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.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention: Revised) (9) Greek – Athenian Empire & Spartan Hegemony

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Athens and its Delian League vs Sparta and its Peloponnesian League at the outset of the Peloponnesian War – map by Marysas (from E Levy) for Wikipedia “Delian League” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

(9) GREEK – ATHENIAN EMPIRE & SPARTAN HEGEMONY

 

Athenian empire vs Spartan hegemony.

We usually (and correctly) think of the Roman Empire as the imperial template in Western culture, but this can mislead us into overlooking the Greek imperial template in Western culture. No – I’m not talking the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great, although that too was influential, but the classical Greek city states, particularly the opposing Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony of the Peloponnesian War.

Of course, similarly to the archetypal city-states of Sumerian civilization, their imperialism was on a small scale – city states ruling other city states or their colonies.

And it tended not to call itself a formal empire as such. Indeed, in this it was a remarkably far-reaching imperial template, not so much for imperialism but neo-imperialism. Where the Roman imperial template set the model for imperialism from the fall of the western empire through to the European maritime empires, the Greek imperial template set the model for neo-imperialism from the European maritime empires onwards.

The Athenian empire evolved from the Delian League, an alliance of Greek cities led by Athens against Persia after the Greek-Persian Wars, based on Athenian naval supremacy and named (in modern historiography) after the sacred island of Delos, “where congresses were held in the temple and where the treasury stood until, in a symbolic gesture, Pericles moved it to Athens in 454 BC”.

That last part of moving the Delian treasury to Athens marked the point where the heavy-handed control by Athens of the Delian League evolved into an Athenian empire, where Athens began to use the League’s funds for its own purposes and there were conflicts with or outright rebellions by less powerful League members.

Essentially members of the League were given a choice of either offering armed forces or paying taxes into the treasury. Most states chose the tax, which now doubled up as leaving them effectively disarmed while paying taxes or tribute to Athens. In the words of the classical historian Thucydides, ” it was correspondingly easy” for Athens “to reduce any that tried to leave the confederacy” – that is, crush members that tried to revolt or secede.

Thucydides dramatized just how heavy-handed Athens could be in the famous Melian Dialogue, often invoked by the so-called school of realism in international relations for its maxim that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must”. Thucydides put that maxim in the mouths of his imagined Athenian emissaries when giving their ultimatum to the neutral island of Melos – surrender and join the League, paying tribute to Athens, or be destroyed.

One might well see the template from this Athenian “empire” or Delian League for the style or techniques of modern neo-imperialism or European maritime empire – even more so when one recalls that the Athenian state was democratic, in the style of so-called democratic empires, “a political state which conducts its internal affairs democratically but externally its policies have a striking resemblance to imperial rule”.

Interestingly, American democracy initially echoed classical Athenian democracy, in that both were also slave-owning societies and excluded women from politics.

Its opposing counterpart, Sparta, was authoritarian at heart but was also shy of formal empire with its Spartan hegemony. Particularly after its victory in the Peloponnesian War, it too could prove equally heavy-handed – establishing many of the pro-Spartan foreign governments throughout the Aegean and also establishing many Spartan garrisons.

Just as I tend to see the Peloponnesian War between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta underlying the grand ideological conflict in Western civilization, so too I am tempted to see the Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony resembling the rival United States and Soviet Union in the Cold War, except with victory reversed.

However, there was a deeper template, from which the Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony arose in part, and that was the long history of classical Greek colonization, a precursor of subsequent settler colonialism.

Essentially, Greek cities founded other cities on a prolific scale throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea coastlines, except in the western Mediterranean where they came up against the Phoenicians and their colonies (in what would become Carthage and its territories), from 750 to 550 BC.

The Greek cities or colonies often became strong city states in their own right, independent of their founding city or cities and often even rivalling them in influence – as in Sicily and southern Italy, to the extent that the Romans called the area Magna Graecia or Great Greece.

I am not familiar enough with the history of Greek colonization to comment on the extent that it was imperial in terms of displacing or dominating any inhabitants in the area of their colonies. However, it certainly had an impact that is occasionally characterized as cultural imperialism – Greek cities spread Greek culture.

