Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of Empire & Imperialism (Special Mention) (12) Defensive Imperialism

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Map of all the territories once occupied by the Roman Empire, along with locations of limes and borders (public domain image)

 

 

(12) DEFENSIVE IMPERIALISM

 

“Now look at what you made me do!”.

Alternatively, I needed my empire to defend myself.

As ridiculous as it may seem, empires have asserted that their imperialism was defensive or reactive, and historian have even agreed with or asserted it for them.

“Defensive imperialism is a security-motivated theory of empire-building that views territorial expansion as a reactive response to external threats rather than planned, aggressive conquest…states often conquered reluctantly out of fear, self-protection, or broken treaties”.

The most famous example of defensive imperialism is the one that may also seem most surprising, the Roman Empire. Indeed, the theory of defensive imperialism originated “in Roman studies in the late 19th century”, albeit it persisted after that and was “closest to the argument favored by the Romans themselves”.

“The theory draws its strength from the apparent inconsistency of Roman foreign policy, the slowness with which their rulers acted (or reacted), and their reluctance to annex. In this pattern economic and ideological factors appear secondary at most.”

Perhaps not coincidentally given the theory was contemporary with the British Empire approaching its peak, defensive imperialism was also asserted for the British Empire – “in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, figures like James Bryce compared Roman expansion to the British Empire, arguing that external dangers and frontier instability forced further conquest”.

Admittedly, claims of defensive imperialism are the exception rather than the rule, particularly for pre-modern empires that tended to cheerfully revel in conquest for its own sake – what is best in life is “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations in their women”. That quote from the Conan film is famously adapted from one attributed to Genghis Khan in a historical biography of Genghis Khan (Charles Lamb’s “Genghis Khan: The Conqueror of All Men”), which notably also included “to take their horses and goods”. While the latter was probably apocryphal, it certainly reflected the ethos of the Mongol Empire.

Even so, claims of defensive imperialism are significant. After all, two of the top three empires in my Top 10 Empires have asserted it for themselves or had historians assert it for them, the Roman and British Empires – and another entry, the Macedonian Empire, might arguably be added to them, at least in so far as Alexander the Great claimed his invasion of Persia to be a “retaliatory defensive act of justice” (for the Greek-Persian Wars and Persia’s control of or interference with Greek cities).

Claims of defensive imperialism haven’t exactly gone out of fashion either – “scholars point out that ancient and modern powers frequently weaponize defensive language and just-war theory to legitimize pre-emptive strikes and territorial control”.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention: Revisited) (12) Holy Roman Empire

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Map of the Carolingian Empire in 814 AD – Wikipedia “Holy Roman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(12) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

 

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

The thousand year Reich, subsequently styled as the First Reich – which means I’ve featured all three Reichs in my special mentions.

It was, as Voltaire famously quipped, neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.

The Holy Roman Empire had some substance to it, but also embodied an idea – or worse, a snub by Pope Leo III to the eastern Roman Empire and its empress Irene by crowning Charlemagne as Roman emperor, in Rome no less, in what must surely rank as a medieval meme.

Of course, underlying that idea was the enduring influence or template of the western Roman Empire, a legacy which many in the European kingdoms or nations subsequent to it sought to revive, even at the expense of the eastern Roman Empire.

That idea had some force to it under Charlemagne, who had achieved the largest unified polity in western Europe since the Roman Empire – although his empire should more accurately be styled as the Frankish Empire- but it soon fell apart after it was divided between his sons.

From that division, Germany emerged as a separate realm from the Frankish Empire, largely from the eastern Frankish empire, and it was from Germany that the Holy Roman Empire truly arose. Historians tend to distinguish the Frankish Empire from the Holy Roman Empire proper, with Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962, even if that cuts down that thousand year Reich (from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800) to a mere 844 years.

