The maximum borders of the Egyptian empire 1450 BC by J.G. Bartholomew in 1913 (public domain image – Wikipedia “New Kingdom of Egypt”

(7) EGYPTIAN EMPIRE

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Even more so than Mesopotamia, Egypt set the standard for imperial state chic, not least in its monumental architecture and statuary, as well as its priesthoods and divine ruler personality cult.

Indeed, it is not too difficult to see the stamp of Egyptian imperial chic even to the twentieth century and beyond, as in the Soviet Union but with a secular party priesthood devoted to the cycles of history as opposed to the Nile and cult of socialism rather than the sun god. Less pyramids perhaps, but equally monumental architecture and statuary, as well as a tendency towards equally grandiose and gigantic projects.

Ironically, despite this imperial chic, Egypt was not so much of an empire itself, except of course to its own subjects, as it largely kept within its own borders to the Nile. The exception is the imperial Egypt of the New Kingdom, when it extended southwards to Nubia and northwards through the Levant – under pharaohs such as Rameses, whose title in Greek gave us the figure in Shelley’s poem.

Also ironically, Egypt has consistently played an important role within empires, but more as imperial prize rather than ruling empire itself – starting with its conquest by Assyrian, Persian and Macedonian empires in turn.

The last also reveals something of an odd recurring tendency, for foreign invaders or subjects from an empire conquering or ruling Egypt to break away from that empire with their own dynasty within Egypt, which is then effectively regarded as Egyptian.

First and foremost among those was the Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by Alexander’s general Ptolemy as a successor state of the Macedonian empire and regarded as the last dynasty of ancient Egypt. It was the dynasty that gave history Egypt’s most famous female monarch, Cleopatra – also Egypt’s last reigning monarch, before its fall to the Roman Empire. Indeed, its fall transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.

Kudos to Cleopatra, however, for almost pulling all a second breakaway dynasty based in Egypt, this time from the Roman Empire in its eastern half, through her alliance with Mark Antony. Yes – it was a long shot but it’s tempting to imagine the counterfactual of their victory, perhaps anticipating the eastern Roman Empire by three centuries, except from Alexandria rather than Constantinople, with Greek as its lingua franca at an earlier date. Or alternatively something like the short-lived breakaway Palmyrene empire under Zenobia two centuries ahead of the Crisis of the Third Century.

Egypt then became an imperial prize for the Roman Empire – and its richest, the proverbial breadbasket of its empire. That always strikes me as strange from my perspective of contemporary Egypt and its comparative poverty – but then that is part of the more general strange feature that the Roman Empire’s eastern or southern African and Asian provinces were richer than its western and northern European provinces, the reverse of our contemporary perspective.

From there, it was briefly a battlefield between the eastern Roman (or Byzantine) empire and the resurgent Persian (or Sassanid) empire, before falling to the Arab conquest that defeated one and conquered the other.

Egypt remained in the hands of one caliphate after another, but rose to new prominence as the seat of power for the Fatimid Caliphate. The Fatimids did not quite fall within that recurring tendency for Egyptian breakaway dynasties, except perhaps in the last stages of their decline when their rule was effectively confined to Egypt – but the Mamluks did, the slave mercenary military case that rose to rule their own Sultanate in Egypt and beyond, even famously defeating the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalat in 1260.

The Mamluks declined in turn, but their role was replayed by Albanian mercenaries with Egypt as a province in the Ottoman Empire, led by their commander Muhammed Ali Pasha, who founded his own dynasty, nominally subject to but effectively independent from the Ottoman Empire.

Egypt became a protectorate of the British Empire, as Egypt again rose to prominence as an imperial prize, not for its agriculture but for the newly constructed Suez Canal as maritime trade route.

And once again ironically, Egypt and the Suez Canal subsequently rose to prominence as the imperial humiliation of the British Empire, with the Suez Crisis in 1956 – often cited as one of the end points of the British Empire.

We’re not quite done with Egypt and its imperial ironies yet – as finally modern Egypt echoed the imperial heights of its ancient New Kingdom with the short-lived United Arab Republic, when it formed a sovereign union with Syria from 1958 to 1961.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Assyrian Empire 824-671 BC

(6) MESOPOTAMIA – AKKADIAN, ASSYRIAN & BABYLONIAN EMPIRES

Ur-imperialism.

The original imperialism – in that Mesopotamia was the origin (or one of the origins) of human civilization, and even more so, states.

Of course those states were necessarily on a small scale, as in the archetypal city-states of Sumerian civilization, and their imperialism was similarly on a small scale, as in city states conquering other city states or their neighbors.

In his book Against the Grain, James C Scott strikingly argues that such imperialism was ingrained (heh) in those states from their very foundations in grain agriculture as an instrument and means of state control, depending on various degrees of forced labor or extraction.

