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Frequency of wars each empire engaged in.

Kurth's Typology of Empires

Kurth's typology of empires is based on the characteristic level of ontological development of an empire. In his Adolescent Empire (National Interest, Summer. 1997) Kurth, a professor of political science at Swarthmore, compared the main empires in terms of each empire's imperial idea, comprising its particular vision of politics, economics, culture, human nature, and meaning of life. The Empire of the Habsburgs, subsuming their Spanish and Austrian Empires and at one time also the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the Empire of the French, were build around a Catholic vision. The British and American Empires were build around a Protestant vision. The Empire of the Russians can be placed somewhere between these two religious paradigms, sometimes favoring the Protestants, sometimes the Catholics. According to Kurth, each empire promoted and valued a certain human type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Spanish and Hapsburg Empires valued experience and responsibility, typical of civil servants in their fifties. Habsburgs valued not rights, but reciprocal duties, not subservience to pressure groups, but sound decision making, be it popular or not. Habsburgs favored strength and unity and abhorred nationalism splintering Europe.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

British Empire The ideals of the British Empire were embodied in mature military leaders in their forties. Unlike Habsburgs who favored strength and unity, British followed the 'divide et impera,' favoring power for themselves and promoting discord among others.


 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

French Empire  valued rationality and dynamism typical of people in their thirties.

 



  

 

 

 

 

 

Russian Empire Russian Empire valued enthusiasm, and dedication to a cause. Its successor, the Soviet Union, also favored these values, typically found in persons in their twenties.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 American Empire The key component of the American Empire is 'popular entertainment based upon global media. Its ideal type is the entertainer or sports star. In short, the ideal human type of the American imperial idea is the adolescent.'  In this respect the American Empire is the antithesis of the classical Chinese Empire. The American Empire supplanted Comte's idea of the progress of humanity with the idea of the regress of humanity from the metaphysical to the theological stage.

 

the protestant empire of the British and the catholic empire of the French

The British Empire  At its peak just before WW I, the British Empire stretched over one-fifth of the Earth's land surface and contained one-fourth of the world's population. World history during the last 400 years cannot be understood without comprehending the role the British Empire played in shaping it. After the WW I, the Empire, in 1931, granted legislative authority to its dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. After the WW II, the remaining countries of the British Empire joined the Commonwealth. The first country to leave the Commonwealth was in 1949, Ireland, followed in 1961 by South Africa. Fiji left in 1987 and in 1997 Hong Kong joined China. The empire started its westward thrust by acquiring territories in the Caribbean and North America, from Hudson Bay to the Carolinas. The empire’s thrust eastward was under the auspices of the British East India Company. The East India Company, chartered by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, spearheaded the British conquest of India and backed British commercial ventures in China. After acquiring the right to coin money and to collect revenue, the company plundered India, and by the mid-19th century the British control of India was complete.



British Settlement in India, 1841

 

 

 

These were the times of the British Raj, portrayed in E. M. Forster’s Passage to India (1924), capturing the essence of Indian resentment against British arrogance, exclusivity, cultural insensitivity, and sexual Puritanism.



         Africa

 

 

 

The Britain’s expansion southward followed the expeditions of Mungo Park, David Livingstone, and Henry Morton Stanley, who mapped parts of Africa unknown to Europeans, marked 'hic sunt leones'. British soldiers, traders, and Protestant missionaries, implanting Christian religious beliefs to the native population, followed the explorers. By the end of the century, Africa had been partitioned among European powers, with the British capturing the largest share. Africans acquired Western religion, Westerners acquired African land.

 

               Maori Motif

   

 

 

 

 

Britain's settlement of Australia begun around the time of the French Revolution. The first settlers were convicts evicted from Britain. New Zealand was settled by escaped convicts from the penal colonies in Australia, followed by Church of England missionaries. British description of signing the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) perhaps best summarizes the nature of the British Empire: ‘the Maoris, cannibals in an advanced state of Neolithic civilization, signed over their tribal lands to Queen Victoria in return for her protection.'


    Flag of the Legion Etrangere


 

The French Empire  The French attempted to build their empire twice. Before the French Revolution, French explorers, missionaries, and merchants helped France acquire Canada, Louisiana, and several islands in the West Indies. The French East India Company acquired parts of India for France. However, in 1763, at the end of the Seven Years' War, the French lost Canada and India to the British, and in 1803, Napoleon I sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, France had only a few islands in the West Indies and some posts in Africa and Asia. Following the recovery of France from the Napoleonic Wars, French Legion Etrangere, founded by King Louis Philippe in 1831, attempted to penetrate Africa from its North Coast southward, and to colonize Cochin China in southeastern Asia. The Legion captured the popular imagination in movies as Beau Geste (1939) starring Gary Cooper. The Spanish had a similar unit, the Legion Extranjera, stationed in Spanish Morocco.

 



French Empire in 1914


 

 

 

By the turn of the century, France’s Empire stretched over 4,000,000 square miles and included over 60 million people. In Southeast Asia, French Indochina comprised the territories of present Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. France's African empire included Tunisia, Morocco, French Equatorial Africa, French West Africa, French Somaliland and Madagascar. The French Empire was reorganized after WW II as the French Union, a counterpart to the British Commonwealth. Its dissolution was primarily the result of the wars in Indochina and Algeria.