Again, the idea had some force to it under Otto and his successors, even if it oscillated between that idea as reflected in its title as Roman Empire and the reality as reflected in its title as Empire or Kingdom of the Germans. It was still a snub to the eastern Roman empire, who were deeply insulted by the Pope crowning Roman Emperors – although in fairness, “the Pope was the only one of these people who actually lived in Rome itself” so “it could be argued he was the most entitled to decide who was Emperor of the Romans”.

The actual term Holy Roman Empire began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich or Frederick Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later, and under him, the idea had some teeth to it (as well as transforming him into a legendary figure) and continued to do so until his grandson Friedrich II, who attempted to run an Italian-German empire from Sicily.

That reflected the internal struggles within the Empire – with German nobles, with Italian cities or communes, and above all, with the Papacy. “The Empire and the Papacy, both competing for secular and religious power over all Christendom without the means to enforce it, essentially destroyed each other’s credibility. This was not helped by a fairly consistent policy of Emperors to neglect the basis of their power in Germany to grasp at its shadow in Italy – because in order for a German king to become Emperor, he had to go to Italy and be crowned by the pope”.

From there, the empire that had originated as a meme essentially devolved back into one – falling into irrelevancy or worse, the joke of an empire “that mostly clung to life because the ruler of Austria wanted to call himself an emperor and the rest of Europe was willing to humor him”. As Marx quipped, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

And above all, it was incredibly convoluted, both in history and structure – an emperor elected by powerful regional lords and clergy, in an empire that went from 300 to 1800 “sovereign kingdoms, duchies, free cities, and other entities”.

Hence Voltaire’s famous quip about it – and Napoleon doing away with the whole dog’s breakfast of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythology Horror (3) Vampires

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Santanico Pandemonium poster art Season 2, From Dusk Till Dawn TV series – one of my favorite female vampires. Yes – it’s not Salma Hayek from that scene in the film but Eiza Gonzalez is more vamped up in the poster here

 

(3) VAMPIRES

 

And now we get to the hungrier folklore of the dead, distinct in their corporeal form from ghosts – back from the dead as revenants. They came back wrong. Not much good comes out of coming back from the dead as a rule. It usually involves preying upon life to sustain one’s unnatural, undead being – treading water, but in blood, as it were.

There is a whole host of vampiric or ‘vampire adjacent’ beings or creatures in folklore and mythology, going all around the world and back to the dawn of history or beyond.

While the archetypal vampire of European folklore – “the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire” – is relatively recent, originating “almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe”, the broader archetype of the hungry corporeal dead goes back at least to ancient Mesopotamia, as John Blair points out in his book Killing the Dead.

And so too does killing the dead (again) as per the book’s title – the various means of preventing vampires (as in the various means of preventing a corpse from becoming a vampire, or at least causing too much trouble as one), identifying vampires, and most importantly of all, protecting against or destroying them.

When the dead aren’t ghostly in horror, they’re hungry. The corporeal dead, and killing them, is a substantial part of horror fiction.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of Empire & Imperialism (Special Mention) (11) Cultural Imperialism

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Arguably the two most famous and iconic corporate brand logos in the world – Coca-Cola and McDonalds (fair use)

 

 

(11) CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

 

Coca-Colonization and McDonaldization!

Yes, cultural imperialism is much broader than the spread of American corporate brands – extending throughout culture and cultural values or traditions – but Coca-Cola and McDonalds serve (heh) as useful symbols of it, as well as the most recognizable.

In my opinion, however, cultural imperialism is a somewhat nebulous concept, typically co-opted for ideological or political argument rather than to connote anything meaningful.

Sure, empires routinely engage in the acculturation of their imperial subjects, so much so that there’s a whole litany of terms with the suffix “isation” or “ization” for it, such as Romanization for the Roman Empire, Americanization for  the global influence of American culture (including Coca-Cola and McDonalds), and so on.

To the extent that such acculturation is imposed by direct imperial diktat or policy, then it probably counts as cultural imperialism. Outside of that, it is less clear.

For example, cultural imperialism is usually defined in terms of “asymmetrical power” – that is, “it relies on economic, political, or military superiority rather than equal cultural exchange”.

