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The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall |  | Author: Timothy Parsons
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  2 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 496
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 0195304314
Dewey Decimal Number: 325.3
EAN: 9780195304312
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Product Description
In The Rule of Empires, Timothy Parsons gives a sweeping account of the evolution of empire from its origins in ancient Rome to its most recent twentieth-century embodiment. He explains what constitutes an empire and offers suggestions about what empires of the past can tell us about our own historical moment.
Parsons uses imperial examples that stretch from ancient Rome, to Britain's "new" imperialism in Kenya, to the Third Reich to parse the features common to all empires, their evolutions and self-justifying myths, and the reasons for their inevitable decline. Parsons argues that far from confirming some sort of Darwinian hierarchy of advanced and primitive societies, conquests were simply the products of a temporary advantage in military technology, wealth, and political will. Beneath the self-justifying rhetoric of benevolent paternalism and cultural superiority lay economic exploitation and the desire for power. Yet imperial ambitions still appear viable in the twenty-first century, Parsons shows, because their defenders and detractors alike employ abstract and romanticized perspectives that fail to grasp the historical reality of subjugation.
Writing from the perspective of the common subject rather than that of the imperial conquerors, Parsons offers a historically grounded cautionary tale rich with accounts of subjugated peoples throwing off the yoke of empire time and time again. In providing an accurate picture of what it is like to live as a subject, The Rule of Empires lays bare the rationalizations of imperial conquerors and their apologists and exposes the true limits of hard power.
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| Customer Reviews:
Why empires always fail June 18, 2010
Paul Gelman (HAIFA , ISRAEL)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
The main message running through Timothy Parsons' comprehensive and excellent book is this:empires fail and fall because "imperial rule always means degradation and exploitation...the fundamental reality of empires is that they are unsustainable because their subject find them intolerable".(page 4)
In the introduction,there is a discussion on the debate of empires.Parsons totally dismisses the claim made by neo-imperialists,among them the known hiatorian of Harvard Niall Fergusson,whose thesis is that after the 2001 terrorist attacks it was necessary to impose order on belligerent states and rogue nations which might possess chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.The neo-consevatives,joined by Christian evangelicals and right-wing ideologues have formed a kind of "neo-imperialist gang" and their assertion is that global security depended on America's readiness to become an imperial power based on the British model.
However,Parsons says that by their nature,empires were never humane,liberal or tolerant,because "would-be Caesars throughout history sought glory,land, and most important,plunder".(page 4)By picking up the examples of seven imperial rules:Roman Britain,Umayyad Spain,Spanish Peru,India under the British East India Company,Napoleonic Italy,Britain's Kenia colony and Nazi-occupied France,Parsons shows how and why empires are unbearable and eventually untenable.In its purest and most basic form,"empire" entails the formal and direct authoritarian rule of one group of people over the the other.Most empires shared certain features and characteristics resulting from their attempts to subjugate a conquered people permanently.Empires were the products of a temporary advantage in military technology,wealth and political will.The process of globalization is not something new.In ancient and medieval societies it was rare for one society to be significantly more advanced than another.Personal greed and cultural aggression were the decisive factors.Empires had to become profitable,therefore their subjects were inherently exploitable,and the victims had to be less human or were regarded racially or culturally inferior.
With the rise of nationalism in modern times,the common people had their say and it is the importance of identity of the individual within the state which changed the nature of empires.
Parsons has based his claims on accumulating and analyzing an enormous and impressive collection of historical sources.He is extremely adroit at understandidng the dynamics of imperialism in each case study that he discusses.
The Roman Empire-like the other ones following it-established its authority through militarism and terror,but needed partners and intermediaries to actually rule.The Romans were generally more open to easing the line between citizen and subject than their successors in later empires.
One of the most impressive chapters in the book is the one which describes the subjugation of Peru by the Spaniards.Pizzaro and all the other conquistadors were driven by self-interest and greed,but they depicted themselves as loyal servants of the Crown.While they were equipped with horses, superior weapons,and an aggressive Christian zealotry,Spanish empire builders triumphed "by exploiting the Americans' vulnerability to Old World diseases,causing the death of many millions of Aztecs and Inkans".(page 166)Spanish ideologues linked imperial citizenship with blood.In other words: all the indigenous people in America were so inherently inferior and different that they were destined to be permanently subjects as "Indians" and they were to regard the Spanish conquerors as the ones who brought salvation to them.Those societies were demolished and no less than sixteen million killograms of silver streamed into Spain between 1503 and 1660.
The chapter on the Napoleonic Empire shows to what extent nationalism corroded empires.Napoleon's imperial model lost its viability when the common people came to see empires as foreign and thus illegitimate.Although the French Emperor went to great lenghts to depict himself as a benevolent one he adopted Roman symbols and titles,sought wealth and personal agggrandizement,while the French empire builders envisioned themselves as missionaries charged with spreading the civilizing message of the Enlightenment to the backward corners of the continent.However,the brutal occupation led to dissent,to rebellions and to guerrrilla wars,especially in Spain.One is reminded of the emperor's words which talked about the Spanish ulcer.The Peninsular War tied down some two hundred imperial troups at a time when Napoleon desperately needed them in Russia.
The concluding chapter analyzes the American invasion of Iraq and its aftermath,emphasizing again the role of the common people in resisting imperialistic dreams.
This is a very richly detailed and clearly written study which shows why empires are doomed from their start.Perhaps we should all remember the famous words uttered by Abraham Lincoln:"Those who do not learn from history,are condemned to repeat the same mistakes".
Ruling empires ain't easy August 22, 2010
Beorn S. Hall (Winder, GA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a remarkably prescient book, full of insights relevant to our current "American Empire," in my humble opinion. Back in WW1, the British conquered Iraq with only a few thousand troops against a decadent Ottoman Empire, and yet today our war in Iraq is threatening to bankrupt our economy among other travesties. The book's central premise seems valid that empires can rule only as long as they can succeed in suppressing the conquered and making a profit out of doing so. As long as guerilla tactics (as used in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere) can inflict such disproportionate casualties and financial expenses onto our unparalleled military supremacy, we will indeed be unable to continue with our current "Superpower" status.
W. Ron Hess [...]
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