific racism that underpinned these efforts and acknowledges the effects they had on European women’s conception of motherhood.

Chima J. Korieh, “ The Invisible Farmer? Women, Gender, and Colonial Agricultural Policy in the Igbo Region of Nigeria, c. 1913–1954 ,” African Economic History No. 29 (2001): 117– 62

In this consideration of Colonial Nigeria, Chima Korieh explains how British Colonial officials imposed British conceptions of gender norms on traditional Igbo society; in particular, a rigid notion of farming as a male occupation, an idea that clashed with the fluidity of agricultural production roles of the Igbo. This paper also shows how colonial officials encouraged palm oil production, an export product, at the expense of sustainable farming practices—leading to changes in the economy that further stressed gender relations.

Colin Walter Newbury & Alexander Sydney Kanya-Forstner, “ French Policy and the Origins of the Scramble for West Africa ,” The Journal of African History  10, no. 2 (1969): 253–76.

Newbury and Kanya-Foster explain why the French decided to engage in imperialism in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. First, they point to mid-century French engagement with Africa—limited political commitment on the African coast between Senegal and Congo, with a plan for the creation of plantations within the Senegalese interior. This plan was emboldened by their military success in Algeria, which laid the foundation of a new conception of Empire that, despite complications (Britain’s expansion of their empire and revolt in Algeria, for instance) that forced the French to abandon their initial plans, would take hold later in the century.

Mark D. Van Ells, “ Assuming the White Man’s Burden: The Seizure of the Philippines, 1898–1902 ,” Philippine Studies 43, no. 4 (1995): 607–22.

Mark D. Van Ells’s work acts as an “exploratory and interpretive” rendering of American racial attitudes toward their colonial endeavors in the Philippines. Of particular use to those wishing to understand imperialism is Van Ells’s explication of American attempts to fit Filipinos into an already-constructed racist thought system regarding formerly enslaved individuals, Latinos, and First Nation Peoples. He also shows how these racial attitudes fueled the debate between American imperialists and anti-imperialists.

Aditya Mukherjee, “ Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain,” Economic and Political Weekly  45, no. 50 (2010): 73–82. 

Aditya Mukherjee first provides an overview of early Indian intellectuals and Karl Marx’s thoughts on the subject to answer the question of how colonialism impacted the colonizer and the colonized. From there, he uses economic data to show the structural advantages that led to Great Britain’s ride through the “age of capitalism” through its relative decline after World War II.

Frederick Cooper, “ French Africa, 1947–48: Reform, Violence, and Uncertainty in a Colonial Situation ,” Critical Inquiry  40, no. 4 (2014): 466–78. 

It can be tempting to write the history of decolonization as a given. However, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the colonial powers would not easily give up their territories. Nor is it safe to assume that every colonized person, especially those who had invested in the colonial bureaucratic systems, necessarily wanted complete independence from the colonial metropole. In this article, Frederick Cooper shows how conflicting interests navigated revolution and citizenship questions during this moment.

Hồ Chí Minh & Kareem James Abu-Zeid, “ Unpublished Letter by Hồ Chí Minh to a French Pastor ,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies  7, no. 2 (2012): 1–7.

Written by Nguyễn Ái Quốc (the future Hồ Chí Minh) while living in Paris, this letter to a pastor planning a pioneering mission to Vietnam not only shows the young revolutionary’s commitment to the struggle against colonialism, but also his willingness to work with colonial elites to solve the system’s inherent contradictions.

Aimé Césaire, “ Discurso sobre el Colonialismo ,” Guaraguao 9, no. 20, La negritud en America Latina (Summer 2005): 157–93; Available in English as “From Discourse on Colonialism (1955),” in  I Am Because We Are: Readings in Africana Philosophy , ed. by Fred Lee Hord, Mzee Lasana Okpara, and Jonathan Scott Lee, 2nd ed. (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 196–205.

This excerpt from Aimé Césaire’s essay directly challenges European claims of moral superiority and the concept of imperialism’s civilizing mission. He uses examples from the Spanish conquest of Latin America and ties them together with the horrors of Nazism within Europe. Césaire claims that through pursuing imperialism, Europeans had embraced the very savagery of which they accused their colonial subjects.

Frantz Fanon, “ The Wretched of the Earth ,” in Princeton Readings in Political Thought: Essential Texts since Plato , ed. Mitchell Cohen, 2nd ed. (Princeton University Press, 2018), 614–20.

Having served as a psychiatrist in a French hospital in Algeria, Frantz Fanon experienced firsthand the violence of the Algerian War. As a result, he would ultimately resign and join the Algerian National Liberation Front. In this excerpt from his longer work, Fanon writes on the need for personal liberation as a precursor to the political awaking of oppressed peoples and advocates for worldwide revolution.

Quỳnh N. Phạm & María José Méndez, “ Decolonial Designs: José Martí, Hồ Chí Minh, and Global Entanglements ,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political  40, no. 2 (2015): 156–73.

Phạm and Méndez examine the writing of José Martí and Hồ Chí Minh to show that both spoke of anticolonialism in their local contexts (Cuba and Vietnam, respectively). However, their language also reflected an awareness of a more significant global anticolonial movement. This is important as it shows that the connections were intellectual and practical.

Edward Said, “ Orientalism ,” The Georgia Review 31, no. 1 (Spring 1977): 162–206; and “ Orientalism Reconsidered ,” Cultural Critique no. 1 (Autumn 1985): 89–107.

As a Palestinian-born academic trained in British-run schools in Egypt and Jerusalem, Edward Said created a cultural theory that named the discourse nineteenth-century Europeans had about the peoples and places of the Greater Islamic World: Orientalism. The work of academics, colonial officials, and writers of various stripes contributed to a literary corpus that came to represent the “truth” of the Orient, a truth that Said argues reflects the imagination of the “West” more than it does the realities of the “Orient.” Said’s framework applies to many geographic and temporal lenses, often dispelling the false truths that centuries of Western interactions with the global South have encoded in popular culture.

Sara Danius, Stefan Jonsson, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “ An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ,” boundary 20, No. 2 (Summer 1993), 24–50.

Gayatri Spivak’s 1988 essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” shifted the postcolonial discussion to a focus on agency and “the other.” Explicating Western discourse surrounding the practice of sati in India, Spivak asks if the oppressed and the marginalized can make themselves heard from within a colonial system. Can the subordinated, dispossessed indigenous subject be retrieved from the silence spaces of imperial history, or would that be yet another act of epistemological violence? Spivak argues that Western historians (i.e., white men speaking to white men about the colonized), in trying to squeeze out the subaltern voice, reproduce the hegemonic structures of colonialism and imperialism.

Antoinette Burton, “ Thinking beyond the Boundaries: Empire, Feminism and the Domains of History ,” Social History 26, no. 1 (January 2001): 60–71.

In this article, Antoinette Burton considers the controversies around using the social and cultural theory as a site of analysis within the field of imperial history; specifically, concerns of those who saw political and economic history as “outside the realm” of culture. Burton deftly merges the historiographies of anthropology and gender studies to argue for a more nuanced understanding of New Imperial history.

Michelle Moyd, “ Making the Household, Making the State: Colonial Military Communities and Labor in German East Africa ,” International Labor and Working-Class History , no. 80 (2011): 53–76.

Michelle Moyd’s work focuses on an often-overlooked part of the imperial machine, the indigenous soldiers who served the colonial powers. Using German East Africa as her case study, she discusses how these “violent intermediaries” negotiated new household and community structures within the context of colonialism.

Caroline Elkins, “ The Struggle for Mau Mau Rehabilitation in Late Colonial Kenya ,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies  33, no. 1 (2000): 25–57.

Caroline Elkins looks at the both the official rehabilitation policy enacted toward Mau Mau rebels and the realities of what took place “behind the wire.” She argues that in this late colonial period, the colonial government in Nairobi was never truly able to recover from the brutality it used to suppress the Mau Mau movement and maintain colonial control.

Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel, “Decolonization as Moment and Process,” in  Decolonization: A Short History , trans. Jeremiah Riemer (Princeton University Press, 2017): 1–34.

In this opening chapter of their book, Decolonization: A Short History , Jansen and Osterhammel lay out an ambitious plan for merging multiple perspectives on the phenomena of decolonization to explain how European colonial rule became de-legitimized. Their discussion of decolonization as both a structural and a normative process is of particular interest.

Cheikh Anta Babou, “ Decolonization or National Liberation: Debating the End of British Colonial Rule in Africa ,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science  632 (2010): 41–54.

Cheikh Anta Babou challenges decolonization narratives that focus on colonial policy-makers or Cold War competition, especially in Africa, where the consensus of colonial elites was that African colonial holdings would remain under dominion for the foreseeable future even if the empire might be rolled back in South Asia or the Middle East. Babou emphasizes the liberation efforts of colonized people in winning their independence while also noting the difficulties faced by newly independent countries due to years of imperialism that had depleted the economic and political viability of the new nation. This view supports Babou’s claim that continued study of imperialism and colonialism is essential.

Mahmood Mamdani, “ Settler Colonialism: Then and Now ,” Critical Inquiry  41, no. 3 (2015): 596–614.

Mahmood Mamdani begins with the premise that “Africa is the continent where settler colonialism has been defeated; America is where settler colonialism triumphed.” Then, he seeks to turn this paradigm on its head by looking at America from an African perspective. What emerges is an evaluation of American history as a settler colonial state—further placing the United States rightfully in the discourse on imperialism.

Antoinette Burton, “S Is for SCORPION,” in  Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times , ed. Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani (Duke University Press, 2020): 163–70.

In their edited volume, Animalia, Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani use the form of a bestiary to critically examine British constructions of imperial knowledge that sought to classify animals in addition to their colonial human subjects. As they rightly point out, animals often “interrupted” imperial projects, thus impacting the physical and psychological realities of those living in the colonies. The selected chapter focuses on the scorpion, a “recurrent figure in the modern British imperial imagination” and the various ways it was used as a “biopolitical symbol,” especially in Afghanistan.

Editor’s Note: The details of Edward Said’s education have been corrected.

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Brewminate: A Bold Blend of News and Ideas

European Colonialism and Imperialism, 1450–1950

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Vasco da Gama / Wikimedia Commons

By Dr. Benedikt Stuchtey / 01.24.2011 Professor of History Philipps-Universität Marburg

The colonial encirclement of the world is an integral component of European history from the Early Modern Period to the phase of decolonisation. Individual national and expansion histories referred to each other in varying degrees at different times but often also reinforced each other. Transfer processes within Europe and in the colonies show that not only genuine colonial powers such as Spain and England, but also “latecomers” such as Germany participated in the historical process of colonial expansion with which Europe decisively shaped world history. In turn, this process also clearly shaped Europe itself.

Introduction

In world history, no continent has possessed so many different forms of colonies and none has so incomparably defined access to the world by means of a civilising mission as a secular programme as did modern  Europe . When  Spain  and  Portugal  partitioned the world by signing the  Treaty of Tordesillas  on 7 June 1494,  they declared a genuine European claim to hegemony. A similar claim was never staked out in this form by a world empire of Antiquity or a non-European colonial power in the modern period, such as  Japan  or the  USA . The extraordinary continuity of Chinese colonialism or that of the Aztecs in  Central America  before the Spaniards arrived is indeed structurally comparable to modern European expansion. But similar to the Phoenician and the Roman empires, the phenomenon of expansion usually ended with colonisation and not in colonial development. The imperial expansion since about 1870 was not a European invention but its chronological and spatial dimension was as unique as the variety of  colonial methods of rule . It is characteristic that the impetus for colonialism was often derived as an answer to European history itself. This includes capitalist striving for profit, the colonies as valves for overpopulation, the spirit of exploration, scientific interest, and religious and ideological impulses up to Social-Darwinistic and racist motives. Colonialist urges of this type do not explain the expansionistic economic, military and other forces in the periphery that compelled the governments of the mother countries into a defensive pressing forward.