Firstly, however, I’m not sure that “cultural exchange” is ever entirely “equal”, or even what would qualify a “cultural exchange” as “equal”. A better adjective might have been “free” rather than “equal”.

Secondly, and more fundamentally, cultural exchange itself may “rely” on – that is, be influenced or motivated by – “economic, political, or military superiority”, to emulate or achieve that superiority. Indeed, military “superiority” is one of the clearest examples of cultural exchange for such a purpose, particularly if that superiority is based on some technological or organizational development.

Also, as critics of the concept have pointed out, it oversimplifies how imperial subjects or other people interact with “foreign” or imported culture – they often “reinterpret, resist, or localize imported culture rather than passively absorbing it.”

It also overlooks “counter-flows” – that is, the culture imported by an imperial nation from its subjects. For that matter, it overlooks the extent to which imperial nations also routinely practice cultural laissez-faire or tolerance when it comes to their subjects – to minimize disruption and resistance, avoid unnecessary drain on their resources, co-opt local elites, or even from genuine love or respect for local culture among other reasons.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention: Revised) (11) Venetian Republic

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The Republic of Venice with its Domini de Terraferma and Stato da Mar – its main territories in Italy and overseas by Ariel196 for Wikipedia “Venice” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(11) VENETIAN EMPIRE 

 

Technically it’s the Venetian Republic – La Serenissima or the Most Serene Republic of Venice – as it was another imperial republic in the style of Rome, indeed with quite a few parallels between them.

Of course, the world had moved on from the days that an Italian city-state could dominate the peninsula and then the Mediterranean (and beyond) in the style of Rome, but Venice took a damn good swing at it, punching remarkably above its weight.

The parallels with Rome extend to a similarly legendary founding – the Republic dated its founding back to 697 AD, albeit predated by Venice itself reputed to have been settled by refugees from the Huns and Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire seeking the safety of its islands.

The Republic was founded as the Duchy of Venetia within the eastern Roman Empire’s Exarchate of Ravenna – its leader’s title of Doge originating from the Latin for dux (or duke) as an imperial provincial title. It became increasingly independent as the exarchate crumbled, until effectively achieving de facto independence because of an agreement between the Holy Roman Empire and the eastern Roman Empire.

Its independence corresponded with its rise as an imperial republic in its own right. Venice relied on the tried-and-true methods of a smaller state – particularly city and island states – to punch above its weight, namely naval power fuelled by wealth from maritime trade, as well as cunning and sharp practice in diplomacy. That wealth was also fuelled by its art, craft and manufacture – historian Geoffrey Blainey’s observation that Venice was like the Silicon Valley of its time, in things like glassmaking, has always stuck in my mind.

Indeed, while it resembled Rome’s classical (and imperial) republic, it also followed the classical Greek model of a maritime colonial empire with a focus on its naval power and trade, while in many ways pre-empting the European colonial – and neocolonial – empires of which it was a predecessor.

And like all empires, even maritime or mercantile ones, it was in the business of territorial expansion – “During its history it annexed a large part of north-east Italy, Istria, Dalmatia, the coasts of present-day Montenegro and Albania as well as numerous islands in the Adriatic and eastern Ionian seas. At the height of its expansion, between the 13th and 16th centuries, it also governed the Peloponnese, Crete and Cyprus, most of the Greek islands, as well as several cities and ports in the Mediterranean”.

Of course, its rise as imperial republic caused it to come into conflict with rival Italian city-states, notably Genoa, but also the eastern Roman empire. Venice had a weird love-hate symbiotic-parasitic relationship with the eastern Roman Empire – evolving from an imperial province and vassal in the empire’s reconquest of Italy, to ally and close associate of the empire effectively as its navy and trading house, and ultimately to rival and perfidious adversary in the Fourth Crusade.