Whether or not that is the case, Sumerian city states warred against each other in what might be regarded as micro-imperialism or proto-imperialism.

Or as I introduced it, ur-imperialism – both as the term ur- is used to connote an ancestral prototype or primeval origin, and for the Sumerian city state of Ur.

One of the aspects of that ur-imperialism is, like many other features of subsequent civilizations, Sumerian civilization created or set the standard features of imperial or at least palace states, including monumental architecture – such as ziggurats! – and imperial or royal cults of leadership.

Ultimately, Mesopotamia evolved to imperialism on a larger scale – with its three namesake empires best known in general history. The Akkadian empire – best known for Sargon of Akkad – managed to conquer or unite all Mesopotamian city states in an area similar to modern Iraq, in the floodplains of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that defined Mesopotamia.

However, the Akkadian Empire pales in comparison to the biggest and most belligerent of Mesopotamian empires, the Assyrian Empire (or technically neo-Assyrian Empire, as I understand it was a resurgence of the Assyrian state) – indeed, the largest empire in world history to that date.

To be honest, I don’t know too much about the Assyrian Empire, other than it being portrayed as one of the evil empires that menaced the Israelites in the Bible – and also that Jonah was ordered to its capital Ninevah by God before disobeying and being swallowed by the whale.

Although smaller than its predecessor, the Babylonian Empire (or again technically neo-Babylonian Empire) loomed larger in the Bible as one of its ultimate symbols, if not the ultimate symbol, of evil empire, because of the so-called Babylonian captivity and exile of the Jews.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion”.

Egypt and Babylon are the two famous (or infamous) poles of captivity for the Jews, but the latter is more raw in the Bible – because it was more recent (and less mythic), but also because the Old Testament was mostly written or compiled at or about that time.

And the symbolism of Babylon as evil empire loomed even larger in Christianity, due to its use as a symbol for Rome in the Book of Apocalypse, with the enduring imagery of that hot harlot, Mystery Babylon.

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Europe at the height of Axis success by Gorak ten-en for Wikipedia “Nazi Germany” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

(5) NAZI EMPIRE

The evil empire par excellence. Although that is an overstatement – it was barely an empire.

Despite styling itself as the Third Reich after the first German “empire” or Reich of a thousand years, the Holy Roman Empire, it didn’t even last as long as the second, Wilhelmine Germany.

In total, Nazi Germany lasted only twelve years from 1933 to 1945 – for which it could only be described as imperial, at least beyond its original borders, for a little over half of that, from 1938 onwards. Well, perhaps from its involvement in the Spanish Civil War before that, although that failed to yield a reliable client state – and it was arguably preparing for its imperialism from its very inception.

And even for war beyond its borders from 1939 to 1945, the second half of that period was defending or retreating from conquests made in the first half – before its complete collapse, defeat, unconditional surrender, occupation and partition. So the Nazi empire was about three years of conquests, albeit impressive, then defending or retreating from those conquests before falling altogether.

The evil part, however, is not an overstatement. It can probably best be summed up by the Encyclopedia of Fantasy’s comparison of the First World War with the Second – “despite the attempts of propagandists on both sides, no wholly evil figure emerges from World War I to occupy the world’s imagination, no one of a viciousness so unmitigated that it seems almost supernatural; Hitler, on the other hand, has all the lineaments of a Dark Lord, and the Reich he hoped to found was a parody of the true Land”.

The Nazi empire, short-lived as it was, consisted of its conquests and occupied territory in Europe and north Africa – as well as its allies that started off resembling client states at best and finished off resembling hostages at worst.

And it was notorious for all the worst features of empire – war, extortion, plunder, slavery and genocide – arguably as a form of hyper-imperialism, both in intent and scale, more so by being crammed into a few short years.

It couldn’t even aspire to the caustic observation of empire by the Roman historian Tacitus through the mouthpiece of a Caledonian chieftain – that they make a desert and call it peace. Rather they made a desert and called it war.

The most that could be said for it was that its occupation of western Europe, extortionate as it was from the outset, was relatively benign – relatively that is, compared to its occupation of eastern Europe, brutal or genocidal as it was from the outset

“It has been argued, and not altogether frivolously, that the crucial German mistake of the Second World War was to have behaved atrociously to Poland and correctly to France when the reverse would have served German interests to better effect”.

On a related side note, I have never understood why the Germans crushed the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, rather than simply withdraw to leave it as a thorn in the Soviet side.

Ironically, there were strains of anti-imperialism within the Nazi empire, similar to those other modern imperial powers that styled themselves as anti-imperialist while creating empires or enacting imperialism of their own. That was particularly so as it opposed the British Empire and hence sporadically invoked or supported anti-imperialism against that empire, as well as its propaganda posing as defending itself (or Europe) from Soviet and American forms of imperialism.