What is now understood as  globalisation  has a critical background in the world historical involvement of the non-European sphere from the Early Modern Period up and into the period of  decolonisation . No European country remained exempt – all directly or indirectly participated in the colonial division of the world. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) put global power thinking into words that perceived of colonial possessions as a political, economic and cultural right, last not least even as an obligation to a civilizing mission that was only definitively shaken with the independence of  India  in 1947. 1  These two dates mark the start and decline of a key problem in the history of Europe, perhaps even its most momentous, that the always precarious colonial rule caused complex competitions among Europeans just as much as among the indigenous population in the colonies, that it was able to simultaneously create cooperation and close webs of relationships between conquerors and the conquered, and that it was never at any time free of  violence and war , despotism, arbitrariness and lawlessness. This turns the simultaneity and multitude of European colonialisms and imperialisms into a border-bridging experience. Few transnational specifics of European history illustrate the diversity of a European consciousness this clearly.

The picture from the late 19th century shows the discovery and occupation of the island of San Salvador (Watling Island) named after Christopher Columbus (c. 1451–1506). Columbus is depicted on his knees in the centre of the picture. The heroical depiction of the explorer triumphant reflects the prevalent Western self-conception of the 19th and early 20th centuries: the pioneer of all progress, Western man stands superior to all other civilization. Indeed, the “white man’s burden” obliged him to make his superior knowledge available to the rest of the world and in so doing, extend his world rule. Conceived for use in schools, this picture illustrates a further aspect of “rule”, namely that over the interpretation of history. / Library of Congress

In this illustration from the early 20th century, the Portuguese mariner and explorer Vasco da Gama (c. 1469–1524) delivers a letter from King Emanuel I. of Portugal (1469–1521) to the  Saamoothirippād , the ruler of Calicut in South-West India. In a manner similar to the portrayal of  Christopher Columbus , the explorer, striking a heroic pose in the centre of the picture, reflects the Western understanding of history and its self-conception as standing at the vanguard of world civilization. / Library of Congress

But what was colonialism? If one looks back at the essential elements in the thought of the Spanish world empire since the 16th century, it was similar to that of the English and Portuguese up to the most recent time because of the often claimed idea that the European nations created their empires themselves without the participation of others. Conquest followed discovery:  Christopher Columbus (c. 1451–1506)  landed in 1492 on a  West Indian  island that he called  San Salvador  to emphasize the religious character of taking possession.  Spain’s power was only definitively broken with the Treaty of  Paris  in 1763 2 , which ended the Seven Years’ War and solidified British colonial supremacy. It also revealed the entanglement between Europe and the  American  continent because the seed had been sown for the independence struggle of the United States as well as the revolutions in Central and  South America  between 1780 and 1820. After human and citizens rights had been fought for during the French Revolution, the first Black republic in world history arose in 1804 from a slave revolt in  Haiti . Its leader  François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture (c. 1743–1803)  had himself been a slave to his 45th year, was a student of French Jesuits and an admirer of the writings of  Guillaume-Thomas Raynal (1711–1796) . Colonialism was by no means a one-dimensional affair with a simply European orientation and European discoverers such as Columbus and  Vasco da Gama (1468–1524) , who succeeded in making the first  East India  voyage in less than a decade after 1492.  Instead, colonialism should be understood as a dynamic interaction in the context of which the colonial empires and the individual colonies massively influenced the historical development of their European mother countries. This even extended to the programmes of rulers’ titles. Subsequent to da Gama successfully establishing trade relations with the Southwest Indian spice port of  Calicut , king  Manuel I (1469–1521)  not only styled himself king of Portugal, but also lord of  Arabia ,  Persia  and India. Like the Portuguese world empire, the Spanish arrived in all of Europe because European and non-European immigrants participated as much as did the natives in the colonies. The Spanish empire can hardly be imagined without Belgians, Italians and Chinese, while commerce and administration in the Portuguese empire was shaped to a significant degree by Germans, Flemings, Moslems and Jews. 3

Colonialism and Imperialism

According to Wolfgang Reinhard, colonialism in terms of a history of ideas constitutes a “developmental differential” due to the “control of one people by an alien one”. 4  Unlike the more dynamic, but also politically more judgmental and emotionally charged form of imperialism, colonialism as the result of a will to expand and rule can initially be understood as a state that establishes an alien, colonial rule. It has existed in almost all periods of world history in different degrees of expression. Even after the official dissolution of its formal state in the age of decolonisation, it was possible to maintain it as a myth, as in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution in 1974, when the dictatorship of  António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970)  was debated but hardly ever the colonial past in  Angola ,  Mozambique ,  Goa ,  Macao  and  East Timor . Already in 1933, the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre stated the thesis that the Portuguese as the oldest European colonial nation had a special gift for expansion in his controversial book  Casa-grande e Senzala  ( The Masters and the Slaves ). It consisted of peacefully intermingling the cultures without  racism  and colonial massacres. Using the example of  Brazil , he rationalized colonial paternalism with the allegedly successful relationship between masters and slaves.

Following his studies, the author, philosopher and theologian Johann Gottfried (since 1802) von Herder initially worked as a clergyman. He travelled extensively in France, Holland and Italy. His writings concentrated mainly on linguistic theory ( Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache , 1772), the philosophy of history ( Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit ,   1784–1791) and the history of literature and culture ( Über die neuere Deutsche Litteratur , 1767;  Von deutscher Art und Kunst , 1773), many of which presented ground-breaking theories. He also contributed to the “Sturm und Drang” movement and influenced 19th century philosophy (Hegel, Schelling) as well as the poetry of the Romantic Movement. / Library of Congress

But other colonial powers also claimed this for themselves. Even the harshest critics of expansion policies – starting with  Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566)  to the Marxist-Leninist criticism of the 20th century – did not doubt the civilising mission that justified colonial hegemony. 5  Similar to the  abolitionists , they criticised the colonial excesses that could mean mismanagement, corruption and, in the extreme case, genocide. However, that the colonies became an integral part of the mother country, that therefore the colonial nation is indivisible, at home on several continents and, thus, incapable of doing any fundamental evil, can be shown to be part of the European colonial ideology since its earliest beginnings. Intellectual transfer processes had already taken place at this time, in the Age of  Enlightenment  most noticeably in the mutual influence of  Adam Smith (1723–1790) ,  Denis Diderot (1713–1784) ,  Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803)    and their contemporaries. 6  They agreed on a moderate critique of colonial expansion and a simultaneous enthusiastic, cosmopolitan exuberance for appropriating the world outside of Europe. Though slavery and cosmopolitanism could theoretically not be brought to a common denominator, in practice the conquest explained its legitimacy since the 16th century with its own success. The Dutch, English, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Russian colonial enterprises, which each surveyed the world in its own manner with soldiers, scientists, merchants and missionaries, shared the common perception of the “Other” on the basis of the presumed cultural superiority of the “Self”. As different as the spread of Christianity proceeded with the nonconformist, dissenting elements of Protestantism in  North America  and the Catholic forces in South America so, too, was the result different in the end. Spain, for example, was not able to use  Latin America  for a profitable export economy, but by contrast the British succeeded in monopolising the slave trade as a most lucrative long-distance business.

When, during the course of the 19th century, the Italians, Belgians and Germans raised a claim to their share of the world in addition to the old colonial powers, the term “Imperialism” became an ideologically loaded and overall imprecise, but probably irreplaceable historiographical concept. 7  During the phase of High Imperialism between 1870 and World War I, every larger European nation state as well as the USA and Japan participated in acquiring territories outside Europe. That is what makes this period so unique in European history, though measured against other criteria, such as time and space, it was not more spectacular than previous ones. Thus, the European conquest of North and South America in the 16th and 17th centuries or of India in the 18th and early 19th   centuries was no less incisive in its spatial dimension or the number of people brought under European rule as was the “Scramble for Africa” that became synonymous with the unsystematic and overly hasty intervention of Europeans in the entire African continent. But unlike in earlier periods, a broad European public for the first time participated politically, economically and culturally directly in the process of that expansion. It had deep-reaching effects on the historical development of the European societies themselves, which is reflected, for example, in the professional careers of politicians, diplomats and high-ranking military men. After all, it was caused by massive economic and diplomatic rivalries between the European colonial powers and a widespread chauvinism.

Likewise, this process was to a significant extent triggered by internal crises in  Africa  itself. As in the 16th century, the rivalry between Christian and Islamic  missions  again erupted in the North of Africa. In a classic of the historiography of imperialism, Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher explain that Europe is not the only place for understanding the motives of European expansion. According to Robinson and Gallagher, this motivation was primarily founded in Africa, at least, as far as late Victorian society was concerned. 8  If non-Western societies were no longer just the victims of Europe and quite a few of their elites participated in colonial and imperial rule, a layer of European settlers, Christian missionaries, colonial officers etc., who bridged the “periphery” and the “centre”, became a third force known in research as the “men on the spot”. Their lobbying influence on the expansion of the colonial empires was no less than that of political and economic interest groups in the metropole, even though their motivations depended more situationally on the events in the colonies than could be or would be the case in the European centres of power. This can be shown equally for the Asian, the African and the  Pacific regions . Colonial sites of remembrance and their culture of monuments recall to this day conflicts and ambivalences of European colonial rule in public memory. 9

The drawing of  Punch  cartoonist John Tenniel depicts Lady Justice larger than life slaying terror-stricken Indians with the executioner’s sword. She is supported by soldiers in the background. The blindfold as one of her typical attributes is missing; the scales of truth and fairness are represented on a shield. / Wikimedia Commons

This circumstance made High Imperialism a European and global project at both the centre and the periphery. Furthermore, it illustrates the critical significance of political and military force in the imperial process. “Gunboat diplomacy”, one of the historical buzzwords for Europe’s intercourse with Africa in the final third of the 19th century, also occurred in  Turkey  and  China . Informal imperialism, often equated with the dominance of  free trade  over other methods of colonial influence, lost ground to the extent that coercion could only be exercised by violence. This is well illustrated by the war with China over the opium trade (1840–1842). The brutal suppression of the Indian “mutiny” in 1857/1858 by the British  constitutes the opposite of the Manchester School of Economics’ view that, based on free trade rather than unilateral exploitation, the world would find a balance of peaceful and cooperative exchange between Europe and the non-European sphere. The protection of national economic interests or the defence of prestige later led several German observers to the conclusion that the English were conducting a commercial imperialism, whereas the French wanted to enhance the respect for their nation in the world.

Nevertheless, the “informal empire” was the prevailing model. In the British context, this led to the exaggerated thesis that the nation was not interested in expansion and that in this regard it was characterized by “absentmindedness”. 10  Those who currently perceive global capitalism as the successor of formerly direct territorial rule because it exercises no less pressure on the political and social systems to impose its economic interests, see the origins of informal imperialism reaching deep into the 19th century. Until the recent past, this thesis could be countered by noting that it not only underestimates the scale of the creation of global empires but also their dissolution. 11  The consequences of the problematic withdrawal of the French from  Algeria , the Italians from  Eritrea  or the British from India and  Ireland  still remain present. In this respect, colonisation and decolonisation were two historical processes referring to each other, comparable to the systole and diastole of the metropolitan heart beat. Only the interaction of these two as well as numerous other factors resulted in the world historical consequences of European expansion.

