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Rise and Fall of Empires

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
>Name one empire that wasn't evil?
No empire is evil. It's a political form. People can be evil; things aren't evil. Others are free to disagree with that, but for me it's axiomatic. As a historian, I can investigate the actions of people, but I cannot assign motive and purpose to a library or to a representative democracy. Or an empire.

Given that axiom, I can point to good things people have done in an empire and bad things people have done in an empire. There's the aqueduct <insert rest of sketch here>.
 

Kevin Beck

Acolyte
>Name one empire that wasn't evil?
No empire is evil. It's a political form. People can be evil; things aren't evil. Others are free to disagree with that, but for me it's axiomatic. As a historian, I can investigate the actions of people, but I cannot assign motive and purpose to a library or to a representative democracy. Or an empire.

Given that axiom, I can point to good things people have done in an empire and bad things people have done in an empire. There's the aqueduct <insert rest of sketch here>.
I would have to disagree to a point, The Nazi's were very much designed as an evil empire. The party actually built a mythology around themselves to define their own mythical history. They also created propaganda based on this history that reinforced their own perceptions of their superiority. This vision defined everything that they did as a nation. Including the holocaust which was the most evil act ever perpetrated by modern human beings in my view.
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Yep, I have to grant that one. Evil, harmful philosophy lay at the very core of National Socialism, and Hitler explicitly proclaimed his government an empire. To dispute just a bit, I'd still want to argue that there is nothing inherently evil in empire as a political form. But there can be no disputing that that particular empire was as deliberately wicked as anything the world has seen.
 
Empires have usually been regarded as self-evidently benevolent by the master nation and evil by the subjugated.

For the sake of a story you might say the zenith is when the empire controls the most territory / resources with the least resistance.

The fall comes with revolution.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Empires have usually been regarded as self-evidently benevolent by the master nation and evil by the subjugated.
The fall comes with revolution.
I've been trying to think of an empire that has been brought down by revolution. Not the Athenian Empire. Not Rome. Not the Carolingian. Not the HRE. Not the Byzantine. Not the Second Reich, nor the Third. Not the British. Oh wait, the Russian (I was going chronologically). Most of them were ended by war.

Who says violence never solved anything? <g>
 
For the sake of a formula I was being deliberately permissive in my use of the term. Permissive in the sense that political revolution within a single nation is just one aspect of the term.

Revolution within the community of nations then.

That's the trouble with formulae when applied to history and politics...they don't really work.
 

Gray-Hand

Minstrel
>Name one empire that wasn't evil?
No empire is evil. It's a political form. People can be evil; things aren't evil. Others are free to disagree with that, but for me it's axiomatic. As a historian, I can investigate the actions of people, but I cannot assign motive and purpose to a library or to a representative democracy. Or an empire.

Given that axiom, I can point to good things people have done in an empire and bad things people have done in an empire. There's the aqueduct <insert rest of sketch here>.

I think it is reasonable to describe an empire as evil if it’s actions as an empire could fairly be described as evil.

The nazis obviously qualify. The Aztecs would have to be up there. The Spanish definitely went through a pretty bad period. The Assyrians make the Nazis look good. The Soviets were nearly as bad as the Nazis. The Japanese Empire of the 20th Century was pretty terrible.

Given how difficult it is to morally justify territorial conquest, just about every Empire at least starts out evil. The Roman Empire committed a lot of genocide on the way to getting as big as it did, but there wasn’t anything particularly out of line with how the Byzantine Empire was conducting itself by the 15th century. Same with the British Empire - more than a bit of genocide and other morally unjustifiable acts throughout its run, but pretty mellow by the time the 20th century rolled around.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Passing moral judgments on past empires is one thing, but it's not what the OP asked, so I'm going not going to keep on the moral theme and shall return to the OP.

One aspect that was not asked but was implied is, how do empires originate? Since my own world is based on history, I don't have too much to add save for one item. The Roman Empire never fell in Altearth. There are (human) emperors in the West right the way through. But there is a non-history empire in Altearth and it belongs to the orcs.

When orcs appeared in Altearth, they quickly imitated the Roman Empire, but with a major wrinkle. We don't know exactly who was the first orc emperor, because of course the orcs claim they always had emperors and it's the humans who copied *them*. That accounts for the presence of quaestors, praetors, and aediles in the orc empire as well. The major wrinkle derives from orc religion. They are duo-theistic. Two gods, one representing the physical world, the other representing the spiritual. Both co-equal and co-eternal. The orcs have a powerful priesthood; indeed, orc society is profoundly theistic. Their priesthood is rigidly hierarchical, with a pontifex maximus at the top (they claim that term, too). The high priest is theoretically the peer of the emperor (the priest represents the spiritual and the one god; the emperor represents the worldly and the other god). In practice, the priest is the most powerful. Anyway, what we have in Altearth is empire by imitation.
 

Yora

Maester
Same with the British Empire - more than a bit of genocide and other morally unjustifiable acts throughout its run, but pretty mellow by the time the 20th century rolled around.
Empires stop being evil when they become too weak to do evil on a bigger scale than regular countries?
I don't entirely disagree, but maybe that means they stop being evil when they stop being empires in anything but name,

I realized everything I said about the evil of empires does not apply to the Holy Roman Empire. But then, many historians say it never was an empire in anything but name.
 