In some ways, that symbiosis involved Venice as almost the inversion of Constantinople – the heart of a mercantile empire which waxed and rose, sucking from the blood of the latter as it waned and fell. Although ironically, Venice found its fortune to be little more symbiotic with Constantinople than it would have liked after all – as the rival declining eastern Roman empire was replaced by the new rival rising Ottoman Empire.

Even then, its remarkable to think that Venice as a city-state held its own going toe-to-toe with the Ottoman superpower for four centuries or so of Ottoman-Venetian Wars (that commenced even before the fall of Constantinople), albeit inevitably losing territory to the Ottomans.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire also indirectly prompted one of the primary factors behind the decline (and fall) of the Venetian Republic and the Mediterranean in general – the decline of Mediterranean trade relative to the Atlantic as the latter opened in the European Age of Discovery and conquest of the Americas. Even so, the Venetian Republic endured until 1797 when it finally fell to the French under Napoleon.

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythology Horror (2) Ghosts

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The bedsheet ghost – that common visual representation of ghosts in Western popular culture. And what better illustration for one than a Scooby Doo villain – Phantom from “Hassle in the Castle”, Season 1 episode 3 “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” (fair use)

 

 

(2) GHOSTS

 

Ghosts – shades, shadows, apparitions, haunts, phantoms or phantasms, poltergeists, spectres, spooks and wraiths – the stuff of folklore, as belief in ancestral spirits or spirits of the dead is nearly universal in world folklore or mythology.

And ghost stories or hauntings are nearly universal as the default plot or premise in horror. Even when the plot of horror fiction does not involve an actual ghost, it tends to involve haunted house or place in one way or another – giving rise to the so-called haunted house problem so that the plot can occur, or why don’t they just leave? (Usually the answer is some variant that they can’t).

The only reason ghosts aren’t in the top spot is because they are a subset, albeit a large one, of my top spot entry of the underworld.

Note their incorporeal nature, which distinguishes them from my next entry for the hungry, corporeal dead.

Not all ghosts are equal. There’s nice or benign ghosts – something you might expect for your own ancestral or familial spirits. And some ghosts are just a**holes. I guess being dead can do that to you. Japanese ghosts – those stringy-haired ghost girls – are particularly nasty, attacking people for no particular reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And then you have the weirder, otherwordly “ghosts”, that aren’t even people but things – haunted houses or locations (which are ghostly entities of themselves, apart from any individual ghosts that may be hanging around), ghost ships, ghost trains, and phantom vehicles.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of Empire & Imperialism (Special Mention) (10) Gunboat Diplomacy

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C;lassic gunboat diplomacy, even more so for the depolyment of ships designated as gunboats – The Crisis at Zanzibar, British War-Ships engaged in the Bombardment of the Sultan’s Palace by artist Fred T. Jane for the Illustrated London News, 5 September 1896 (public domain image)

 

 

(10) GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY

 

“An aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons of diplomacy”.

Send in the boats!

Ah yes, a blunter and more prosaic phrase for the reality of imperialism than either civilizing mission or manifest destiny, although the diplomacy part of the phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

While the point is typically to avoid the actual use of military force or at least more than a show of it, the diplomacy of gunboat diplomacy relies on the threat of superior military force to bring imperial power to bear on a weaker opponent, potentially as an imperial subject or supplicant.

Not surprisingly given the reference to gunboat, it was a phrase used particularly for the use of superior naval firepower as an instrument of nineteenth century European maritime empires or the United States.

“Gunboat diplomacy is the pursuit of foreign policy objectives with the aid of conspicuous displays of naval power, implying or constituting a direct threat of warfare should terms not be agreeable to the superior force. The term originated in the 19th century, during the age of imperialism, when Western powers would use their superior military capabilities, particularly their naval assets, to intimidate less powerful nations into granting concessions. The mere presence of warships off a country’s coast was often enough to have a significant effect, making the actual use of force rarely necessary.”