Regions and periods

The oil painting by the American historical painter John Trumbull (1756–1843) shows the presentation of the draft of the American Declaration of Independence by the five-man committee (centre of the painting) to Congress. /  United States Architect of the Capitol

An outline of Batavia (Jakarta), today Indonesia, the central trading post of the  Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie  in 1629. The title (upper centre): “Afbeldinge van ‘t Casteel en de Stadt Batavia, gelegen op ‘t groot Eylandt Java-Maior, int Coninckrijck van Jaccatra” (View of the fort in the town of Batavia, on the large island Java Maior in the Kingdom of Jakarta). To the right is a lion wielding a sword and the coat of arms of Batavia. The lower right picture half contains the legend, below which is a view of Batavia from the sea. /  Atlas Van Stolk collection Rotterdam

Colonial regions and their limits as well as periods and their caesuras offer two possibilities of approaching European colonialism. For example,  the independence of the North American colonies in 1776  marks one of the most important turning points – from the Atlantic to the Asian aspect of the British empire – and, also, the first experience of decolonization of global significance in the history of European imperialism. The second only began in the 1950s, here especially on the African continent and, offset in time from the freedom movements of Central and South America as well as  Asia . In the 18th century, the foremost European colonial powers, led by  England , solidified their global hegemonic position. If they did not create overseas empires, they conquered territories in the form of a continental colonialism as the Russian monarchy did in  Siberia  and the Habsburgs in  South-eastern Europe . This continental variant was equivalent in nature to the later westward shift of the American  Frontier  and the north migration of the South African boundary as well as the subimperialism, e.g. of  Egypt  and the  Sudan . While the direct penetration of North and South America was almost entirely completed, that of the Asian and African sphere only began on a larger scale after 1800 – in Africa, for example, after 1830 with the French conquest of Algeria, from which  Morocco  and  Tunis  were also to be brought under French influence. The Russian conquest of Siberia, which followed the course of the rivers similar to the American expansion, aimed to acquire the lucrative fur trade. Concurrent with the mining of gold and precious stones in Brazil, silver mines were also found in the Siberian highland and the financial as well as the informational value of a caravan route between Russia and China was recognized. The coastal fort colonies that the Dutch operated in  Indonesia   and the English on the coasts of India initially were reserved for commercial interests in spices, tea, coffee and cotton. As long as they did not expand inland and develop larger areas, they lacked military value.

A contemporary printed graphic shows an interior view of Westminster Hall during the trial of Warren Hastings (1732–1818) in the British House of Commons. As the first Governor General of India (1773–1785), Hastings not only markedly increased the profits that the East India Company made for the crown but also expanded its sphere of power and reorganised the administration. He clashed with the British government because it wanted to limit the company to a purely mercantile function. In 1785, he was accused of abuse of office and blackmail by the Whig politicians Sir Philip Francis (1740–1818) and Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and was only acquitted in 1795. / Library of Congress

In 1772, when governor  Warren Hastings (1732–1818)  strove not only for economic but also for the political and administrative development of the hinterland in  Bengal  and his administration was overshadowed by numerous scandals, his famous critic  Edmund Burke (1729–1797)  vented his anger on the methods of colonial rule. In this way, he also directed attention to the newly formed field of tension of the competing powers of the administrative centre in  London  and the “men on the spot”, those increasingly more powerful servants of European colonialism who at the same time also pursued their own interests in the periphery. In the 19th century, this would become a fixed  topos  of mutual accusations when businesses based on shares and founded on the model of the  East India Company  (chartered in 1559, monopoly to 1858), and comparable to the Dutch Vereenigden Oost-Indischen Compagnie (1602–1798), were raised by  Sweden ,  Denmark ,  Scotland ,  Austria ,  Brandenburg-Prussia  and  Poland  and were partly equipped with sovereign rights. Financially, they were based on the exchanges, which were becoming ever more central to European economic life, and a modern banking system that coordinated the international trade in luxury goods, such as silk, with that in foods novel to Europe, such as potatoes, maize and rice. Only the English company flourished in the long run. Within limits, the Dutch company, which focused on the spice trade and participated in expanding the colonial empire in Southeast Asia, also succeeded. The British created a cotton monopoly. With the trade in goods, for example, coffee from  Java  and tea from China, Europeans continuously developed new areas, especially Asia, that could be “opened” almost without violence (China since 1685). The formal use of colonial violence was symbolized in its most illustrative form in the  slave trade  with the establishment of slave ports on the coasts of  West  and  East Africa  as the starting points of slave shipments to the plantations of Middle and South America.

This contemporary chromolithography shows the battle of Belmont on 23 November 1899 in the Second Boer War, in which British troops took a Boer position, driving their opponents into flight. The composition emphasizes the superiority of the British, by placing three British soldiers in heroic pose and the Union Jack at the centre of the image. / Library of Congress

South Africa, since the 17th century developed by the Dutch as a  settlement colony  and since 1815 of importance to the British because of its gold and diamond mines, is exempted from this. Similar to Egypt, it played a special role, including with regard to its perception by Europeans. The shipping routes around the  Cape  and through the  Suez Canal  were of elementary significance from the perspective of military and commercial politics. Furthermore, a presence in Egypt held great symbolic significance, as manifested in attempts at its conquest from  Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)  to Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). Remarkable in this parallel is the belief that focussed power in Europe and on the  Nile  – as the access to Asia – was a condition of concentrated power in the world. A British colonial administrator such as  Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer (1841–1917) , who was stationed in  Calcutta  and  Cairo , knew like none other that the survival of the empire depended as much on India, the Jewel in the Crown, as on the Suez Canal. His book  Ancient and Modern Imperialism  (1910) is a testimonial of intimate knowledge of the manner in which colonial rule functioned, as they were handed down at various administrative posts. What the British were willing to spend on the defence of their interests some 6,000 miles from London is evident from the, on the whole devastating, South African War (also Second Boer War, 1899–1902).  Volunteers from numerous European countries fought on the side of the Boers against the British, who in turn recruited large military contingents in  Australia  and  Canada . The legend of imperial rule irretrievably lost its legitimacy when in 1956 the British and the French armies had to leave the Suez Canal Zone under pressure from the USA and the  Soviet Union . Therefore, the Canal as well as the Cape were areas of first rank in the encounters of Europeans and non-Europeans as well as areas of encounter in the sequence of various European colonialisms.

Precisely defined dividing lines between periods are impossible in this panorama as a matter of course. For this, the enterprises in which all European colonial powers were more or less involved ( voyages of discovery , scientific projects such as cartography, construction of mercantilist colonial economies etc.) were too different in their time spans and too fluid, while the interactions between Europe and the rest of the world, which were subjected to continuous change, were too divergent. However, there were phases in the overall development of European colonialism that can be separated in analogy to the development of the great power system of the European states:

1. In the beginning, Portugal and Spain (in personal union 1580–1640) were primarily interested in overseas trade to Brazil and the  Philippines  and inspired by Christian missionary zeal. With few exceptions, they managed to avoid colonial overlap.

2. By contrast, competition heated up in the 17th century, when the English, French and Dutch pressed forward, initially not in the territories of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, but in neighbouring regions. This is demonstrated in exemplary manner by the North American  Atlantic coast  between the French possessions in modern Canada and the Spanish claims in the South.

3. When it became impossible to avert the crisis of the  Ancien Régime  in Europe any longer, the colonial empires also lost their cohesion. The British won against their French rival in North America and India, against the Dutch in Southeast Asia and against the Spanish in South America. The independence of the United States was substituted with supremacy in India, in  South Africa and especially on the seas with the almost peerless  Royal Navy  and modern free trade.

4. The colonial incorporation of Africa on a large scale began with  France ‘s conquest of Algeria in 1830, which at the same time more than before released Europe’s internal economic and industrial tensions as colonialist forces and peaked in High Imperialism between 1870 and World War I. 12

5. Since the origins of a pluralistic colonial system during the course of the 19th century, not only the Europeans were involved in dividing the world but also Japan and  Russia . The USA is the prototype for a successful linkage of continental internal colonisation in the form of the westward shift of the Frontier and maritime colonial policy in the Asian sphere, while paradoxically being the most successful model of anti-colonialism. At the latest around 1900, the European system of great powers stood before the challenge of global competition. In the controversial interpretation of Niall Ferguson, it was logical that the USA would assume Britain’s role as the “global hegemon” in the 20th century and marginalize the formal and informal colonialism of Europe but also continue globalization as “anglobalisation”. 13

In 1884, the German colonial politician Carl Peters founded the “Society for German Colonisation” and acquired through questionable “protection treaties” with the natives in Zanzibar the core area of later German East Africa. In 1891, the German empire took over the administration of the “protectorate” and Peters was installed as the Imperial commissioner of the Kilimanjaro district to 1893. Serious accusations of arbitrary cruelty against the natives resulted in his dismissal from state service in 1897. / Wikimedia Commons

Since the 16th century, genuine European colonial powers such as Spain, Portugal, France and  Britain  were distinguished by developing a concept of their world rule and basing it on the legacy of  Rome . 14  This does not mean that stragglers like  Italy ,  Belgium  and  Germany  did not produce their own forms of imperial thought and had specific colonial systems with which they caught up to the great historical empires. German colonial officials, pragmatists such as  Heinrich Schnee (1871–1949)  and  Carl Peters (1856–1918) ,  saw German colonialism in the light of and in delimitation against British and French colonialism as well as in the context of world politics. They also participated in the virtually Europe-wide debate about the possible model function that the  Roman Empire  had for Europe. However, unlike the empires of the late 19th century, Spanish world rule was characterized by being pre-modern, and British colonial rule no later than 1750 held a geographical sway without example, which makes a thorough concept of empire and expansionism a precondition. Their shared reference frame was the Atlantic world, which as a historical concept for determining colonial practices had gained acceptance. 15  In this case, “imperiality” and “globality” were one and carried by a Christian universalist, almost messianic claim to leadership. However, the price that Spain came to pay for its position as world-empire was high and due to the European constellation of powers. Its global superiority was offset by rejecting the claim to the imperial title of the Holy Roman Empire as a consequence of the division of the Habsburg inheritance.

Albert Sarraut was a delegate of the Radical Party in the French Parliament from 1902–1924. As governor general in Indochina (1911–1914, 1916–1919), he promoted participation of the population in the administration and reformed, for example, the education system. He was Minister of Colonies in 1920–1924 and 1932–1933, and Interior Minister from 1934–1935 and 1938–1940. In 1933 and 1936 respectively, he served for a few months as prime minister. In 1944–1945 he was incarcerated in a German concentration camp. After 1945, he dedicated himself increasingly to overseas policies. / Library of Congress

The empires of the modern nation state were not exposed to a loss of unity associated with the global dimension. Their expansion drive was primarily conditioned by worldly factors such as profit and prestige, in any case not a concept of universal monarchy indebted to Christian salvation, peace and justice. The world empire thought of  Charles V (1500–1558)  survived to the extent that the civilising mission of the modern European imperialisms became a transnational, but not primarily religious motor. Their driving forces were very different, not necessarily ideological but, in the French case, they constituted a part of the cost/benefit calculation. In 1923,  Albert Sarraut (1872–1962) , the governor general of  Indochina , defined the  leitmotiv  of “mise en valeur” (development) and based it on the concept that the colonies are merely an exterritorial component of a “Greater France” or a “France Africaine”. 16  There already were similar considerations in Victorian England with regard to the white settlement colonies, such as Canada and Australia. For the historian  John Robert Seeley (1843–1895)  and before him  Charles Dilke (1843–1911) , the empire signified the “expansion of England” into a colonial world, in which cricket would be played just as in  Oxford . 17  Nation and expansion were conditional upon each other without relinquishing diversity.  James Anthony Froude (1818–1894)  warned that whoever overemphasized the value of India and the African colonies also underestimated that of the “white settlements”. His book  Oceana, or England and her colonies  (1886) was an attempt at staging the British empire as the legitimate heir of the Roman republic: The former followed the principle of politically wise forms of government when it subordinated colonialism and republicanism to reason and with it attributed more weight to the code of the virtue of good government than to the authority of military or economic monopolies of violence in the African and Asian colonies. 18   Winston Churchill (1874–1965)  invented for this the exclusive term “English-speaking peoples”.

