No matter their good intentions, those nations that set themselves up as empires tend to follow the same rut of domination and exploitation of minority peoples and the corruption and pride of supposed master races that deal with a heavy “white man’s burden” of ruling over sullen and rebellious peoples. Why is this so? I would like to examine many of the patterns that empires followed that provided short-term power but long term misery.

Often far flung empires hit upon similar strategies. The Assyrians and Babylonians of the Mesopotamian civilization hit upon the same strategy of the Incas of South America, as well as the “Lords of Ravaged Lands” after the collapse of 15th Century Zimbabwe in Africa, of depopulating and exiling potentially or historically rebellious peoples, in the hope that they would be less troublesome in new areas where they lack local knowledge and local allies. Other empires, like the Shang of China, the Aztecs and Maya of Mesoamerica, and the Roman Empire, sought conquest in order for athletes for their bloody sports and/or human sacrifice to appease their bloodthirsty and demonic heathen deities. Some empires, like the United States and the later Roman Empire sought to make their empire more secure by expanding citizenship to a broad population, seeking to ensure a broad base of support for their rule. Other empires, like the Assyrians and the Germans of the Hapsburg realms and Nazi Germany, sought to emphasize the dignity of a master people under seige (or so they saw) by threats on all sides. Indeed, extreme racism in an imperial people (like the aristocratic antebellum Southern elites) is generally a sign of weakness within a ruling elite masquerading as strength.

By and large, all empires consist of at least two or three different types of regions. The core of an empire is made up of its elite people. A core can be made of up an ethnic group (like Latins in the Roman Empire, Israelites in David’s mini-empire, or Han Chinese in many of the native Chinese dynasties) or it can be made of a cultural group (like that of the “white Anglo-Saxon Protestants” of English, Celtic, Dutch, Scandinavian or German ancestry). In order for the empire to propser, though, the core must be strong enough militarily, culturally, and economically to propser, or its empire (like that of David) is likely to be short-lived. For an empire to last, its core must be united, or rebellions and rival nations are likely to destroy its power. The periphery is made up of those nations who are conquered by the core and who are subject to it. In the United States, for example, the South is a periphery region (poorer economically, seen as “more primitive” culturally, and less well educated), largely as a result of the defeat of the Confederacy in America’s Civil War. In many countries, the core region is centered around the capital: London, Paris, Berlin, and Athens are all classical “primate cities” which dominate the economic, political, and cultrual realms of their respective nations.

Peripheries, in contrast, are marginalized. Even in areas where the periphery may have more people than the core (such as Northern and Northeastern Thailand, or the Slavic regions of the Hapsburg Empire), those people are unlikely to share in the economic wealth of the nation they belong to. Even where there is a nominal democracy such people will be considered as “servile” and “obedient” rather than possessing opinions and ambitions of their own that must be respected. It must never be forgotten, though, that peripheries are held in their respective realms largely by force, and that if the core becomes weak and divided that peripheries have historically often sought to regain their independence or overthrow the core region’s elites and replace its leadership with themselves, as repeatedly happened in Muslim Spain and China and Japan. A nation with a divided core (like that of biblical Israel between Ephraim and Manasseh in the north and Judah in the South) is unlikely to remain dominant for very long, as energies that could be spent in maintaining dominence over other peoples are instead frittered away in horribly destructive civil wars. It is only unified cores that can for a long time oppress other minority (and sometimes majority peoples) for long enough to preserve their rule across many generations.

Occasionally there is a third element to an empire, that of the subject-ally. A subject-ally is a part of an empire that is allied, for whatever reason, to the core nation without itself being subjugated and exploited. Often it serves as a “junior partner” in a larger empire, its troops supporting grander imperial aims while it receives a fair amount of freedom and respect from the core region. The Hungarians of the Hapsburg empire were one such “subject ally” after 1867. So were the Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans of the British Empire, the “dominion” settler colonies. The presence of subject allies allows an empire to gain more popular support at the risk of less central control over those allies, and so usually it is only those nations that buy-in to the goals of the larger empire through military support that get the privilege of greater autonomy within imperial rule.

Why is it that empires repeat so many of the same patterns? There are a few reasons that are worth briefly mentioning. For one, as an empire requires the despotic rule of some people over others, it requires the existence or the credible threat of force. Therefore there is no empire without violence—first to unify an imperial core area around a central government, and then to conquer subject areas for their exploitation by the core region, to serve as markets, garrison posts, and sources of raw human and economic materials for ambitious and grasping leaders. Once a nation sets out to be more than merely a nation-state but to become an empire, its success requires consistent violence or the threat of violence. There never has been a true empire of liberty, for no empire was ever founded or preserved without violence against enemies without and enemies within.

Additionally, empires have depended upon difference and distinction to preserve their rule. A distinction between subject or “barbarian” outsiders and privileged insiders preserved the support of those insiders for the work necessary to maintain that rule, both in taxes and military service. Where distinction was not strong enough between core and periphery, there has traditionally been a breakdown of support for elites and the repressive measures that are required to maintain power, allowing more strongly unified and embittered peripheries either to seize power or freedom. But empires rest on a paradoxical foundation. The sorts of glory and privileges that make empires worth maintaining for peoples also make them particularly offensive for those who are under the boot of empires. Peripheries that are too fierce are difficult to keep control of and continually in rebellion. On the other hand, peripheries that are destroyed and completely cowed are probably not of any gain or worth to their central authority any longer, because their people lack the spirit to work on their own behalf, or anyone else’s. Therefore empires are unstable, threatened both by too much “stability” that means no one will lift a finger to protect an imperial government under threat (as happened in the Late Roman Empire of the West), or threatened by constant and destructive rebellions allied with hostile and threatened external powers (as eventually led both Assyria and Babylon to fall). Additionally, empires can be finished off or threatened by conflicts with rivals, as Europe’s empires saw in the 20th century.

In short, empires are so similar regardless of where and when they exist because they all spring from a very limited set of circumstances that requires a small and elite group of people to gain power over restless larger populations. The process is uncertain and full of tension, which prevents imperial powers from ever fully enjoying the illicit power they gain as a result of ruling over others despotically. So many factors can go wrong in an empire—either elites can be divided, threatening their hold over periphery regions, imperial cores can engage in fratricidal conflict against other empires over periphery regions of mutual interest, empires can become complacent and decadent and lack the moral courage needed to preserve their rule in a dangerous world, or empires can simply overextend by failing to preserve their economic or demographic strength necessary to preserve that all-important military strength. A lot can go wrong, and when something does, an empire falls. And no one mourns, save those survivors of the catastrophe who lose their illicit power and their ill-gotten spoils.