Not that gunboat diplomacy is limited to gunboats in the nineteenth century but has persisted through the twentieth century to the contemporary use of naval power, or the combination of naval and air power encapsulated in Kissinger’s quote about aircraft carriers as diplomacy, or indeed to air power – bomber or drone diplomacy as it were – or the use of special forces.

I would argue that gunboat diplomacy also has a long history before the nineteenth century – indeed for as long as boats have been combined with guns, or even beforehand where massed fleets or other attributed of pre-gunpowder navies could be deployed for shows of force or threats short of the actual use of force.

It would also extend to limited deployment and threats or shows of force on land. The Roman emperor Antoninus Pius reputedly engaged in what might be called legion diplomacy when he “apparently stood off a resurgent Parthian Empire (under Vologasius IV) by writing a letter warning that “encroachment on Roman territory would not be taken lightly”. The Roman Empire also offers the examples of punitive raids, or the “fortification diplomacy” of other states.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention: Revisited) (10) Hunnic Empire

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Extent of Attila’s empire based on a map from Empires and Barbarians: The Birth of Europe by Peter Heather 2010 – map by Slovenski Volk for Wikipedia “Huns” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

(10) HUNNIC EMPIRE

 

A classic nomadic empire founded by horse blitzkrieg of mounted nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes that should be ranked as the fourth great empire of late antiquity and menacing the other three – Persian Empire as well as eastern and western Roman empires – in turn.

(Although I tend to agree with the observation of Youtuber Tominus Maximus that the Huns generally hated the eastern Roman empire but liked the western Roman empire. Well, you know, until they didn’t.)

However, despite its classic status and notoriety, the Hunnic Empire remains somewhat nebulous because like most nomadic empires, they preferred riding to writing – so we are mostly reliant on what other people wrote about them.

Apparently according to tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River. Their origins remain uncertain, other than broadly sweeping across central Asia – with some theories resembling an extent almost as wide as the Mongols, particularly those theories linking them to the Xongniu and other nomadic peoples that menaced China, often stylized as Huns, such as in the Disney version of Mulan.

They are also often linked to other nomadic tribes, sometimes also stylized as Huns, that menaced the Persian Empire and even India. It’s not helped by the tendency, as with the Scythians, to identify or name nomadic tribes across Eurasia as Huns – both before and after the classical Hunnic Empire.

Classical sources have them suddenly appear in Europe or west of the Volga from 370 AD – where they triggered the Migration Period or at least the westward movement of Goths into the Roman Empire and bringing about the latter’s fall.

By 430 AD, they had “established a vast but short-lived empire on the Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire” – with various Germanic or other tribes “either under Hunnic hegemony or fleeing from it”. The Hunnic empire largely crystallized around the charismatic leadership of the most notorious Hun, Attila – and rapidly disintegrated after his death.

Under Attila, the Huns won not just peak empire but also the historical infamy of being extremely barbaric and ruthless towards their adversaries. Although I have to admit Attila being identified as the Scourge of God earns him badass points.

From their empire, the Huns raided the more robust eastern Roman Empire, invading the Balkans and threatening the capital Constantinople, with little to stop them until the emperor opted for the pragmatic policy of paying tribute for peace.

The Huns then invaded the western Roman Empire in 451, with Attila claiming the sister of the western Roman emperor as his bride and half the empire as his dowry – with some fairness, as she had swiped right on him in preference to her betrothal to a Roman senator.

 However, there the Huns encountered the general Flavius Aetius, often hailed as “the last of the Romans”. Ironically, Aetius had effectively risen to power by relying on the Huns – with whom he had previously been a court hostage – as his allies. Now he had to face off against his former allies as Attila invaded Gaul, drawing on the waning resources of an increasingly vestigial empire to field one of its last major military operations in alliance with the Visigoths and its other Germanic allies – and won, defeating the Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

Or not, as historians dispute how conclusive a victory it was. Attila and the Huns withdrew from Gaul, only to invade Italy the following year – and there was little Aetius could do to stop them there, except for the Pope to ask Attila nicely if he would leave without sacking Rome.