That this rule could apply to the overseas empires but would be different for continental ones like that of the Habsburgs was discussed by contemporary observers in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s sphere of influence and especially in delimitation against the pulsating German empire. Austrian imperial history was formulated in imperial terminology – after all, the occupation of  Bosnia-Herzegovina  was officially accepted at the Congress of  Berlin  in 1878. However, the Habsburg Empire was not centralistic but multinational in concept and tolerated local independence up to the confirmation of regional and religious diversity. Habsburg’s deficit of not being able to provide a national identity was partially compensated by strengthening the popular dynasty, although it, in the person of  Emperor Franz Joseph (1830–1916) , was not equal to the extreme High Imperialism of the turn of the century. The empire was governed in a nostalgic rather than modern manner. Where similar backward tendencies appeared in other European monarchies, a balance was sought using political and cultural measures. One of the best known examples is the crowning of  Victoria (1819–1901)  as the empress of India in 1876, which was in a manner an imitation of the Bonapartist succession practice of the Spanish monarchy in South America.  Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)    pushed Victoria’s imperial title forward because he saw a crisis coming toward Britain and the empire with the monarch’s Germanism and obliviousness to duty after the death of her prince consort  Albert (1819–1861) . Subsequently, British imperialism became even more unrivalled and the centrality of Europe in the world of the 19th century became even more clearly an economic, military and maritime centrality of Great Britain. Based on the Royal Navy and world trade, the  Pax Britannica symbolized this programme of a pacifist colonialism. In the concept of a peace-making world empire, there could be several global players but only one global hegemon. This idealisation of maritime rule was reflected in  Alfred Mahan’s (1840–1914)  classic  The Influence of Sea Power upon History  (1890), a manifesto of the triumphal “anglobalisation”, that is the earth-girding and people-uniting expansion of the  Occident .

This photograph of Herero prisoners of war in German Southwest Africa from the early 20th century was distributed as a postcard. / Wikimedia Commons

The photograph shows youths who were abused and maimed by the Belgian colonial power in the Congo under king Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909). / Wikimedia Commons

The overseas as well as the continental colonial empires of Europe were together characterised by constructing their imperial rule over a developmental differential against the “Other” and, thus, significantly contributed to a changed self-perception of Europe in the world. Essentially, it was more about self-image than the image of others. Rule was alien rule over peoples perceived as being “subject”. It had to be achieved with violent conquest and secured with colonial methods to guarantee economic, military and cultural exploitation. Therefore, the European claim to superiority legitimised the logic of the unequal interrelationship between colonial societies and a novel capitalism in Europe, especially the British “gentlemanly capitalists”, 19  whose global reach came to bear in a particularly pronounced form as the slave economy. Nowhere was the ambivalence between ruthless hegemonic ambition on one hand and concepts such as world citizenship, cosmopolitanism and human rights, which were derived from the Enlightenment, more clear than in slavery on the other hand. 20  Slavery, which made use of the idea of the different natures of people, culminated in the race theories of High Imperialism. Probably no European colonial power remained aloof from this discussion, which with the help of medicine, anthropology, ethnology etc. was founded on pseudoscience, guided by practical benefit and brought the contradictions and perversions of imperialism to a climax. French debates from  Arthur de Gobineau’s (1816–1882)   Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines,  1853)    to  Georges Vacher de Lapouge’s (1854–1936)     Race et milieu social:  essais d’anthroposociologie   ( 1909) profited in the same way as the British controversies involving, for example,  Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914)  from the stereotypical ideas that colonial officials brought back to the centres of power from their every day experiences. The genocide of the Germans against the Herero and Nama in  German Southwest Africa  (1903–1907)  is one of many testimonials, the reign of terror of the Belgian king  Leopold II (1835–1909)  in the  Congo  another.

Therefore, the concept of a “Europeanisation of the world” signifies the dilemma. On one hand, there are positive achievements, such as modern statehood, urbanisation, rationalism and Christianity, European thought systems such as Liberalism, Socialism and Positivism, which was received with great enthusiasm in France and England as well as in Brazil and Japan. On the other hand, there are negative legacies, such as Caesarism, racism and colonial violence. It can also raise the question whether European history between about 1450 and 1950 cannot be predominantly read as a history of expansion, especially if one treats the history of the empires beyond Eurocentrism as world history but without underlaying it with a universal theory and without constructing it as a historical unity. With the treaty to divide the world of 1494, a more intensive interaction of nation, expansion and “Europeanisation of the world” began that was not a unilateral creation of dependencies but a process of give and take with reciprocal influences beyond fixed imperial boundary drawing. According to this multipolar dynamic, Europe was not decentralised or provincialised, 21  but Europe is equally unsuitable as the only perspective in the interpretation of the global modern period. 22

Aldrich, Robert: Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France: Monuments, Museums and Colonial Memories , Basingstoke 2005.

Barth, Boris / Osterhammel, Jürgen (eds.): Zivilisierungsmissionen: Imperiale Weltverbesserung seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, Constance 2005.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh: Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference , New Jersey 2000.

Cain, Peter J. / Hopkins, Antony G.: British Imperialism: Innovation and expansion 1688–1914 , 2. ed., London 2001.

Cain, Peter J. / Hopkins, Antony G.: British Imperialism: Crisis and deconstruction 1914–1990 , 2. ed., London 2001.

Dilke, Charles Wentworth: Problems of Greater Britain , London 1890, vol. 1–2.

Drescher, Seymour: Abolition: A history of slavery and antislavery , Cambridge et al. 2009.

Elliott, John H.: Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 , New Haven et al. 2006.

Ferguson, Niall: Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World , London 2003.

Froude, James Anthony: Oceana, or England and her colonies , London 1886.

Headley, John M.: The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy , Princeton et al. 2008.

Kiernan, Victor: The Lords of Human Kind: European Attitudes to Other Cultures in the Imperial Age , London 1995.

Koebner, Richard / Schmidt, H. D.: Imperialism: The story and significance of a political word , Cambridge 1965.

Korman, Sharon: The Right of Conquest: The acquisition of territory by force in international law and practice , Oxford 1996.

Mommsen, Wolfgang J.: Der europäische Imperialismus: Aufsätze und Abhandlungen, Göttingen 1979.

Oliveira Marques, Antonio Henrique de: Geschichte Portugals und des portugiesischen Weltreichs, Stuttgart 2001.

Osterhammel, Jürgen: Kolonialismus: Geschichte, Formen, Folgen, 5. ed., Munich 2006.

Pagden, Anthony: Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500 – c. 1800 , New Haven 1995.

Porter, Andrew: European Imperialism, 1860–1914 , Houndmills 1994 (Studies in European History).

Porter, Bernard: The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain , Oxford et al. 2004.

Reinhard, Wolfgang: Kleine Geschichte des Kolonialismus, Stuttgart 2008.

Robinson, Ronald / Gallagher, John: Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, London 1961.

Sarraut, Albert: La mise en valeur des colonies Françaises, Paris 1923.

Seeley, John Robert: The Expansion of England , London 1883.

Stuchtey, Benedikt: Die europäische Expansion und ihre Feinde: Kolonialismuskritik vom 18. bis in das 20. Jahrhundert, Munich 2010.

Wesseling, Hendrik L.: The European Colonial Empires 1815–1919 , Harlow 2004.

• Korman, Right of Conquest 1996.
• Digitized version of the peace treaty, Ministère des Affaires étrangères, online:  http://www.doc.diplomatie.gouv.fr/BASIS/choiseul/desktop/choiseul/DDW?M=134&K=17630001&W=PAYS+%3D+%27Multilat%E9raux%27+ORDER+BY+SOUSSERIE/Ascend [20.09.2010].
• Oliveira Marques, Geschichte Portugals 2001, p. 177.
• Reinhard, Kolonialismus 2008, p. 1.
• Barth / Osterhammel, Zivilisierungsmissionen 2005.
• Stuchtey, Europäische Expansion 2010, p. 39–122.
• Koebner / Schmidt, Imperialism 1965, passim.
• Robinson / Gallagher, Africa 1961, pp. 462–472.
• Cf. Aldrich, Vestiges 2005, pp. 328–334.
• Seeley, Expansion 1883.
• Porter, Absent-Minded Imperialists 2004.
• Wesseling, European Colonial Empires 2004.
• Ferguson, Empire 2003.
• Pagden, Lords 1995, pp. 11–28.
• Elliott, Empires 2006, passim.
• Sarraut, Valeur 1923.
• Seeley, John Robert: The Expansion of England, London 1883; Dilke, Charles Wentworth: Problems of Greater Britain, London 1890, vol. 1–2.
• Froude, Oceana 1886, pp. 1–17.
• Cain / Hopkins, Imperialism 2001.
• Drescher, Abolition 2009.
• Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe 2000.
• Headley, Europeanization 2008.

Originally published by EGO: Journal of European History Online under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license.

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Imperialism and nationalism

The nature of Russian aggression in Ukraine

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• Published: 30 September 2022
• Volume 74 , pages 447–461, ( 2022 )

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• Paweł Rojek   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2584-0108 1  

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Is Russia a neoimperial or postimperial state? In this paper, I compare two interpretations proposed by political commentators Marcel Van Herpen and Dmitri Trenin. Van Herpen holds that the Russian empire is literally being rebuilt, whereas Trenin believes that Russia is just ceasing to be an empire. I argue that, contrary to popular belief, the current war against Ukraine cannot be interpreted as an attempt to restore the Russian empire. This is because being an empire requires a universalistic ideology that can be accepted by other nations. Meanwhile, the ideological foundation of the current war is an obviously nationalistic conception of the “Russian world.” Polish historians Andrzej Nowak and Włodzimierz Marciniak brilliantly argued that it was Russian nationalism that had previously led to the collapse of both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Under this interpretation the current war in Ukraine can be seen not as the rebirth but rather as the dramatic end of Russian imperialism.

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Imperialism and Its Critics

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Russia is undoubtedly a former empire. The most important question today is whether it remains a postimperium or is becoming a neoimperium. Postimperial states, such as Turkey, France, or Great Britain, gradually give up their imperial aspirations, although they retain the memory of their past for a long time and occasionally turn to old rhetoric. Neoimperial states, on the other hand, return to imperial ideology and renew their imperial power structures, threatening not only their former territories but also further neighbors. The process of imperial decay can be very long and painful. Turkey committed the Armenian genocide in a postimperial spasm, France had a terrorist organization defending its imperial status, and Britain was still waging war in the 1980s to defend the remnants of its overseas possessions. All of these countries ultimately gave up their imperial legacy, although they still play a significant role in world politics. Former empires can also return to their previous form after a period of weakness and disintegration. The best example of this is Imperial Russia, which reemerged as a Soviet Union after several years of decline. However, what is happening to contemporary Russia? Are we witnessing its transition to a postimperial phase, or perhaps the beginning of another dangerous imperial rebirth?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 seems to finally resolve this question. Russia has attacked a neighboring country for no specific reason, triggering a war of unprecedented scale, with terrible civilian casualties and apparently numerous war crimes. The war is accompanied by the strengthening of authoritarianism in Russia, massive propaganda, and the isolation of society from the free media. So far, control over Russian society seems to be successful. The war still enjoys the support of the majority of Russians and the few anti-war protests were brutally suppressed. Bloody military aggression, cynical lies of propaganda, and the helplessness of the opposition are reminiscent of the worst days of the Soviet Union. No surprise then that it is widely believed that Putin is trying to rebuild a lost empire.

However, something seems to be missing in this obvious analogy. The former Soviet Union was a supranational empire based on a universalist ideology. The contemporary Russian Federation, while still uniting many nations, increasingly appeals to a particularist Russian nationalism. The officially declared goal of the “special military operation” in Ukraine is to protect ethnic Russians from alleged Ukrainian Nazis. It primarily concerns the Russian population living in Ukraine, but indirectly also the inhabitants of Russia. While it is clear that the idea of the defense of Russians was just a pretext for war, I think it should be taken seriously. This is because such an official ideology creates a conceptual framework that limits the possible actions of power. Every previous form of Russian imperialism appealed to some supranational ideas, such as Orthodoxy, Enlightenment, or Communism. Contemporary Russia, for the first time in its history, has begun a major war against another country officially appealing not to universalistic ideas, but to Russian nationalism. However, the point is that nationalism is fundamentally antithetical to imperialism. It is impossible to build a stable multinational empire on the bare domination of a single nation. The domination must be mediated by universalistic ideologies justifying the cooperation of conquered nations with the empire. Such ideologies could be based for instance on religion, a civilizational mission, or a philosophical vision. As it seems, there is no such universalistic ideology behind the current Russian aggression. So perhaps, ironically, the war in Ukraine is evidence of the final end of Russian imperialism and the beginning of a new national Russia. Unfortunately, the face of this new Russia appears to be no less repulsive than that of the former empire.