However, I would go further – that Western civilization as a whole is effectively a Greek colony.

An analogy that is commonly drawn in modern history is to cast the British and their empire as the Greeks to the Romans of the United States, albeit American imperialism might be styled as closer to that of the Delian League (and its original democratic polity as closer to that of Athens).

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythology Horror (Preamble)

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This almost looks like a cheerful party, except for the dead babies – Francisco Goya’s “Witches’ Sabbath”, oil painting 1798 (public domain)

 

 

TOP 10 MYTHOLOGY HORROR

 

Horror is a genre of fiction that seeks to elicit fear or disgust.

That always prompts me to think of Greek dramatic tragedy and its quality of catharsis proposed by Aristotle, arousing intense feelings of fear and pity in its audience.

However, thinking about horror also prompts me to think that horror, or at least feelings or forms of horror, extend well beyond the genre of fiction labelled as such. Indeed, there is horror to be found throughout the subjects of my top ten lists, most obviously with the heart of horror genre fiction in my lists for film or fantasy and SF – but somewhat less obviously for poetry and literature, comics, television, music, and tropes, all of which are surprisingly prolific for feelings or forms of horror. More surprisingly prolific but even less obviously still is the horror to be found in science and philosophy or history.

Mythology on the other hand may not be so surprising for horror, given that it is easy to trace the origins of horror to mythology itself.

“The horror genre has ancient origins, with roots in folklore and religious traditions focusing on death, the afterlife, evil, the demonic, and the principle of the thing embodied in the person.” (Wikipedia, “Horror Fiction”)

Also, mythology was the usual subject of that Greek dramatic tragedy I referenced at the outset for its catharsis. I stand by that comparison between Greek tragedy and the genre of horror, at least as holding up in similar qualities of catharsis. And it wouldn’t take too much to tweak most Greek tragedies into horror films.

Hence, this is my Top 10 Mythology Horror list. Obviously, horror in mythology tends to be from supernatural sources, but then my own tastes in horror similarly lean towards dark fantasy or supernatural horror so it’s a good match. For that matter, horror films or horror in fantasy literature also frequently lean to adapting the horror in mythology.

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Adaptations of the Odyssey (Complete Top 10)

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Odysseus in the underworld – screenshot from the trailer for the 2026 Christopher Nolan film (fair use)

 

 

TOP 10 ADAPTATIONS OF THE ODYSSEY

 

Sing, Muse, of my Top 10 Adaptations of the Odyssey.

Yes, as pre-empted by the introduction to my Top 10 Odysseys (or Odyssey Iceberg), I have my Top 10 Adaptations of the Odyssey.

After all, it is the oldest work of Western literature (along with the Iliad as its prequel) and hence been around for almost three millennia as inspiration for prolific adaptations and re-imaginings – predominantly in literature but also on screen and in other media.

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

The edition my parents owned and hence the one I read – I think it may be the second edition (fair use)

 

 

(1) BERNARD EVSLIN –

THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES (1969)

 

 

Not surprisingly for an adaptation of the Odyssey written for children, I read this book as a child and it was my introduction to the Odyssey, preceding me reading the actual Odyssey by many years. This book is what lodged the Odyssey deep into my psyche and has remained there with it ever since, so much so that even upon reading or re-reading the actual Odyssey afterwards, it remains conflated with or filtered through this adaptation as my childhood version of it.

It helps that the book follows the original narrative closely, give or take what you’d expect in an adaptation for children. As the saying goes, what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. Evslin even arguably improves on the narrative conventions of Homer for the modern reader – substituting a linear narrative for the non-linear narrative of the original, telling the wanderings of Odysseus firsthand rather than Odysseus telling it to the Phaeacians as a story within the story, and adding or fleshing out details or dialogue from the original. The only jarring thing is the use of the Roman name Ulysses rather than the Greek name Odysseus, as the book otherwise uses the names from Greek mythology.

 

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

Profile of the poem as sold on Amazon Kindle (fair use)

 

 

 

(2) ALFRED LORD TENNYSON –

ULYSSES (1842)

 

“I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me”.

 

Well, there’s a job description for you, surprisingly close to my actual job description.

