01d: Some Helpful Buzzwords

Empire and imperium
The Latin verb impero means “I command.” Its meaning is as strong in Latin as it is in English. For example: you need my GEP 397 class to receive a degree from Missouri State University. You don’t pass my GEP 397 class unless I inform University Records you have passed it. Even so, I don’t give you commands. I give you lectures and reading assignments, and I assign you essays, and so on, but I don’t command you to do anything. My wife suggests that I take out the garbage, or she asks me to take out the garbage, or she tells me to take out the garbage, but she never commands me to take out the garbage. And I, of course, would never dare command my wife to do anything.

In most cases, if you need to give commands, you need a dog. “Sit, Eefy.” If I say that to our older dog, she will sit. “Leave that pizza alone, Yongy.” If I say that to our younger dog, he will leave the pizza alone... once he's gobbled up every scrap. Of course, you can also give commands to a cat, but the cat will merely laugh at you. On the other hand, you can receive commands from a commander. A commander tends to have a first name like: “Sir,” “Ma’am,” “Your Highness,” or “Lord.” A commander doesn’t ask you to do something, or advise you to do something. A commander tells you what you are going to do, and you do it or else.

During the Roman monarchy, the Roman king automatically possessed imperium – the right to command obedience from anybody, for any reason whatsoever. If the king’s command was not obeyed, he could punish his disobedient subject however he wanted. Imperium also gave the king the right to command Roman troops in battle, or to interpret Roman law. This was an awful lot of power for one person to have, and it was not always used wisely. After the Romans traded their monarchy for a republic in 509 BC, the imperium was always held by two (or more) elected officials at a time.

By the time of Christ, Rome had become the greatest power in the known world. The term imperium had taken on an additional meaning.  The term imperium Romanum now described both Roman power and Roman space, as applied to all of the lands where Rome herself held imperium. Allow me to use it in a sentence. Within the imperium Romanum (a physical space roughly resembling the Mediterranean world), the imperium Romanum (the power of the Roman government, as wielded by the Emperor) is supreme. Here is where we get our term empire: land inhabited by people who may or may not look like us, may or may not speak our language, may or may not like us much - but have to do what we say because we have imperium over them.

Imperator and Emperor
The term emperor is derived from the Latin noun imperator, which is itself derived from the verb impero. Yet it has a rather wider meaning. To the Romans, an imperator was not just a commander wielding imperium, because a Roman had to possess imperium before taking command of an army. Instead, the title imperator was reserved for a successful commander who had won a particularly important battle. After winning this battle, the imperator could return to Rome and apply to have a triumph – a long parade through the streets of Rome full of cheering onlookers, his troops marching ahead of him singing old war songs, and an opportunity to lay down his imperium right there in the Roman Forum. This was the greatest honor a Roman could ever achieve with his imperium.

To rule the imperium Romanum effectively, Augustus Caesar had by this time started the “Principate,” which was basically one-man rule cloaked in the window-dressing of the Republic. He dared not call himself king or anything like that, because he didn’t want to become s a human pincushion like his uncle Julius Caesar. Instead, he settled for making the title imperator a part of his legal name. From that time on, who ran the imperium Romanum automatically held the title imperator, but imperator still meant more than “in charge of the empire.” – it implied that its bearer was also a skilled and accomplished military commander – as with our term emperor.

Up until the turn of the 20^th century, the world still boasted real live emperors such as Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Hirohito of Japan. But even after the emperors passed from the scene, empires remained. The German, Russian, and Ottoman empires all disintegrated as a result of the First World War (1914-1918). The German Empire came back temporarily as Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich (1933-1945), and the Russian Empire re-emerged as the Soviet Union (1917-1991). The Japanese, French, Dutch, and (for the most part) British empires disintegrated as a result of the Second World War (1939-1945). In the wake of the Second World War, the world became divided into two “blocs” or “sides:”

1. the United States and its allies, also known as “the West” or as “NATO” or the “Bourgeois Imperialist Warmongers”
2.  the Soviet Union and its allies (sometimes including Red China, sometimes not), also known as “the East” or as the “Warsaw Pact” or as the “Godless Commie Imperialists”

Notice that the word “imperialist” is not exactly used as a term of endearment here. By the 20^th century, the term “empire” had become a synonym for a system designed to oppress poor subject peoples and nations for the benefit of a warmonger elite in Moscow, London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin… or even Washington, DC.

Yet at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century, we find empire meaning something completely different. The great powers of the day - including Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States - were all trying to grab on to and hold on to as much territory as they could. These powers made a pretense of "civilizing" their new territories, but for the most part they grabbed new territory because it was there and they could. The acquisition of an empire for empire's sake became known as imperialism. The terms "imperialism" and "imperialist" were new, but the concept - as we will see - wasn't. The US and its allies called the Soviets and their allies imperialists, and vice versa. To a certain extent, they were both right.

An important part of belief in "manifest destiny" is "nationalism." Nationalism holds that human civilization can be broken up into basic units called "nations," which basically consist of people having a similar origin and unifying culture. Each nation, therefore, should have its own state: this is in fact the rule today. The United States is home to the American nation, Russia is home to the Russian nation, and so on. Theoretically, at least. The Soviet Union was a nation only to the extent that it was unified by Communism; it collapsed in 1991 when various nations (for example, Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic republics) seceded from it. The remainder of the Soviet Union now calls itself the Russian Federation; even though the Russian Federation considers itself representative of a Russian nation, it still incorporates a number of non-Russian peoples with their own cultures. A tough call, to be sure.

Nationalism claims particular virtues for a given nation, and particular responsibilities. Rome believed it had a mission to civilize the world, Russia believed it had a mission to civilize the world, as did the Soviet Union, and as does the United States, at least sometimes. I would say that nationalism is basically a neutral concept: nationalistic arguments have been used to start countless wars, but they have also held countries together. I take great pride in belonging to the American nation. The extreme form of nationalism is dangerously bad, though. Once a nation really believes it has the obligation to civilize the world, this is usually a sign that the nation is going to fall on hard times. Not only is civilizing the world an expensive and bloody process, there is no guarantee that the world actually wants to be civilized.