The question of the postimperial or neoimperial character of contemporary Russia has been the focus of an important debate between two prominent specialists in Russian affairs associated with important pro-Atlantic and pro-European think tanks, Dmitri Trenin and Marcel Van Herpen. I think this discussion can be very helpful in understanding what is happening in Russia today.

In 2011, Trenin, director of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, widely recognized as one of the most pro-Western Russian commentators, published a book with the telling title Post-Imperium . He wrote emphatically:

The Russian empire is over, never to return. The enterprise that had lasted for hundreds of years simply lost the drive. The élan is gone. In the two decades since the collapse, imperial restoration was never considered seriously by the leaders, nor demanded by the wider public. Rather, Russia has gone in reverse—expansion has yielded to introspection [...]. This is a Russia the world has not known before the start of the twenty-first century. (Trenin 2011 , p. 231)

It should be noted that Trenin wrote these words several years after a clear shift in Russian policy toward strengthening its international position, after Putin’s infamous claim that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” in 2005, after Putin’s harsh speech against the United States in Munich in 2007, and after the Russian intervention in Georgia in 2008. Despite all this, Trenin argued that, contrary to the fears of many Western experts and the hopes of some Russian ideologists, none of these events actually reflected a revival of Russian imperialism. According to him, Russia simply wanted to remain one of the major players in the international game, a great power with a privileged zone of influence, but this had nothing to do with building a universalist empire as in the Tsarist or Soviet times.

In 2014, just before the annexation of Crimea, the Dutch commentator Marcel H. Van Herpen, director of the Cicero Foundation in Maastricht, published a book with the no less telling title Putin’s Wars: The Rise of Russia’s New Imperialism . As he wrote,

The thesis of this book is that—unlike in Western Europe, where the process of decolonization was definitive—the same is not necessarily true for Russia. For the Russian state colonizing neighboring territories and subduing neighboring peoples has been a continuous process. It is, one could almost say, part of Russia’s genetic makeup. (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 2)

Van Herpen analyzed in detail the tendencies of Russian internal and external policy. He noted the rise of authoritarian trends on the one hand and the growth of imperialist tendencies on the other. For him, Russian despotism is the most important cause of Russian expansion. This is so because imperialist aggression helps to neutralize social tensions produced by authoritarianism. Van Herpen severely criticized Trenin’s interpretation. He insisted that “the problem with Trenin’s analysis is not only that it is too simple, but also that it contradicts the facts” (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 3). Putin’s Wars are in fact a polemic against Post-Imperium .

Trenin is reassuring us: Putin’s Russia has no plans to reconquer its lost empire. Russia is a post-empire and intends to remain so. The thesis of this book [namely, Van Herpen’s one] is that the Russian Federation is both a postimperial state and a pre-imperial state. (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 5)

Van Herpen sees the time of Putin’s rule as a period of transition from postimperialism to neoimperialism. After a short time of crisis, we are witnessing the rebirth of the Russian empire. This dynamic, according to Van Herpen, is evidenced by the fact that just after the publication of Trenin’s book in December 2011, Moscow launched the Eurasian Union project, which he considered the final effort to restore the lost empire. Recent events in Russia seem to strongly support his thesis. Shortly after Van Herpen’s book was published, we witnessed the annexation of Crimea, followed by Russian intervention in Donbas and Luhansk, and finally the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In this paper, I would like to present the main arguments in the debate between neoimperial and postimperial interpretations of contemporary Russian politics. As it turns out, Marcel Van Herpen was right in his prediction of increasingly aggressive Russian internal and external politics. However, it seems to me that, contrary to him, the official justification for current Russian aggression in fact rules out the possibility of the realization of any imperial project in a strict sense. It is widely agreed that nationalism, chauvinism, and xenophobia have become increasingly influential in Russia in recent years. Moreover, the current aggression in Ukraine is being carried out in the name of defending the “Russian world” ( russkii mir ), that is, the community of Russians living in Russia and neighboring countries. It is not clear whether this supposed community is based on ethnic Russians, Russian-speakers, or people identifying with Russian culture broadly. Nevertheless, it seems that no true empire can be built on such foundations. This is because the idea of the Russian world has a distinctively nationalistic character. After all, it was the rise of nationalism, and not just that of the subjected nations, but above all of the Russians themselves, that led to the collapse of the USSR. Furthermore, it seems that current Russian nationalistic rhetoric also threatens the integrity of the Russian Federation itself, which is after all a multinational and multiethnic state. Thus, it appears that Russia has fallen into a trap of nationalism that not only prevents the restoration of the former empire but also threatens the very integrity of what remains of it.

Three forms of Russian empire

Russia has always been an imperial country. I would like to briefly look at the history of the formation of the Russian empire. Roughly, there are three main phases of this process, differing not only in territorial extent, but also in the dominant imperial ideology. I will call them the Traditional Empire, the Classical Empire, and the Soviet Empire. The history of these three imperial forms provides the context for a discussion of the current stage of Russian history.

At the beginning, the Grand Duchy of Moscow was an ethnically homogeneous Ruthenian state, perhaps the only foreign element being the descendants of the Varangians who ruled it. However, shortly after Grand Duke Ivan the Terrible assumed the title of Tsar in 1547, a process of rapid expansion began. The country became a true empire, incorporating predominantly Muslim lands formerly belonging to the Golden Horde. In 1552 the Kazan Khanate was incorporated, in 1556 the Astrakhan Khanate, then, in 1598, the Siberian Khanate. Russia began the colonization of Siberia. In 1649, the Russians reached the coast of the Bering Sea. Then, in the middle of the seventeenth century, eastern Ukraine was incorporated, and the Cossacks conquered lands up to the Caucasus. The Traditional Russian Empire was thus established, forming the core of any subsequent imperial creation.

Next, the conquests of Peter the Great, who assumed the title of emperor in 1721, led to a new formation that could be called the Classical Russian Empire. The victorious war with Sweden opened access to the Baltic. Then, during the reign of Catherine II, Lithuania, the rest of Ukraine, and a great part of Poland were conquered. Afterward, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Russia captured Finland. In the south, Crimea, the Black Sea coast, and Bessarabia were annexed; in the east, Central Asia, and the Far East. For a long time, there were fights over the North Caucasus. Russian colonists took over Alaska and even reached California, where they established the settlement of Fort Ross in 1812, slightly north of present-day San Francisco. Whereas the Traditional Russian Empire was built through colonization rather than conquest, the new lands forming the Classical Empire in most cases belonged to states that actively opposed Russian expansion. For the most part, the new territories broke away from Russia at the first opportunity, in 1917, some forever, others only for the period of the civil war.

The third form of Russian empire was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Revolutionary Russia, having withdrawn briefly to its seventeenth-century borders, began a new expansion, annexing the Baltic states, parts of Poland, Bessarabia, Karelia, Tuva, and after World War II, parts of East Prussia, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuriles. The Soviet Empire created a powerful domain of influence that covered almost the entire world. Soviet troops were stationed in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Mongolia. Yugoslavia and Albania also belonged for some time to this strict zone of influence. Looser Soviet influence included North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Laos, Egypt, Syria, South Yemen, Ghana, Mali, Congo, Ethiopia, and Angola. It is worth recalling that the flag of Mozambique still features a Kalashnikov gun.

Being an empire, however, is not merely about having vast and diverse territories, but also, and perhaps most importantly, about establishing the ideas that justify such power. For no empire is based solely on force; each presents some legitimizing formula, which, at least officially, provides the justification for rule over it. The role of imperial ideas should not be underestimated; for whether or not they are sincerely accepted by the rulers and the ruled, they form an official worldview that defines the framework of their possible operations (Rojek 2009 ). During the 500 years of the Russian empire, there have been several different ways of its legitimization.

The Traditional Russian Empire was explicitly religious in nature. The mission of the Tsar was to protect and spread Orthodoxy. Such a mission resulted especially from the adoption of the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome, which implied that the Russian state was the heir of ancient Rome and Constantinople and the only defender of true Christianity in the world (Rojek 2014 , pp. 35–54). Religious legitimacy was also present later. It was the religious mission that drove Russian leaders to fight for the territories inhabited by Orthodox Christians and sometimes led to dramatic choices. A conflict with the Ottoman Empire and France over Russia’s role as protector of Orthodox believers in the Balkans and the holy sites in Jerusalem led to the Crimean War in 1853, which ended with a stunning Russian defeat and an earthquake in internal politics.

The Classical Russian Empire under Peter and Catherine initially changed its emphasis from a religious mission to a civilizing one. Russia’s new rulers officially proclaimed that their rule brought peace, culture, and enlightenment to their various peoples. Russian imperial rhetoric of this type was close to the concept of the “white man’s burden” later developed in the West (Thompson 2000 ). The conquests were presented as a beneficial emancipatory action of the peoples who could thus enjoy the achievements of European civilization. However, for a long time, the civilizing mission was combined with a religious one. For instance, the partitions of Poland were carried out in the name of protecting the rights of religious minorities, Orthodox and Protestants, allegedly threatened by intolerant Polish Catholicism.

Subsequently, the universal civilizing mission was slowly replaced by a more particular nationalistic idea. As early as 1833, Count Sergei Uvarov formulated the famous triple principle of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality, which constituted the ideological basis of the empire. Such a formula obviously excluded non-Orthodox and non-Russian inhabitants. The pan-Slavic concept of the unity of the Slavic peoples, which justified Russian claims to rule in Poland and the Balkans, was somewhat broader. An elaborate theory substantiating the Slavic alliance was put forward by Nikolai Danilevsky, who many years before Feliks Koneczny and Samuel Huntington wrote about the “plurality of civilizations.” Russia was to be the political organization of the “Slavic cultural type.” Ultimately, however, Alexander III, after his father’s assassination in 1881, adopted a decidedly more nationalist course supported by his minister Nikolai Pobedonoscev, which resulted in massive Russification and Jewish pogroms. Nevertheless, pan-Slavic ideas were still alive, and Russian support for the Slavs in the Balkans finally led to the outbreak of World War I.

The third form of the Russian empire, the Soviet Union, was based on admirably universal communist ideology. The USSR was founded not on the national, but rather class basis. It was to be the “homeland of the proletariat” and since the proletariat is everywhere, it was supposed to ultimately encompass the whole world. The first anthem of the Soviet Union announced quite literally that “with the International, the human race will rise.” Such a legitimizing formula had for a long time ensured the great successes of the empire, even after the new wartime anthem of the USSR referred to the “Great Russia” that had united the “free republics.” The conquered peoples always had an alibi for their situation, since they were not formally subject to the authority of a single nation, but to that of a state realizing the interests of the world proletariat.

Russian history might be seen as a great laboratory of imperialism. Most importantly, we can investigate in this case the fundamental role of ideologies, not only in the rise of empires but also in their fall. First, it seems that the general shift from universal civilizational principles to a particularistic national formula eventually led to the collapse of the Russian Classical Empire. This process has been admirably described by a prominent contemporary Polish historian, Andrzej Nowak ( 2014 ). The initial inclusive civilizational formula naturally privileged the most culturally developed peoples of the empire. As it happened, these were predominantly Poles. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, more subjects of Alexander I read Polish than Russian. The Polish nobility made up more than half of the entire nobility of the Russian empire. This provoked opposition from the Russian elite, who called for the empire to be based on a more national basis that would privilege their position. That was the main underlying idea of the famous “Opinion of a Russian Citizen,” sent by Nikolai Karamzin to Tsar Alexander I. However, the adoption of the national formula blocked the elites from the peripheries. They were not able to realize their aspirations in the new system, which pushed them to undermine it. National repressions thus led not only to the intended Russification, but also to the unintentional radicalization of oppressed minorities. Revolutionary activity was treated as the next, perhaps more effective, stage of the struggle for national liberation. This explains the phenomenon of thousands of Russified Poles engaged in revolutionary movements in Russia. As a result, the Russian Empire was overthrown by the Russian-speaking Pole Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Jew Lev Bronstein, and the Georgian Yosif Dzhugashvili. This case clearly shows that it is impossible to build a lasting empire on a too narrow national base. The Classical Russian Empire collapsed because it became too nationalistic.