Okay, technically it doesn’t adapt the original but is a sequel, invoking the same heroic spirit for one last sail into the sunset – which I can’t help but feel was an influence on my next entry.

However, after Evslin, it was my next invocation of the Odyssey as a child before reading the Odyssey itself.

Alfred Lord Tennyson – archetypal poet of Victorian literature and poet laureate – and his Ulysses – poem in blank verse and dramatic monologue. Dramatic monologue to whom is not clear, but by whom is of course the classical hero of Iliad and Odyssey, Odysseus, or as the Romans called him, Ulysses.

Companion poem to his earlier “The Lotus Eaters” also inspired by the Odyssey but complete opposite to the former poem’s anti-heroism – where “The Lotus Eaters” resists the heroic call to action for slacking off and, well, eating lotus (because we’re just so wasted, man), “Ulysses” accepts it and indeed issues it.

 

“Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world”

 

Ulysses is particularly effective – and emotive – as that last call to heroic action, literally riding (or sailing) off into the sunset in one’s own twilight.

 

“We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.

 

 

Iconic poster image and shot from the trailer for the Nolan film (fair use)

 

 

 

(3) CHRISTOPHER NOLAN –

THE ODYSSEY (2026)

 

“In a time of apparent magic”

 

Well, you must have seen this coming. Christopher Nolan’s cinematic adaptation of the Odyssey is inescapable for inclusion in a top ten compiled in the same year as its release – even more so as Nolan himself observed, the Odyssey “had not been adapted into a large-scale production from a major Hollywood studio” and was hence “an odd gap in movie history”.

Also, I liked it.

It is by no means perfect and necessarily has omissions or changes to adapt the original epic into a single film – but by Athena, it lodged itself deep in my psyche and resonated with me afterwards. Not as deep or resonant as the original epic or my childhood version of it in top spot, but perhaps on a par with Tennyson’s poem – which Nolan’s film echoes in its ending.

Part of that resonance is because Nolan’s film is a distinctly contemporary or modern adaptation of the epic.

The “apparent magic” of the film’s intertitle is poised ambiguously between the psychological and the supernatural – floating as memories through a lotus haze and haunted by the ghosts of war.

Beyond that, there’s the reframing of the poem and the character of Odysseus “into a meditation on the moral consequences of war…using it to reframe the Trojan Horse and Odysseus’ journey as explorations of post-traumatic stress disorder, war guilt, moral injury and the breakdown of trust in civic norms”, albeit it got a little heavy-handed with its message of the Odyssey as part of the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Sea Peoples.

 

 

 

Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus – one of the most famous paintings depicting a subject of classical mythology or indeed any subject, imitated and parodied ever since in popular culture (public domain image)

 

 

(4) BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY (1867)

 

Yes, technically this doesn’t adapt the original but includes a summary version of it as part of general compendium of classical (and other) mythology.

Named for its American author Thomas Bulfinch and published as a collection of three volumes after his death in 1867, Bulfinch’s Mythology still remains a classic reference (and handily in the public domain) – as indeed it was for me as my introduction as a child to the world of classical mythology. Well, technically that was the first volume – the Age of Fable – but it did include a summary version of the Odyssey, that along with Evslin and Tennyson, was my childhood version of the epic.

Anyway, its impact as an introduction to classical mythology remains profound – if, deep within my psyche, there is any mythology that tempts me to actual religion, it’s classical mythology – and its summary version of the Odyssey is part of that.

 

 

Cover 2017 Penguin paperback edition (fair use)

 

 

(5) ROBERT GRAVES –

THE GREEK MYTHS (1955)

 

Similarly to Bulfinch’s Mythology, this book by Graves is a general compendium of Greek myths, including the Odyssey.

However, The Greek Myths by Graves is distinct from Bulfinch’s Mythology in that it extends beyond mere summary to interpretation, albeit Graves’ idiosyncratic interpretation to his overarching “poetic theme” or monomyth of the Goddess, and hence arguably an adaptation.

Essentially, Graves’ study of Greek mythology comes in two parts, summary and interpretation.

