Historians have widely discussed the concept of empire, yet no one can assert if imperialism is a good or bad type of governance. Scholars explore the history of empires to answer this question. For example, the article by Pennock, Holland, Green, and Wagner gives specific reasons why empires can be good or bad (Pennock et al.).
The reasons provided by the historians about why empires are good are the following:
- Aztec empire’s citizens had the right to protection and justice from the state (Pennock et al. 2);
- Citizens had access to grain stores (Pennock et al. 2);
- During the Roman empire, the infrastructure of many ancient cities improved (Pennock et al. 3);
- In West African empires, education started to spread (Pennock et al. 3).
On the other hand, according to the same historians, empires can be viewed as bad because of the following reasons:
- Aztec emperors were only interested in obtaining wealth (Pennock et al. 2);
- Slavery was present in all empires (Pennock et al. 4);
- Significant inequality between people existed (Pennock et al. 3);
- Emperors could justify all violence and cruelty with divine power (Pennock et al. 3).
The arguments above demonstrate that deciding whether empires are good or bad is difficult. On the one hand, some scholars state that an empire was beneficial for the state’s cultural and economic development. For example, creating the Incas empire brought infrastructure and agriculture to the region (Christian Laursen and Pham 433). On the other hand, they always used violence to conquer more wealth, justifying their divinely-approved actions. For example, all European empires used force when conquering land and resources in Asia and Africa (Sharmon 67). French and German empires brought slavery to every African colony they conquered (Havik et al. 205). Force was an essential part of ancient empires’ policy, too (Van Berkel 2). Furthermore, marked inequality made communication between the emperor and the citizens virtually impossible. For example, to get an emperor’s audience in the ancient Assyrian empire, a citizen had to undergo three control layers (Groß and Kertai 1). Although empires helped improve education, infrastructure, agriculture, and industry in many conquered regions, slavery and wars can never be justified.
Works Cited
Christian Laursen, John, and Kevin Pham. “Empires for Peace: Denis Veiras’s Borrowings from Garcilaso de La Vega.” The European Legacy, vol. 22, no. 4, Routledge, 2017, pp. 427–42, Web.
Groß, Melanie, and David Kertai. “Becoming Empire: Neo-Assyrian Palaces and the Creation of Courtly Culture.” Journal of Ancient History, vol. 7, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–31.
Havik, Philip J., et al. “Empires and Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 47, no. 2, Routledge, 2019, pp. 201–12.
Pennock, Caroline Dodds, et al. “Are Empires Always Bad?” History Today, vol. 69, no. 7, 2019, pp. 1–4, Web.
Sharman, Jason Campbell. Empires of the weak: the real story of European expansion and the creation of the new world order. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Van Berkel, Maaike. “The People of the Pen: Self-Perceptions of status and Role in the Administration of Empires and Polities.” Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives. Brill, 2018. 384-451.