Secondly, the universalist communist ideology, although for a long time legitimized Soviet domination over enormous ethnically diverse territories, prompted Russian patriots to dismantle the system from within. This process, in turn, has been brilliantly described by Polish political scientist and historian, former ambassador to Moscow, Włodzimierz Marciniak ( 2004 ). As he argued, it was the national awakening of the Russians, who were the only nation in the USSR without their own Communist Party, that eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. In this way, Russian nationalism crushed Soviet imperialism. Russia was one of the first republics to detach itself from the USSR. Thus, a mechanism similar to that which led to the collapse of the Classical Empire worked here. Again, the national principle undermined the imperial one. However, the Soviet Empire fell not because it was too national, but because it was not national enough.

The neoimperial view

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Russian Federation, although a quarter smaller than the former USSR, is still the largest country in the world. Present Russia, as many commentators note, with either satisfaction or concern, is surprisingly similar to the first Traditional Russian Empire, before the incorporation of Ukraine in the mid-seventeenth century. Apparently, the peoples of this imperial core have bonded strongly over 500 years of shared history. The new Russian state is clearly more national in character, although it is still a mixture of many national and ethnic groups. At the end of the Soviet Union, roughly half of its citizens described themselves as ethnic Russians ( russkie ); today they form about 75% of the Russian Federation’s population. The process of the collapse of the Soviet Empire was remarkably peaceful. Massive decolonization led to only a few local border conflicts, some of which have not been resolved to this day. Compared to other collapsing empires, which left a state of war of all against all, the Soviet Union disintegrated in a very decent way and certainly better than the French, British, or Portuguese empires.

Commentators agree that the early 1990s was a turning point in which the continuity of Russian imperial history was called into question. “The Russian Federation,” Trenin says, “having emerged from an empire, had a good chance to build a nation-state” (Trenin 2011 , p. 60) “In retrospect,” Van Herpen says, “1991 offered the first real chance in modern Russian history to break the infernal cycle of imperialist expansion and colonial subjugation of neighboring peoples” (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 47). The Russians rejected the restraining curse of empire and the ideology that legitimized it. This process was accompanied by a profound shift in attitudes toward pragmatism and individualism. Russians became tired of maintaining costly colonial possessions and generally lost interest in common goals, focusing instead on their individual lives. In addition, the violent economic crisis made it urgent to find a way to survive. Then, the path to spectacular individual success opened up for some people. Russia therefore faced a unique historical opportunity to transform its own consciousness and redefine the nature of its state. The difference between Trenin and Van Herpen was that, in the former’s view, Russia has generally seized its opportunity, while in the latter’s view it has not. “Unfortunately,” Van Herpen urged, “in the Russian situation, after a short period of shock, the loss of empire did not result in a gradual acceptance, but in a swelling tidal wave of chauvinism and nationalism” (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 50).

The foundation of Van Herpen’s reasoning is the belief that despotism is the source of imperialism. Brief democratization in the new Russia led to temporary decolonization, but shortly thereafter a process of restoration of strong central power began, resulting in a new cycle of imperialization. The underlying mechanism is that undemocratic governments generate citizen discontent that can be neutralized by the government’s use of neoimperialistic rhetoric and occasionally aggressive activity in the international sphere. Citizens thus give up their political freedom in exchange for national pride. The expansion legitimizes government and unites the nation around common causes. Unfortunately, the government, in order to maintain support, must permanently mobilize citizens and engage in aggressive external politics.

Russian imperial reconquest obviously needs a new state ideology. This ideology, according to Van Herpen, is increasingly nationalistic, or even “ultranationalistic.” As he indicated, this could be seen not only in the program of the governing party but also in the slogans of the opposition and in the demands of extremist groups that enjoy the silent support of the government. Van Herpen carefully analyzed Vladimir Putin’s famous speech, “Russia at the Turn of the Millennium,” delivered on December 29, 1999, just before he became president (Putin 1999 ). For him, this was “one of the most elaborated pieces of the Putin ideology” (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 110). Putin begins with the somewhat surprising assertion in this context that he has no intention of proposing a new state ideology:

I think the term “state ideology” advocated by some politicians, publicists, and scholars is not quite appropriate. It creates certain associations with our recent past. [...] I am against the restoration of an official state ideology in Russia in any form. (Putin 1999 )

At the same time, however, as Van Herpen notes, Putin clearly suggests such an ideology in his speech. It was based on four principles: patriotism ( patriotizm ), great power ( derzhavnost ’), statism ( gosudarstvennichestvo ), and social solidarity ( sotsial ’ naia solidarnost ’). Putin defined the principle of great power as follows:

Russia was and will remain a great power ( velikoi stranoi ). It is preconditioned by the inseparable characteristics of its geopolitical, economic, and cultural existence. They determined the mentality of Russians and the policy of the government throughout the history of Russia, and they cannot but do so at present. (Putin 1999 )

Van Herpen finds in Putin’s speech a typically Russian apotheosis of a strong state, ultranationalism, and a virtual negation of the principles of democracy and the free market, which acquire a worrisome local, Russian, rather than universal, sense. In his view, Putin’s ideology, which proclaims the need for national rebirth, is close to Italian fascism. The analogy between Putinism and fascism has been extensively developed by Van Herpen in his previous book (Van Herpen 2013 ).

The internal politics of the government and the rise of nationalist attitudes of the people were followed by concrete statements and actions of Russia in the international sphere. In 2005 Putin called the collapse of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” and in 2007 in Munich, he threatened a new Cold War. Next, in 2008 Medvedev included into the principles of Russian foreign policy “protecting the lives and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they live,” and a law passed in 2009 allowed the use of Russian troops abroad for this purpose. That same year, 2009, Russia conducted huge military maneuvers in which a tactical nuclear attack on Poland was exercised. Finally, Russia initiated various integration projects apparently aimed at rebuilding an empire in the former Soviet space. Already in 1996, the Union of Belarus and Russia was initiated, in 2002 the Collective Security Treaty Organization was created, and in 2011 the Eurasian Union was launched, which according to Van Harpen was “the ultimate integration effort, crowning and superseding all earlier integration efforts,” and the “pet project of Vladimir Putin” (Van Herpen 2014 , pp. 82, 83). To sum up, “under the guise of the Eurasian Customs Union, Eurasian Economic Union, and—most recently—Eurasian Union, new efforts of empire-building have begun” (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 3). Subsequent well-known events seem to fit this pattern perfectly. In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea and created a crisis in eastern Ukraine, and in 2022 he carried out an open attack on Ukraine.

The postimperial view

Dmitri Trenin offered a completely different diagnosis of contemporary Russia. In his opinion, it is a postimperial country, not a neoimperial one. This means that “the country is no longer an empire and it is not going to be one again. However, the many features that were established in the imperial period are still felt to this day” (Trenin 2011 , pp. 13–14). However, these features, which may continue for decades to come, should not obscure a fundamental, substantive change in the very nature of the Russian state.

The most important feature of the imperial legacy in modern Russia is its internal political system. In its general description, Trenin would probably agree with Van Herpen to a great extent. Russia is an authoritarian country, although it is a rather soft, moderate and not, in fact, very repressive authoritarianism. Democratic mechanisms function merely superficially, political parties do not truly represent the population, the courts do not preserve proper neutrality, the media is not independent, and there are no sufficient guarantees of individual freedoms. For Trenin, authoritarianism, however, contrary to Van Herpen’s suggestion, is not the same as imperialism. On the one hand, a state can be nondemocratic and show no expansionist tendencies, while on the other hand, there can be democratic states that adopt imperialist policies.

The second feature of the imperial legacy is the expansionist rhetoric frequently used by various Russian ideologists, historians, publicists, and sometimes politicians. Trenin, however, insisted that we should not attach undue importance to words. They are irritated but, in fact, ineffective expressions of the postimperial syndrome. “Words substituted for action. […] Troubled souls could vent their feelings and relieve themselves, but—apart from a few ruffled feathers—everything remained in place” (Trenin 2011 , p. 208). This is particularly evident in the comments of the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who in reality discredited, rather than promoted, imperial ideas. Moreover, in Trenin’s view, the widespread nostalgia for the Soviet Union observed by sociologists among Russians is not due at all to its imperial character, but rather to the social security it provided. The Russians, according to Trenin, yearn for the lost stability, equality, protective government, and ultimately their youth spent in the Land of Soviets rather than its status as a global empire.

Trenin argued that Russia has fundamentally changed its priorities in international politics. It has renounced imperialism but still wants to maintain its status as a great world power. Putin directly wrote about this in the article quoted and linked above. Trenin explains this shift in the following way: “While no longer a pretender to world hegemony and staying within its new, shrunken borders, Russia has been trying hard to establish itself in the top league of the world’s major players and as the dominant power in its neighborhood” (Trenin 2011 , p. 13). The transformation of an empire into a great power may seem like a nuance, but it is of great importance. Great powers realize their own interests, not imperial missions. The problem is that they can adopt aggressive politics that, to outside observers, may not differ from the former imperial politics.

What does it mean that Russia wants to be a great power? Trenin pointed to three components of the Russian idea of great power. First, Russia wants to be internally sovereign, secondly, it wants to be externally sovereign, and thirdly, it wants to maintain its own zone of influence.

Internal sovereignty means that no country should influence Russia’s internal affairs. This idea was developed in the doctrine of sovereign democracy, elaborated primarily by Vladislav Surkov (Surkov 2007a , 2007b ; Rojek 2014 , pp. 77–101). The doctrine was clearly intended to protect Russia from another “color revolution” supported by Western powers, but it also stemmed from a deep belief in the uniqueness of Russian culture, incommensurable with Western experience and categories. The pursuit of political, economic, and cultural autarky, however, is not characteristic of an empire. From an empire, we would expect bold expansion rather than desperate defense.

External sovereignty means independence in foreign-policy decisions. Russia has finally given up its previous attempts at integration with the West. To recall, in the 1990s it seriously discussed joining NATO and the newly formed European Union. Then, in the first years of the twentieth century, Russia hoped to integrate not as a part of the West but rather with the West. Putin, after the September 11 attacks, proposed a strategic partnership with the United States. According to Trenin, however, the West could not find a formula that would satisfy Russia, and Russia ultimately decided to go its own way. Most importantly, however, the concept of external sovereignty has a negative character. “The basic meaning of great power in Russian minds, then, was its own independence, rather than others’ dependence on it” (Trenin 2011 , p. 208). Again, this is not a mark of empire.

Certainly, the most controversial element of the idea of great power is the concept of a sphere of privileged influences, which has been quite often voiced by representatives of the Russian government. Trenin sees it as a clear relic of imperial thinking. “As an international actor, Russia is at a point where it recognizes all former borderland republics as separate countries , even if it does not yet see all of them as foreign states ” (Trenin 2011 , p. 14). The post-Soviet states, however, are not all treated in the same way. The Baltic countries, for instance, seen as completely foreign, are one thing, whereas Belarus or Kazakhstan, still treated as close neighbors, are another. For Trenin, the idea of the influence sphere initially had a defensive nature. It was evidenced, for instance, by the long stagnation in the process of Russia’s integration with Belarus. Undoubtedly, however, the idea of a sphere of influence, which presupposes the Russian expectation of at least neutrality, leads to unavoidable conflicts. Georgia’s and Ukraine’s attempts to leave the sphere of neutrality by integrating with the EU and NATO gave Russia reasons to go to war.

Trenin insisted that even famously aggressive statements by Russian leaders should be interpreted in the light of the idea of great power rather than empire. For example, Putin’s notorious speech at the Munich conference was, according to Trenin, in fact, a legitimate defense of Russia’s rights to retain its own status. “Accept us as we are; treat us as equals; and let’s do business where our interests meet” (Trenin 2011 , p. 27). Trenin also recalled that Putin’s worrying statements about the collapse of the Soviet Union were actually quotations from Ukrainian politicians. Allegedly, it was Oleksandr Moroz, a Speaker of Rada, who first said that “one who does not regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart; one who wants to bring it back has no brains.”