The first is a conventional compendium of Greek mythology – literary retellings of the various myths from their sources – and it is this part that is the basis for the book as my favorite single volume study of Greek mythology, albeit somewhat dense in its prose style.

The second part – his interpretative notes or commentary – is where things get wilder, albeit all in good poetic fun. This is where Graves ‘decodes’ or reconstructs Greek mythology to his monomyth of the Goddess or prehistoric matriarchal religion – “Graves interpreted Bronze Age Greece as changing from a matriarchal society…to a patriarchal one under continual pressure from victorious Greek-speaking tribes. In the second stage local kings came to each settlement as foreign princes, reigned by marrying the hereditary queen, who represented the Triple Goddess, and were ritually slain by the next king after a limited period, originally six months. Kings managed to evade the sacrifice for longer and longer periods, often by sacrificing substitutes, and eventually converted the queen, priestess of the Goddess, into a subservient and chaste wife, and in the final stage had legitimate sons to reign after them”.

So there you go. Of course, the historical accuracy of Graves’ interpretation or commentary has been almost universally contested or considered to be idiosyncratic – “the interpretive notes are of value only as a guide to the author’s personal mythology”.

And that extends to his interpretation of the Odyssey, of which I’ll always remember his interpretation of recurring katabasis or descent to the underworld – death and rebirth. One scene that indeed strikes as a ritual burial of death and rebirth is that of the Phaeacians taking Odysseus – who is in a seemingly supernatural state of slumber – ashore on Ithaca, placing him and the treasures they gave him in a cave.

 

 

HarperCollins 1983 paperback edition (the edition I own) – my favorite cover art for the book!

 

 

(6) BARBARA WALKER –

WOMEN’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYTHS & SECRETS (1983)

 

As the title indicates, this is a general encyclopedia of mythology, including classical mythology, including entries for subjects from the Odyssey – most notably for Penelope.

Like Graves and indeed borrowing from him as a reference, the entries are really interpretative notes or commentary – decoding or reconstructing mythology to the monomyth of the Goddess or prehistoric matriarchal religion.

Essentially, throughout all entries there is Walker’s monomyth of the archetypal Goddess throughout mythology and history – or rather prehistory (or perhaps herstory), as the Goddess was displaced, firstly into many goddesses, and secondly by male gods or God.

Or in this case, heroes or hero. There’re not many entries directly for the Odyssey – Odysseus himself does not get one – but there are brief entries for some of its female figures such as Circe, the Sirens, and above all, Penelope.

Teasing out Walker’s adaptation or interpretation of the Odyssey from such entries, primarily that for Penelope (which cites Graves’ The Greek Myths), Walker presents Penelope as yet another manifestation of the Goddess – essentially in the same role as Athena as patron of Odysseus, particularly as a goddess of fate spinning and unspinning the thread of his life (represented by the shroud of his father) such that he has a literally charmed life, escaping dangers and death.

 

 

O Brother, Where Art Thou? DVD cover (fair use)

 

 

(7) COEN BROTHERS –

O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000)

 

“You seek a great fortune, you three who are now in chains. You will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek. But first… first you must travel a long and difficult road, a road fraught with peril. Mm-hmm. You shall see thangs, wonderful to tell…”

So says the Blind Railman, this film’s equivalent of the blind prophet Tiresias in the underworld.

Some might prefer this film adaptation of the Odyssey to that of Nolan – and I obviously regard it as the only other cinematic version worthy of a place in my top ten, albeit second to Nolan’s film.

My reason is that Nolan’s film is a more straightforward adaptation of the original epic. As entertaining as it is, O Brother is only loosely based on the original epic – “a loose comedic retelling of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem, The Odyssey, set in 1930s Depression-era Mississippi.” Oh – and musical as well.

Indeed, part of the fun is spotting the parallels with the original epic. George Clooney’s Ulysses and Holly Hunter’s Penelope. John Goodman’s cyclops. The sirens – always the best part of the Odyssey and one of the highlights here. And so on.

The other highlight for me was Sheriff Cooley and his relentless pursuit of Clooney’s Ulysses, as well as the latter’s escape by divine fortune. In terms of the epic, Cooley represents Poseidon (or the forces of divine retribution or nemesis in general), but arguably also Hades and the underworld, merged with the Christian Devil.