Gray-Hand

Minstrel
The British Empire was still the most powerful entity on Earth in the early twentieth century, and it was only eclipsed by the USA which wasn’t being particularly evil at that time.

a lot of Empires probably start mellowing out after they cease their territorial expansion and subsequently don’t have to rely on and glorify violence as much. After awhile, the most influential people are no longer the people who are capable of and enjoy the most violence. The empire stabilises and the culture is able to develop in other areas.

Of course, that ‘stability’ can easily become stagnation, and they can get overtaken by younger, more energetic nations.

This is a subject that is hard to talk about in general terms because the circumstances of the rise and fall of each empire are usually unique and are almost always due to multiple factors.
 
If an empire loses its vision and mission, it will soon fall. Back to my revolution theme, you could say the Roman empire fell apart after a Christian revolution whose golden rule sentiment weakened the previous pantheon-approved expansionism.

The British empire was similarly eroded from within - losing the will to expand and exploit due to a whole range of humanist sentiment including emancipation and the growing nationalism of subjected states. After the opium wars in particular, the British conscience was pricked. It was all downhill for the empire after that.
 

TheKillerBs

Maester
Same with the British Empire - more than a bit of genocide and other morally unjustifiable acts throughout its run, but pretty mellow by the time the 20th century rolled around.
Yeah, maybe you should ask the Irish or Indians about that. Winston Churchill isn't remembered nearly as fondly there as in other places.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
I've been trying to think of an empire that has been brought down by revolution. Not the Athenian Empire. Not Rome. Not the Carolingian. Not the HRE. Not the Byzantine. Not the Second Reich, nor the Third. Not the British. Oh wait, the Russian (I was going chronologically). Most of them were ended by war.

Who says violence never solved anything? <g>
I think the idea of heroic revolutions bringing down evil empires is basically a myth that mostly exists in fiction. Probably because clear standards of heroism and evil is more prominent in fiction than history. This kind of ties into what I was saying early about the fictional archetype of "empire" versus historic empires.
I'd also argue that internal collapse probably does more to end an empire than anything. An empire can usually remain after losing a war but if you throw war on top of internal issues (civil unrest, economic failure, etc.), that's when the empire ends.
 

Gray-Hand

Minstrel
Yeah, maybe you should ask the Irish or Indians about that. Winston Churchill isn't remembered nearly as fondly there as in other places.
I checked.

While plenty of subjects of the British Empire during the early twentieth century could and did feel rightly aggrieved by the way they were treated, such bad conduct didn’t descend to the level that it could really be called evil. Certainly not compared to say the Aztecs, Third Reich, Assyrians etc.
 

TheKillerBs

Maester
Probably a lot of ways you could define it, but I tend to set the bar up at: Committing extreme acts of violence or cruelty on a wide scale out of proportion to any morally justifiable objective.
Such as killing over 2 million in the Bengal famine?
 

Gray-Hand

Minstrel
Such as killing over 2 million in the Bengal famine?
Pretty damn disgraceful, but was the result of badly thought out policies and incompetence in the context of the war against a dangerous enemy rather than deliberate infliction of cruelty against the victims.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
Pretty damn disgraceful, but was the result of badly thought out policies and incompetence in the context of the war against a dangerous enemy rather than deliberate infliction of cruelty against the victims.
I noticed in fiction (and history kind of) that an incompetent government is usually given more leeway and sympathy than a malicious government. Even if the incompetent government kills hundreds while the malicious government kills dozens.

In any case, I don't think ascribing the term "evil" to a country makes it an empire. In fiction or history.
 
I have some issue with the idea of declaring evil empire in real history. The attachment of the term evil to empire suggests that somehow the opposite isn't evil. As in, regular countries aren't evil. This is clearly not always the case. Just look at Pol Pot in Cambodia, Argentina under Videla or Iraq under Saddam Hussein. But it goes further then that. How many countries exist today that haven't at some point in their history fought someone else?

And how do you declare an empire evil anyway? Is it that it has to have done something evil at some point in its history? How about the USA then, they're the only country that has used nuclear weapons on civilians. Sounds pretty evil to me. But does that make them evil overall? Or even in the WW2 period? Most people consider them to be the good guys there. But can they still be considered the good guys after bombing Dresden?

And what is evil anyway? Is there some universal Truth we can measure evil against? And what is it? And if a country doesn't know about this universal truth and thus performs evil acts does that make them evil or just ignorant? How big a percentage of its time should a country have been performing evil deeds for it to be deemed evil? An interesting example is slavery. It's pretty evil by today's standards. But in Roman times it was pretty widely accepted. It makes it evil by our standards. But if it's completely normal for them, then does that still count as evil or is that just our own feeling of cultural supremacy talking?

And if an empire is deemed evil are then all its inhabitants evil? Back to Pol Pot. He was in power around 10 years or so and was responsible for the death of about 25% of the population of Cambodia. About as evil as we can claim. But what does that mean for 90+% of the people of Cambodia who suffered through it? Are they evil as well?
 
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