Abstract
This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of order
with geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity for
expansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, the
article argues that the principal manifestation of earlier geopolitics
lay not in the nation but in empire. That in turn has been driven
by a view of the world as disorderly and open to the ordering will
of empires (emanating, at the time of geopolitics' inception, from
Europe). One implication is that empires are likely to figure in the
geopolitical ordering of the globe at all times, in particular after all
that has happened in the late twentieth century to undermine
nationalism and the national state. Empire is indeed a probable,
even for some an attractive form of regime for extending order
over the disorder produced by globalisation. Geopolitics articulated
in imperial expansion is likely to be found in the present and
in the future - the EU, and still more obviously the USA exhibiting
the form in contemporary guise. This does not mean that empires
figure in geopolitics simply by extending their own order, however;
they are at least as much purveyors of other dynamics and orders,
which possess their own discrete effects. The article ends with stipulations
regarding the variety of forms that empires may take:
neither fully bounded nor centred; neither straightforwardly
self-serving nor easily made legitimate.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Tidsskrift | Geopolitics |
| Vol/bind | 15 |
| Udgave nummer | 1-2 |
| Sider (fra-til) | 109 - 132 |
| ISSN | 1465-0045 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - jan. 2010 |