But it couldn’t even do that right – as it was not particularly concerned with expressing such sentiments during its high tide of conquest, and they only came to the fore as it became increasingly desperate defending against its defeat.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT DEVIL-TIER?)

Map of the Japanese Empire at its peak in 1942 (although it did extend its territory in China in 1944-1945) by San Jose for Wikipedia “Japan during World War II” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

(4) JAPANESE EMPIRE

One of the oldest empires but also one of the newest – which, among other things, makes it one of the oddest.

There were older empires than Japan, whose mythology traces its imperial line to legendary founder Jimmo in 660 BC, although more conventional history tends to trace its origins “in the late Kofun period of the 3rd-6th centuries AD”. However, it is the oldest empire still existing, at least in retaining an emperor, the last state to do so, albeit as ceremonial head of state.

Which brings us to the one of many oddities of Japan’s empire – that for the vast majority of its history, Japan had an emperor without an empire.

Firstly, in the sense that Japan was a homogenous polity that mostly kept to itself, apart from importing cultural influences, mostly from China – contrary to how empire is typically defined as one nation or people ruling over another. In that sense, the Japanese emperor was a somewhat inflated term for monarch, albeit a cult figure in the native Japanese religion of Shinto.

Secondly, in the sense that for a substantial part of its history, the emperor wasn’t even that, but a lame-duck monarch where de facto power was held by military aristocrats in what is generally known as the shogunate. Ironically, it is during one of these periods that Japan actually embarked on empire in the conventional definition of the term – its invasions of Korea in 1592-1598.

Japan was also one of the newest empires, a latecomer in the Age of Imperialism – and as the only Asian imperial power of that otherwise exclusive club of European empires, seen as somewhat of a gate crasher or interloper, although ironically its primary crash course was for collision with the other non-European imperial power, the United States.

Japan narrowly escaped being the subject of an imperial power or powers that was the fate of the rest of Asia. When European imperialism first tentatively reached east Asia about three centuries before in the Age of Discovery, Japan decided it was having none of that and famously sealed itself off in isolationism.

That couldn’t last forever, as European imperialism had bigger guns in the Age of Imperialism – and the United States forced Japan to open up with classic gunboat diplomacy (in the literal form of a fleet commanded by Commodore Perry), starting Japan’s love-hate relationship with the United States as an object of admiration and awe but also potential hostility and rivalry.

That saw Japan revive its emperor within a new centralized government in the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and adapt all those features of European nations that led to their imperial power – in the smartest possible way by following world leaders in their fields, notably building their navy on expertise from Britain and their army on expertise from France, before swapping out the latter for Germany after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

And what more distinctive European feature was there than an empire? So Japan set about acquiring that too – modestly at first, from its immediate neighbors, starting with the Ryukuan island kingdom in 1879. By 1894, it was powerful enough to join in that other distinctive European feature in the nineteenth century – pawning Qing China, which it did in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, acquiring Taiwan, and continuing to use China as its punching bag thereafter.

However, its victory and claims against China saw it clash with European imperial powers keen to maintain the balance of power and their spheres of influence there – foremost among them Russia, looming largest against Japan in north-east Asia. That aligned Japan with Britain, which was similarly concerned with Russia, and they sealed their alignment with a formal alliance in 1902 – which allowed Japan to take on Russia directly and win in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

The spoils of victory in that war saw Japan revisit its ambitions in Korea, but this time successfully annexing it – where they were notoriously brutal ruling over it. Not Belgium-brutal, but still up there even on the scale of brutality in the Age of Imperialism.

Japan made more gains at the expense of Germany in and after the First World War – and at the expense of increasing hostility with the United States, prompting Britain to abandon the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

Which brings us perhaps to most of the oddities of the Japanese Empire, as it sowed the seeds of its rise to one of the largest territorial empires in history at the same time as the seeds of its decline as one of the shortest-lived empires in history. All the while on the path of evil empire, ultimately one that was dying and insane.

Yet on that path and even before, certainly from the Russo-Japanese War, Japan styled itself as anti-imperialist, in the tradition of those two other states that styled themselves as anti-imperialist while engaging in imperialism of their own, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Of course, for Japan this was against European imperialism – propagandizing their own imperialism with slogans such as “Asia for the Asians” and as the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, although they weren’t too big on the co- part of that title, more their own prosperity sphere. Those claims were not without some justice, but they were also with brutality and violence that eclipsed those of European imperialism as well as making their previous occupation of Korea seem like a picnic

Ultimately the Japanese Empire fell to defeat, primarily by the United States in the Pacific War – and Japan was not only shorn of its empire, but itself occupied by an American shogunate, albeit one that proved extraordinarily and unexpectedly enlightened in its role in the equally extraordinary and unexpected revival of Japan as an economic superpower, for a period second only to the United States itself. Which of course has seen Japan also accused of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism, substituting economic power for military victory in controlling other nations.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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