 

 

Screenshot from the episode with Homer’s homecoming Odysseus (fair use)

 

 

(8) THE SIMPSONS –

D’OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?:

TALES FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, SEASON 13 EPISODE 14 (2002)

 

The Simpsons did it.

Yes, it’s a good gag from a South Park episode (“Simpsons Already Did It”) but in the case the Simpsons did Homer’s Odyssey.

I mean, it was probably inevitable, given the name of its (adult) protagonist (and indeed, they used the title Homer’s Odyssey for another episode which did not adapt the epic).

And they did it pretty well – remarkably so as it was not even a whole episode, but one of three segments of an episode. Even so, it hit the main comedic satire or parody beats  of the Odyssey through a modern lens, with too many classic lines from which to choose.

If I have to choose, it’s a close call with Penelope musing whether Odysseus is the same “magnificent physical specimen as when he left” (complete with a photograph of a muscular fully-haired Odysseus), but I’d go with Odysseus blowing off Penelope after twenty years of war and homecoming.

“Quit suffocating me, I’m going to Moe’s”.

 

 

Cover of Scribner Book Company 2003 paperback reprint edition – the edition I own (fair use)

 

 

(9) JONATHAN SHAY –

ODYSSEUS IN AMERICA: COMBAT TRAUMA & THE TRIALS OF HOMECOMING (2002)

 

Companion and sequel of sorts to Shay’s Iliad, Achilles in Vietnam, this is not so much an adaptation of the Odyssey as the usage of it as a lens for combat trauma and the concept of “moral injury”.

I can’t find any source for this book as an influence on Nolan’s film but the themes of the film are too uncannily similar for it not to have been influenced by the book. It certainly has been an influence on my own planned adaptation of the Odyssey…but I’ve said too much.

I’ll let the Amazon blurb for the book speak for it:

“In this ambitious follow-up to Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier’s homecoming, to illuminate the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life…Shay deepens our understanding of both the combat veteran’s experience and one of the world’s greatest classics. In Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay used the story of the Iliad as a prism through which to examine how ancient and modern wars have battered the psychology of the men who fight. Now he turns his attention to the Odyssey, the story of a soldier’s homecoming, to illuminate the real problems faced by combat veterans re-entering civilian society. The Odyssey, Shay argues, offers explicit portrayals of behavior common among returning soldiers in our own culture: danger-seeking, womanizing, explosive violence, drug abuse, visitation by the dead, obsession, vagrancy and homelessness…Shay shows how Odysseus’s mistrustfulness, his lies, and his constant need to conceal his thoughts and emotions foreshadow the experiences of many of today’s veterans.”

 

 

Cover mass market paperback edition – the edition I own (fair use)

 

 

 

(10) MARGARET ATWOOD –

THE PENELOPIAD (2005)

 

It’s only fair that we get Penelope’s tale of the twenty years of Odysseus’ absence (and more).

Margaret Atwood not only gives us this tale, narrated from the underworld after her death, but also gives voice to the maids hanged by Odysseus almost as a footnote to the original epic – or should I say, a Greek chorus?

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Adaptations of the Odyssey (10) Margaret Atwood – The Penelopiad

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Cover mass market paperback edition – the edition I own (fair use)

 

 

 

(10) MARGARET ATWOOD –

THE PENELOPIAD (2005)

 

It’s only fair that we get Penelope’s tale of the twenty years of Odysseus’ absence (and more).

Margaret Atwood not only gives us this tale, narrated from the underworld after her death, but also gives voice to the maids hanged by Odysseus almost as a footnote to the original epic – or should I say, a Greek chorus?

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Adaptations of the Odyssey (9) Jonathan Shays – Odysseus in America

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Cover of Scribner Book Company 2003 paperback reprint edition – the edition I own (fair use)

 

 

(9) JONATHAN SHAY –

ODYSSEUS IN AMERICA: COMBAT TRAUMA & THE TRIALS OF HOMECOMING (2002)

 

Companion and sequel of sorts to Shay’s Iliad, Achilles in Vietnam, this is not so much an adaptation of the Odyssey as the usage of it as a lens for combat trauma and the concept of “moral injury”.

