If the Byzantines make an appearance, so would the sons of Osman.
My speaker, you know that what i ask is well within my rights, to as emperor, command
And more usurpers won't mean anything in the end.
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Which major empire was your current area once a part of?
- Thread starter stfoskey12
- Start date
My speaker, you know that what i ask is well within my rights, to as emperor, command
And more usurpers won't mean anything in the end.
Lexicus
Deity
Take my word for it then. The US has been an empire in its own right since whatever arbitrary moment we stopped being part of the British Empire.
"can't get messed again!" /WBush
Well, if all that is needed to be an empire is to wage wars of conquest, then maybe, yes.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Well, there's at least a decade between the Declaration of Independence and the United States developing a Western policy coherent enough to be described as "imperialism". But, fundamentally, yes, American policy in the West very quickly emerges as perhaps the prototypical model of white settler colonialism: establish forts, clear the natives, plant colonists. Whether this is conducted under a kingdom or a republic probably doesn't make a lot of different to the natives or even, really, the colonists.
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Lexicus
Deity
Certainly not.
And I mean, one of the impetuses behind the war of independence in the first place was exactly the colonials' desire to expand west which the British were eventually seen as hindering. So that's why I think we've been an empire since day 1.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That decade is important, though. It's very possible that, had it run a little different, "the United States of America" would be remembered as an obscure historical experiment. Until the North-Western Ordinance, and, really, until the ratification of the Constitution, Western colonialism is still carried out by the states, and outside of Virginia they don't have any really coherent policy. It's only when the federal government states taking charge of how territory is divided up, and starts making an effort to sure that some actual civil administration is planted in the new colonies, that you get a distinct American imperial project, rather than just the various British colonies being their usual acquisitive selves.
Lexicus
Deity
Well, you know more about it than I. But I would think that, again, part of the reason the Constitution worked out the way it did was because of the westward "pressure" as it were.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Oh, absolutely, the Convention delegates were very explicit about that. But that was precisely because America had resoundingly failed to develop the spontaneous empire that expansionists hoped. The individual states had neither the resources nor, really, attention-span to play empire; that took the sort of powerful, centralised government that the Constitution established. The pressure for Westward imperialism had been there since 1763 at least, but took another quarter century to emerge as a coherent political project.
I'm not quibbling about US history here, but just wanting to be an empire does not make one so, unless you're using a very different definition to most people.
Lexicus
Deity
What about wanting to be an empire while laying the basis for imperial expansion by waging genocidal wars of conquest against your neighbors?
Just so we're clear, Webster's (via Wikipedia) defines an empire as an aggregate of nations or people ruled over by an emperor or other powerful sovereign or government, usually a territory of greater extent than a kingdom. Thus, 'just' indulging in genocide against one's neighbours in pursuit of a self-appointed 'divine' mandate makes one a very unpleasant nation, but not actually an empire until one succeeds to a notable extent.
MilesGregarius
Half-baked Renegade
So the Mexican War at the latest, if not the Northwest Indian War or earlier.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That's a pretty precise description of the United States under President Washington, so we're back to the "maybe like a decade" interpretation I offered above.
Well, I was led to believe that empires tend to encompass multiple cultures and/or languages, but "larger than a kingdom" is very imprecise and leads to somewhat silly disagreements like the last page or so.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
I suppose the Five Civilised tribes had their own language and culture.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
The early Republic was a far more diverse place that later mythology acknowledged. Most Americans were only a few generations removed from Europe or Africa, and carried their distinct regional languages, cultures and religious practices with them. On the Appalachian and New England frontiers, Scots and German were heard as commonly as English, interspersed with Welsh- and Gaelic-speaking enclaves, while large stretches of the Hudson Valley remained Dutch-speaking into the nineteenth century. (Martin Van Buren, eight president of the United States, spoke English as a second language.) And of course, there were large communities of African, Native and mixed-race people, free and unfree, speaking a variety of non-European and creole languages. While the cultural baseline of the thirteen colonies was white, Northern European and Protestant, this wasn't thirteen states full of white, English-speaking Episcopalians.
Ferocitus
Deity
The Imperialist Brits.
And we still have a depiction of one of their vile parasites on our money.
And we still have a depiction of one of their vile parasites on our money.
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