Surprisingly, it worked. Attila left Italy – albeit probably more for lack of supplies or expectations of tribute as well as an eastern Roman campaign against the Huns in their homeland. He died the following year, aborting his plans for further campaigns against either empire – as with the Mongols, Europe was saved from invasion by a fortunately timed death (from Attila partying too hard celebrating his latest wedding to his hot new bride).

The Huns took one last shot at the eastern Roman Empire under one of Attila’s sons in 469, vanishing from history with their defeat.

 However, much about the Hunnic Empire remains mysterious, even the empire’s full territorial extent – some maps tentatively suggest their empire extended to the Baltic, but we just don’t know. Similarly, we can only speculate on why Attila agreed to leave Italy, setting aside papal mojo. We only have glimpses of fascinating aspects of the Huns such as their practice of cranial deformation, with their subsequent appearance no doubt adding to their fearsome reputation.

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythology Horror (1) Underworld

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A particularly horrific scene, as depicted in William-Adolphe Bougeureau’s 1850 painting “Dante and Virgil in Hell” (publlic domain image)

 

 

(1) UNDERWORLD

 

Chthonic horror!

God is a hole in the heart of the world and he’s hungry – omnipotent, omniscient, omnivorous.

Yes, I know my top entry for mythology horror is a common denominator across mythologies – dare I say lowest common denominator in a different sense – rather than any specific mythology.

But you don’t get more horror in mythology than chthonic horror, the horror of the underworld.

Even when it isn’t literal hell or pandemonium, the underworld is a bleak and dark place, that hole in the heart of the world.

Even when its gods aren’t literal demons or devils, they are those hungry gods representing the force of death in a world of the dead. The underworld lies between death and destruction or between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea – the adversarial forces of nature between predation and parasitism, between evolution and entropy. Or is that devolution (heh)?

And of course its denizens are the dead.

While there tends to be mythic horror in descent into the underworld, literally or metaphorically, particularly if one remains there for good or rather for evil (heh), mythic horror usually involves the underworld or its supernatural forces moving in the other direction, invading our own world. For that matter, that’s usually the default plot or premise of horror fiction, literally or metaphorically.

Hell, even the intrusion or invasion of mythic worlds other than the underworld into our own can be terrifying. “Be not afraid” as Biblical angels say to soothe the terror from their appearance.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of Empire & Imperialism (Special Mention) (9) Civilizing Mission

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Yes, you can read the title – the poem by Rudyard Kipling as it was originally published, and the poem that has probably alone done most to undermine his modern literary reputation (public domain image)

 

 

(9) CIVILIZING MISSION – WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

 

Although associated with – or claimed by – European colonial empires, a belief of civilizing mission is the flipside of the belief in manifest destiny that is inherent to most empires, flipped that is from the “destiny” of the imperial nation to its “responsibility” for the “benefit” of its subjects.

Well, in theory anyway – almost every empire proclaims itself to be spreading civilisation or bringing some benefit to its subjects, and all but the most destructive have at least some merits in those claims.

That’s including those European empires. As destructive as they were, they did bring the development of trade and industry, transport and communication, and technology and science that ultimately was the reason they were able to have empires in the first place, however unevenly and for their own interests first. Not to mention social and political ideas, some of which such as nationalism and liberalism were ultimately to prove self-destructive to their empires.

Still, it can’t help but add insult to the injury of imperial rule for the rulers to claim they are doing so for the civilization of their subjects, particularly when killing, starving or enforcing the servitude of those subjects.

That’s even more so when it is preached as a “burden” for the imperial rulers, as Rudyard Kipling did in his poem “The White Man’s Burden”, its subtitle expressly addressed to the United States for the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, exhorting the United States to assume the same “burden” as the British did for their empire. It was astonishingly tone-deaf even for its time, as demonstrated by contemporary criticism such as that by Mark Twain – and probably is the one poem that has alone done most to undermine Kipling’s modern literary reputation ever since.