I can’t find any source for this book as an influence on Nolan’s film but the themes of the film are too uncannily similar for it not to have been influenced by the book. It certainly has been an influence on my own planned adaptation of the Odyssey…but I’ve said too much.

I’ll let the Amazon blurb for the book speak for it:

“In this ambitious follow-up to Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier’s homecoming, to illuminate the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life…Shay deepens our understanding of both the combat veteran’s experience and one of the world’s greatest classics. In Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay used the story of the Iliad as a prism through which to examine how ancient and modern wars have battered the psychology of the men who fight. Now he turns his attention to the Odyssey, the story of a soldier’s homecoming, to illuminate the real problems faced by combat veterans re-entering civilian society. The Odyssey, Shay argues, offers explicit portrayals of behavior common among returning soldiers in our own culture: danger-seeking, womanizing, explosive violence, drug abuse, visitation by the dead, obsession, vagrancy and homelessness…Shay shows how Odysseus’s mistrustfulness, his lies, and his constant need to conceal his thoughts and emotions foreshadow the experiences of many of today’s veterans.”

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of Empire & Imperialism (Special Mention) (8) Manifest Destiny

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American Progress painting by John Gast – destiny made manifest (public domain image)

 

 

(8) MANIFEST DESTINY

 

Yes, manifest destiny is something that might seem unique to the American territorial expansion, westward across the continent (and beyond across the Pacific) for which the phrase was coined by its advocates.

“Manifest destiny was the expansionist colonial belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand westward across North America, and that this belief was both obvious (“manifest“) and certain (“destiny“).”

However, I consider that a belief in the “manifest destiny” of imperial claims or territorial expansion, divine or otherwise, is common to most empires, if not all of them. After all, from the point of view of the imperial nation, if empire or expansion weren’t its manifest destiny, then it wouldn’t be in a position to be made manifest but instead on the receiving end of being someone else’s manifest destiny.

Admittedly, a belief in manifest destiny is perhaps highest for settler colonialism, particularly by adjoining territorial expansion or annexation. After all, it takes a strong sense of your destiny to move or settle into someone else’s territory and claim it as your own by right.

Ironically, the closest parallel to American belief in manifest destiny by territorial expansion is that of Russia eastward across the Eurasia (and beyond across the Pacific).

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention: Revisited) (8) Phoenician & Punic Empires

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Carthaginian dependencies and protectorates through the Punic Wars (public domain image – Wikipedia “Ancient Carthage”)

 

(8) PHOENICIAN & PUNIC EMPIRES

 

The Phoenicians rose to prominence among the Canaanites after the Bronze Age Collapse as the thalassocracy par excellence to dominate the Mediterranean and to influence classical Western civilization.

They earn special mention as with one notable exception they weren’t really an empire. Indeed, they weren’t even really a single ‘nationality’ or state, but an agglomeration of city-states like Sumer before them, located on the Levantine coast (mostly in modern Lebanon) – with the most prominent being Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos.

Of these, Tyre rose to become the richest and most powerful, famed for its purple dye that became synonymous with imperial chic – particularly through its use by the Roman emperor. Under its ruling priest Ithobaal from 887 to 856 BC, it even took a shot at expanding its territory to other Phoenician states, coming the closest the Phoenicians ever did to a unitary territorial state.

So if the Phoenicians didn’t really have an empire or even a single state, why the special mention at all?

Well, firstly there remains the history of Phoenician maritime and mercantile power, indeed the sole such power in the region for several centuries – arguably the precursor of what might be styled as economic neo-imperialism.

Interestingly, they combined maritime power with proto-industrialism. Like the Greek city-states which rose in parallel with them, they had few natural resources – apart from the lumber (or cedar) for which they were famed – so they specialized in craft, construction, and manufacture, for which they were also famed in contemporary literary works from the Bible to Homer.

With that maritime and mercantile power came cultural influence, best known of which is the oldest verified alphabet, but the full extent of their influence on classical Western civilization is still being discovered – for example, the “orientalization” of “Greek cultural and artistic conventions”.