The shift from the idea of empire to the idea of great power was grounded in a fundamental and permanent change in the dominant system of values. Russians have become less committed to grand collective projects and more focused on personal concerns. They also became much less willing to share their wealth, while the possession of an empire requires sacrifices.

Empires, for all the coercion they necessarily entail, do produce some public goods, in the name of a special mission. Great powers can be at least equally brutish and oppressive, but they are essentially selfish creatures. (Trenin 2011 , p. 212)

It is the natural selfishness, both at the level of individuals and the country as a whole, that is the deepest reason for the resignation from imperial ambitions. Indeed, the possession of colonies was extremely expensive, and people remember this very well. In 1991, the seven Soviet republics received large subsidies from the union budget; in the case of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the subsidy from the center was almost the same as their own budgets. Today, simply no one would be willing to make such sacrifices.

There is no ideology, no clear set of values, but a very strong sense of pragmatism. The motto is simple: to survive, and to succeed, using whatever means available. This pragmatism allows no room for empire-building. Russian leaders have agreed among themselves: no more expensive ideological nonsense; no more material self-sacrifice; and no more subsidies for others. (Trenin 2011 , p. 234)

For Russia’s ruling elite is painfully selfish. They are not hot idealists, but cold pragmatists. One can expect from them a firm defense of the interests of great power, but not the realization of demanding imperialistic ideals.

This diagnosis generally agrees with the famous theory of the System of the Russian Federation formulated by Gleb Pavlovsky. This former Kremlin close advisor, a major figure in the presidential campaigns, suggested that Russia is in the hands of a relatively small group of people, led by the Team ( komanda ), as he calls it, whose sole concern is to maintain their control over the circulation of Russian resources. Russia, in his view, is therefore not a state in the usual sense of the word. Political institutions are merely facades, and politics is dominated by informal personal relationships. Putin’s maintenance of personal power despite its formal takeover by Medvedev in 2008–2012 was clear evidence of this. Pavlovsky claims that the power in Russia is held first by Putin’s Team, which consists of several dozen people, and second by the Bonus Class ( premial ’ nyi klass ), which is about a thousand, which profit from control of key sectors in Russia’s economy.

These people are getting rich by being monopolists in the field of resource extraction and building gas pipelines. Under Putin’s supervision, they operate the global financial network of the Russian Federation. [...] There is a protected class of people who govern the conversion of resources into power. This class has grown from Moscow to the whole country and includes more than a thousand people. Together with Putin, they constitute an unelected elite circle of the Russian Federation, similar to the establishment of the European Union. Real decisions are made at a level that is beyond the reach of voters. [...] This model has been working for decades and will continue to work. (Pavlovskii 2014 , pp. 46–47)

The purpose of the System of the Russian Federation is not, as in the case of other countries, to ensure the common good of its citizens, but rather to enable the elite to make profits by controlling the exploitation of resources. Also, obviously, the purpose of the System is not to realize any civilizational or imperial projects. It is only about money and power for a small group of people.

It seems, therefore, that the modern Russian state is a perfect realization of the principles of austere political realism. It is guided by hard economic interests, brutally defends them, and looks with contempt and incredulity at Western countries that sometimes still refer to values. All this, of course, perhaps shows Russia in a bad light, but at the same time, it proves that it does not seek to build an empire at all. For empire is based not so much on force as on ideas. Russia is therefore not an ordinary country, but its uniqueness lies not in the fact that it is a neoimperial state, but in the fact that it is a predatory state. Russia is not, in other words, an ideocracy, but rather a kleptocracy.

Nationalism and imperialism

A crucial point in the debate between the postimperial and neoimperial interpretations of contemporary Russia is the question of Russian nationalism. As I pointed out, following Polish historians Andrzej Nowak and Włodzimierz Marciniak, it was exactly the problem of nationalism that led to the collapse of the two previous forms of the Russian empire. The Tsarist empire became too national, whereas the Soviet one was not national enough. As a result, the former was broken up by revolting minorities, whereas the latter was dismantled by a dissatisfied majority. Russian nationalism was thus paradoxically a main antiimperial force throughout history.

It seems to be the same today. Russian nationalism, even if it takes extremely aggressive forms, actually undermines Russian imperialism, which has been far more dangerous at times. This is so because nationalism limits the possible scope of the supposed empire. This was clearly recognized by Trenin, who wrote:

What the rise in xenophobia, the upsurge of chauvinism, and the spread of anti-foreign violence also tell is that there is no appetite whatsoever for a new edition of the empire, only residual nostalgia for the old days. (Trenin 2011 , p. 62)

The radicalization of nationalism in Russia thus indicates a reduction in imperial sentiments. Paradoxically, the more nationalism, the less imperialism. Therefore, the recent rise of Russian nationalism gives at least hope for the final decline of the Russian empire. While we may be endangered by aggressive Russian chauvinists, we will not be threatened by the far more ambitious Russian imperialists.

Obviously, this is a controversial interpretation. For many commentators, Russian chauvinism, xenophobia, and nationalism rather indicate the rise, not the fall, of Russian imperialism. That was Van Herpen’s view.

Trenin’s argument that the widespread xenophobia in Russia will prevent Russia from becoming imperialist is [...] not valid. In fact, the contrary is true: ultranationalism and imperial chauvinism are often most developed in xenophobic and racist countries. (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 3)

Van Herpen was right in his insistence that Russia escalates aggression. Trenin obviously turned out to be too optimistic. However, it seems to me that ultimately Trenin is right in his analysis of the relationship between nationalism and imperialism. No empire can be founded on a too narrow national basis. The Russian empire always had to include many different nations, religions, and cultures, so the current rise of Russian ethnic nationalism virtually excludes any wider imperial aspirations. Even the present-day Russian state is officially based on the idea of a political sense of Russian nationality ( rossiiskii ), rather than a cultural or ethnic one ( russkii ). Paradoxically, therefore, the more Putin’s regime becomes nationalistic, the less imperialistic it must be. Alas, this does not mean that it becomes less aggressive.

Now, what is the nature of the current Russian war against Ukraine? It seems that it is a nationalist reaction rather than an imperialist expansion. This is evidenced by the ideological justifications of the war in Ukraine shown in the statements of Russian politicians. The defense of ethnic Russians beyond the borders has long been among Russia’s foreign policy priorities. A convenient instrument of this policy was the “passportization” of Russians living outside the Russian Federation, providing a formal pretext for their defense. The foundation of Russia’s current claim to domination in the post-Soviet area is the doctrine of the Russian world ( russkii mir ). It follows from the statements of Putin and his officials that the Russian world is supposed to be a specific cultural community of people who speak Russian, somehow identify with Orthodoxy, and refer to some common values (Menkiszak 2014 ). The center of the Russian world is, of course, Russia, but it also comprises Belarus, at least the eastern part of Ukraine, and perhaps other territories bordering Russia, but definitely not the whole post-Soviet space, not to mention the rest of the world. Russia merely presents itself as a defender of the rights of the Russian-speaking population in its neighboring countries. Van Herpen aptly calls this concept an “annexationist Pan-Russianism” (Van Herpen 2014 , p. 56). However, there is no doubt that such an idea has a strong nationalist, not imperialist, sense. This is so even if Russian nationalists sometimes speak about the reintegration of the former Soviet Empire. If they attempt to do this on the grounds of national ideas, they could not succeed. The logic of empire building, which needs a more universalistic principle, is inexorable.

What’s more, it seems that playing the nationalist card not only prevents the building of an empire but also threatens the disintegration of the Russian state itself. The concept of russkii mir is potentially dangerous for the Russian Federation. In the short run, it may serve as a basis for local expansion, but in the long run, it may lead to an irreversible destabilization of the Russian state itself. This is because the Russian Federation is still not a regular nation-state, but a semi-imperial remnant of a multiethnic and multicultural empire. Hence, if it became a one-nation country, it would inevitably trigger separatist tendencies. As Trenin notes:

There is a sense that an ethnic Russian nation might spell the end of the present Russian state. Even though more than 50 percent of Russian residents find the slogan “Russia for the Russians” attractive, an ethnic Russian nation in a country with so many ethnic homelands organized as republics with their constitutions, national languages, and aspirations is a sure way to a new disaster. (Trenin 2011 , p. 62)

It is worth recalling that, for instance, Dagestan, one of the eighty-five subjects of the Russian ( Rossiiskaia ) Federation, is inhabited by about thirty different nationalities that can by no means be considered as parts of the ethnic Russian ( russkii ) world. The government’s insistence on a national premise may thus open an ethnic Pandora’s Box. If the Russian authority today stands up for the rights of ethnic Russians abroad, then Russian residents of other nationalities become second-class citizens. It is only a matter of time before this thought will appear in the minds of the Chechens, Ingush, Buryats, or Yakuts fighting in Ukraine. The Russians may thus unwittingly hang themselves with the rope they wanted to impose around the necks of their neighbors. Instead of moving beyond the current borders of Tsar Alexei I Mikhailovich, they may return to the borders of Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is based on the first chapter of my book Przekleństwo imperium. Źródła rosyjskiego zachowania [The Curse of Empire. Sources of Russian Conduct], Krakow: Wydawnictwo M, 2014, pp. 13–33. An abridged version of this text was posted online on March 15, 2022 as “Will Russian Nationalism Ultimately Strangle Russian Imperialism?” by Church Life Journal run by the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/will-russian-nationalism-ultimately-strangle-russian-imperialism/ . I am grateful to Artur Sebastian Rosman, the editor-in-chief of Church Life Journal , for the permission to reuse this material.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Rojek, P. Imperialism and nationalism. Stud East Eur Thought 74 , 447–461 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-022-09501-1

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Twelve Theses on Nationalism

Subscribe to governance weekly, william a. galston william a. galston ezra k. zilkha chair and senior fellow - governance studies.

August 12, 2019

• 16 min read

This piece was originally published by “ The American Interest. “

B y the end of World War Two, nationalism had been thoroughly discredited. Critics charged that national self-interest had prevented democratic governments from cooperating to end the Great Depression, and that nationalist passions had led not just to war, but also to some of the worst crimes groups of human beings had ever perpetrated on others. The construction of international institutions and norms—in economics, politics, and human rights—as antidotes to nationalist excesses dominated Western diplomacy for decades after 1945, and the global struggle between liberal democracy and communism muted the expression of nationalist sentiments on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The peace and economic growth that characterized this period built public support for this strategy.

As decades passed and new generations emerged, memories of the Great Depression and World War Two lost their hold on the Western imagination. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the postwar era began giving way to new forces. The European Union, its boosters convinced that their enlightened post-national project represented the future of politics for mankind, sought to move from economic integration to political integration. But public opposition swelled in many member-states. The “captive nations” of eastern and central Europe reemerged as independent actors, and long-submerged nationalist feelings resurfaced. But the feelings were not limited to the east: Growing regional inequalities within countries drove a wedge between left-behind populations and the international elites many citizens held responsible for their plight. The Great Recession of 2008 undermined public confidence in expert managers of the economy, and in the internationalist outlook that had long dominated their thinking. In Europe, concerns over immigration grew as people from lower-wage countries in the EU moved freely to wealthy member-states. These concerns exploded in 2015 after German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to admit more than 1 million refugees from Syria and other countries wracked by conflict and economic stagnation.

All these trends, and others, were at work in the United States. The consequences of China’s entry into the WTO, especially for U.S. manufacturing, stoked concerns about international trade. Five decades of robust immigration transformed America’s demography, a shift celebrated by some but deplored by others. In the wake of the Great Recession and the Iraq war, the costs of America’s global leadership became increasingly controversial, and the belief that other nations were taking advantage of the United States intensified. Postwar internationalism became a new front in the decades-old culture war. In retrospect, it was only a matter of time until someone mounted a frontal challenge to the consensus of elites in both major political parties. When it did, “America First” hit the established order with the force and subtlety of a wrecking-ball.

“Nationalism rightly understood means that no nation is an island, and that in the long run the wellbeing of one’s nation cannot be decoupled from the fate of others.”