However, “as a mercantile power concentrated along a narrow coastal strip of land, the Phoenicians lacked the size and population to support a large military”, and hence “increasingly fell under the sway of foreign rules” from “neighboring empires – except for their colonies, which brings me to my next point…

Secondly, there was the history of Phoenician colonization, overlapping and in rivalry with classical Greek colonization – similarly founding colonies and trading posts, mostly of limited size but of impressive range throughout the Mediterranean coastline. The Greeks may have eclipsed them in the eastern Mediterranean, but the Phoenicians continued to predominate in the western Mediterranean, not least one colony founded by Tyre known to history as Carthage. Which brings me to my third point…

Thirdly, there was that one notable exception to the Phoenicians not really being an empire and that was the empire of the Phoenician colony that effectively took over the other colonies in the western Mediterranean and eclipsed the original Phoenician city-states, even Tyre as the city-state that founded it – which was of course Carthage and its Carthaginian or Punic empire.

Like the power that rivalled and ultimately destroyed it as the predominant power in the western Mediterranean – Rome – Carthage was an imperial republic. Before it lost out to Rome that it mirrored as a republic – as it also mirrored the maritime and mercantile power of the original Phoenician city states – Carthage gradually expanding its economic and political hegemony across the western Mediterranean through a network of “colonies, vassal states and satellite states” that “controlled the largest territory in the region”.

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Adaptations of the Odyssey (8) The Simpsons – D’oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

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Screenshot from the episode with Homer’s homecoming Odysseus (fair use)

 

 

(8) THE SIMPSONS –

D’OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?:

TALES FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, SEASON 13 EPISODE 14 (2002)

 

The Simpsons did it.

Yes, it’s a good gag from a South Park episode (“Simpsons Already Did It”) but in the case the Simpsons did Homer’s Odyssey.

I mean, it was probably inevitable, given the name of its (adult) protagonist (and indeed, they used the title Homer’s Odyssey for another episode which did not adapt the epic).

And they did it pretty well – remarkably so as it was not even a whole episode, but one of three segments of an episode. Even so, it hit the main comedic satire or parody beats  of the Odyssey through a modern lens, with too many classic lines from which to choose.

If I have to choose, it’s a close call with Penelope musing whether Odysseus is the same “magnificent physical specimen as when he left” (complete with a photograph of a muscular fully-haired Odysseus), but I’d go with Odysseus blowing off Penelope after twenty years of war and homecoming.

“Quit suffocating me, I’m going to Moe’s”.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of Empire & Imperialism (Special Mention) (7) Columbian Exchange – Ecological Imperialism

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Alfred W. Crosby – “Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900”, Cambridge University Press, 1986 hardcover edition (fair use)

 

 

(7) COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE – ECOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM

 

The Columbian exchange – the massive and widespread transfer of plants, animals, human populations, and communicable diseases between the Old World and the New World from Columbus onwards – might well have happened simply from trade rather than imperialism. Well, perhaps except for the human populations.

However, it did happen from imperialism and is distinctive enough for its own type of imperialism as ecological imperialism. Indeed, the historian who coined the term Columbian exchange in a book of that title – American historian Alfred Crosby – also coined the term ecological imperialism in the title of a sequel book.

Of course, the focus of Crosby’s ecological imperialism is on the European side of the equation – that is, Europe’s exports of biological species or population rather than those it imported from elsewhere, where the latter largely consisted of cultivated plants (with superstars such as potatoes and tomatoes) and largely beneficial.

“Crosby introduced ecological imperialism as an explanatory concept that points out the contribution of European biological species such as animals, plants and pathogens in the success of European colonists” – foreshadowing arguments much to the same effect by Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel.

Ecological imperialism may not have had the same deliberate nature of other aspects of imperialism – and even where it was deliberate, often may not have had the same awareness or intention of consequences, the most destructive of which can be summarized in one word, extinction.

That is, extinction of human populations through disease, often overlapping with gen0cide, but also extinction of animal (or plant) species, through such things as competition with or predation by invasive species but also something that might be added as another aspect of ecological imperialism – human over-hunting or habitat destruction.

The same destructive consequences recurred with European ecological imperialism in Australasia and Oceania.