The growth of nationalism as a political phenomenon encouraged the emergence of nationalist theoreticians and ideologues. In the United States, a July 2019 conference on “National Conservatism” brought together thinkers who argued—in direct opposition to the leaders of the postwar era—that nationalism offers a more secure and morally preferable basis for both domestic and international policy. Similar convenings have occurred in Europe. Critics of the new nationalism have been quick to weigh in.

As the battle has been joined, the ratio of heat to light has been high. And yet so are the stakes. Our democratic future depends on whether publics come to see nationalism as the solution, the problem, or something in-between. As a contribution to clarifying the debate, I offer twelve theses on nationalism.

Thesis One:   Nationalism and patriotism are not the same.  Patriotism is love of country—as George Orwell puts it, “devotion to a particular place and way of life.” Nationalism means giving pride of place, culturally and politically, to a distinctive ensemble of individuals—the nation.

Thesis Two:   A nation is a community, united by sentiments of loyalty and mutual concern, that shares a cultural heritage and belief in a common destiny.  Some nations additionally invoke common descent, which in nearly all cases is mythical, as it was when John Jay posited it for the nascent United States in Federalist 2. As political theorist Bernard Yack observes in  Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community , not all nationalist claims are based on ethnicity. Ethno-nations are distinct, he observes, in that they make descent from previous members “a necessary, rather than merely sufficient, condition of membership.”

Thesis Three:   An individual need not be born into a cultural heritage to (come to) share it.  Entrants into the national community commit themselves not only to learn their nation’s history and customs but also to take on their benefits and burdens as their own, as Ruth did when she pledged to Naomi that “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

Thesis Four:   Nationalism and patriotism can yield conflicting imperatives.  Many Zionists felt patriotic connections to the states in which they lived, even as they labored to create a nation-state of their own. Although many of today’s Kurds in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey harbor patriotic sentiments, their primary loyalty is to the Kurdish nation, and their ultimate aim is national self-determination in their own state.

Thesis Five:   Nationalism poses a challenge to the modern state system.  The familiar term “nation-state” implicitly assumes that the geographical locations of distinct nations coincide with state boundaries. Occasionally this is true (Japan comes close), but mostly it isn’t. Nations can be spread across multiple states (as the Kurds are), and states can contain multiple nations (as Spain does). What some regard as the ideal arrangement—a sovereign state for each nation and only this nation—is still exceedingly rare despite the convulsions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and still could not be realized without further massive, bloody disruptions of existing arrangements. Hitler’s determination to unify all ethno-cultural Germans into a single nation would have been a disaster, even if he had harbored no further ambitions. Today’s Hungarians have grounds for objecting to the Treaty of Trianon, which left millions of their co-nationals outside the borders of their shrunken state. Nevertheless, any effort to reunite them under a single flag would mean war in the heart of Europe.

Today’s state system includes international organizations, which many nationalists oppose as abrogating their states’ sovereignty. This stance rests on a failure to distinguish between revocable agreements, which are compatible with maintaining sovereignty, and irrevocable agreements, which are not. In leaving the European Union, Britain is exercising its sovereign rights, which it did not surrender when it entered the EU. By contrast, the states that banded together into the United States of America agreed to replace their several sovereignties into a single sovereign power, with no legal right under the Constitution to reverse this decision. When the southern states tried to secede, a civil war ensued, and its outcome ratified the permanent nature of the Union.

Thesis Six:   It is possible to be a nationalist without believing that every nation has a right to political independence, but it isn’t easy.  The U.S. Declaration of Independence speaks of “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” Similarly, Israel’s Declaration of Independence invokes the “self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign state.”

There are often practical reasons to deny some nations political self-determination (see Thesis Five). But doing so in principle rests on the belief that some nations are superior to others and deserve to rule over them. The claimed superiority can be cultural, hence mutable and temporary, or ethno-racial, essentialist, and immutable. The former often includes the responsibility of dominant nations to prepare subordinated nations for independence, as John Stuart Mill’s defense of tutelary colonialism did. The latter implies that subordinate nations are at best means to the well-being of dominant nations; at worst, lesser forms of humanity who exist at the sufferance of superior nations.

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There is no logical connection between the undeniable premise that each nation is distinctive and the conclusion that mine is better than yours. But the psychology of pride in one’s nation can lead even decent, well-meaning people from the former to the latter.

Some contemporary defenders of nationalism claim that it is inherently opposed to imperialism. Nation-states want only to be left alone, they say, to govern themselves in accordance with their own traditions. As Rebecca West once put it, there is not “the smallest reason for confounding nationalism, which is the desire of a people to be itself, with imperialism, which is the desire of a people to prevent other peoples from being themselves.”

She would be right if all nationalism were inwardly focused and guided by the maxim of live and let live. But the history of the 20th century shows that some forms of nationalism are compatible with imperialism and worse. It depends on what a nation thinks that “being itself” entails. The proposition that nationalism and imperialism always stand opposed rests not on historical evidence, but rather on a definition of nationalism at odds with its real-world manifestations.

Thesis Seven:   It is possible to be a nationalist without believing that the interests of one’s nation always trump competing considerations.  Writing in the shadow of World War Two, George Orwell declared that nationalism was “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” Although this is an unmatched description of Nazism, it conflates an extreme instance of nationalism with the totality.

In fact, nationalism is compatible with a wide range of ideologies and political programs. It motivated not only Nazi Germany but also Britain’s heroic resistance to fascism. (Churchill’s wartime speeches rallied his countrymen with stirring invocations of British nationalism against its foe.) And because the nation need not be understood as the supreme good, “liberal nationalism” is not an oxymoron.

Giving priority to the interests of one’s nation does not mean ignoring the interests of others, any more than caring most about one’s own children implies indifference to the fate of others’ children. Nations are sometimes called upon to risk their blood and treasure to respond to or prevent harm in other nations. At some point, the imbalance between modest costs to one’s nation and grievous damage to others should compel action. Even though some Americans would have risked their lives to prevent the Rwandan genocide, America’s failure to intervene was a mistake, a proposition that nationalists can accept without contradicting their beliefs.

Thesis Eight:   It is a mistake to finger nationalism as the principal source of oppression and aggression in modern politics.  As we have seen repeatedly, creedal and religion-based states and movements can be just as brutal, and they can pose, in their own way, equally fundamental challenges to the state system. The Reformation triggered a full century of astonishingly bloody strife. More recently, for those who took class identity to be more fundamental than civic identity, “socialist internationalism” became the organizing principle of politics, and similarly if membership in the Muslim  umma  is thought to erase the significance of state boundaries. Those outside the favored class or creed became enemies with whom no permanent peace is possible, and the consequences are as negative for decent politics as any of the evils perpetrated in the name of nationalism.

Thesis Nine:   As a key source of social solidarity, nationalism can support higher-order political goods such as democracy and the welfare state.  Democracy rests on mutual trust, without which the peaceful transfer of power comes to be regarded as risky. The welfare state rests on sympathy and concern for others who are vulnerable, whether or not the more fortunate members of the community see themselves as equally vulnerable. Shared nationality promotes these sentiments, while in the short-to-medium term (at least), increasing national diversity within states weakens them.

This helps explain why many nationalists who are not driven by racial or ethnic bias nonetheless are ambivalent about high numbers of immigrants and refugees. It also points to the most important domestic challenge contemporary nationalists face—reconciling their attachment to their co-nationals with fair treatment for other groups with whom they share a common civic space.

Thesis Ten:   Although we typically think of nations as driving the creation of nation-states, the reverse is also possible.  A generation ago, Eugen Weber showed how, over the decades before World War One, the French state deployed a program of linguistic, cultural, and educational unification to turn “peasants into Frenchmen.” During the past half-century, post-colonial governments have sought, with varying degrees of success, to weaken tribal and sectarian ties in favor of overarching national attachments.

Many historians have discerned similar processes at work in the United States. Prior to the Civil War, lexicographers such as Noah Webster crystallized a non-regional American English, distinct from British English, while historians such as George Bancroft told the story of America’s creation and growth as a narrative that all could share. After the Civil War, as flows of immigrants from Central and Southern Europe accelerated, programs of civic education proliferated—with the aim, one might say, of turning peasants into Americans. Because it was no longer possible to say, as John Jay did in 1787, that Americans were “descended from the same ancestors,” let alone “professing the same religion,” it became all the more important to create a common cultural heritage into which millions of new immigrants could be initiated. The process may have been rough and ready, even coercive, but in the main it succeeded. And today, after a half century of cultural strife and large flows of immigrants from an unprecedented diversity of countries, it may be necessary to recommit ourselves to this task, albeit in less favorable circumstances.

Thesis Eleven:   Although scholars distinguish between creedal nationalism and ethnic or cultural nationalism as ideal types, there are no examples of purely creedal nations.  In the United States, abstract principles and concrete identities have been braided together since the Founding. Our greatest President, who famously described the United States as a nation dedicated to a proposition, also invoked (unsuccessfully) the “mystic chords of memory” and our “bonds of affection” as antidotes for civil strife and advocated transmuting our Constitution and laws into objects of reverence—a “political religion.”

Thesis Twelve:   Although nationalism is a distinctively modern ideology, national identity has pervaded much of human history and is unlikely to disappear as a prominent feature of politics.  As Bernard Yack has persuasively argued, nationalism is unthinkable without the emergence of the principle of popular sovereignty as the source of legitimate political power. Because this theory characterizes the “people” who constitute the sovereign in abstract terms, it does not answer the key practical question: Who or what is the people?

The U.S. Declaration of Independence exemplifies this hiatus. Before we reach its much-quoted second paragraph on the rights of individuals, we encounter the assertion that Americans constitute “one people” asserting its right to “dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another.” Americans are one people, the British another. The governing class of Great Britain had a different view: Americans were subjects of the king, just as residents of the British Isles were, distinguished from them only by location. Even to assert their Lockean right of revolution, of which George III was no great fan, Americans had to make the case that they were a separate and distinct people. It turns out that in the case of the United States and many that followed, national identity offered the most plausible way to meet this challenge, which is why John Jay resorted to it. 19th century nationalists had richer intellectual resources on which to draw, including Herder’s account of distinct cultures, but their strategy was much the same.

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In short, national identity is transmuted into nationalism through its encounter with the doctrine of popular sovereignty. When the people are understood as the nation, popular sovereignty becomes national sovereignty.

Because pre-modern politics lacked the theory of popular sovereignty, it could not develop a doctrine of nationalism. Nonetheless, national identity has pervaded human history, for the simple reason that we are finite beings shaped by unchosen contingencies. Although we are social, cultural, and political beings, we are born helpless and unformed. We are formed first by the ministration of parents and kin or their equivalents, then by the experiences of neighborhood and local community, and eventually by the wider circle of those with whom we share a cultural heritage. To be sure, the encounter with those whose formative influences were different will not leave us untouched. No matter how much our horizons are broadened, we never set aside our origin. We may leave home, but home never quite leaves us, a reality reflected in our language. “Mother tongue,” “fatherland”—the age-old metaphor of our place of origin as nurturing, shaping parent will never lose its power.

N ational identity is an aspect of human experience that no measure of education should seek to expunge—nor could it if it tried. But as we have seen, the modern political expression of national identity is multi-valent. Nationalism can be a force for great evil or great good. It can motivate collective nobility and collective brutality. It can bring us together and drive us apart.

In the face of these realities, the way forward is clear, at least in principle. Acknowledging the permanence of nationalism and its capacity for good, we must do our best to mitigate its negative effects. Nationalism need not mean that a country’s cultural majority oppresses others with whom it shares a state; putting one’s country first need not mean ignoring the interests and concerns of others. On the contrary: To adapt a Tocquevillian locution, nationalism rightly understood means that no nation is an island, that in the long run the wellbeing of one’s nation cannot be decoupled from the fate of others. The American leaders who rebuilt Europe understood that theirs was not an act of charity but rather a means to the long-time best interest of their country. The leaders of the civil rights movement knew that they promoted not only the cause of justice, but also the strength of their country, at home and abroad.

The details may have changed since the days of George Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr., but the essentials remain the same.

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