The New Roman Empire: The United States of America

[DieselDaisy]

Japan too got rather competitive. They were like the dark horse, learned the best from the best. The British in naval warfare and the Germans in infantry. They humiliated the Qing Dynasty and the Russian Empire. They played a minimal role in WWI, many German soldiers they've captured in the Pacific ended up staying in Japan, taking Japanese wives and opening beer halls that last to this very day.

Britain's dominance was partially owed to not fighting directly with other European powers in risk of weakening their positions. They smartly organize coalitions against Napoleon and later Tsars Nicolas I and Alexander II of Russia. World War I is when they've started to lose their power through dominance. It took a lot more out of them than Crimea did. Fighting Germany and Japan at the same time during World War II severely weakened them plus the ongoing unrest in South Asia did not help. The partition of India and Pakistan could have been handled better but I don't think they had the military peace keeping power at the time. The Japanese taking Sinapore in 1942 with smaller numbers and even fewer ammunition was the symbolic end of an empire along with the loss of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In land battles?

Britain has always presided herself on not possessing an extensive land army. That partially accounts for the prestige of the Royal Navy, 'the senior service'. The British saw, a Navy, as somehow more in tune to her national spirit than land armies, which were associated with continental despotism. There is a historical reason for Britain's apathy of standing armies: the English Civil War and the Cromwellian military dictatorship of the 17th century. It is actually a belief that the American colonies inherited, built upon a 'whigish' hatred of state power. This is why Washington's Continental Army was dismantled. The United States essentially did not have a professional army after that. (As late as the beginning of World War Two, the United States army was relatively paltry).

Rather ironic, really?

So Britain had a much smaller army than the other nations of the Napoleonic Wars. She funded these coalitions against Bonaparte, with her gargantuan financial resources, and blockaded French ports. Her army, when it was used, was used sparingly. In actual fact, in the Peninsular War it made a massive contribution to the defeat of Napoleon but it was husbanded carefully under Wellington.

Britain would not have a massive 'conscript' army until 1916.

And the conscription and subsequent losses is what weakened the Empire. Maybe they didn't see it as having much choice because they would alienate their French and Russian and later American allies who were pouring bodies into the war machine and splatter them onto the battlefield. The British had to sacrifice much for victory. Both wars they've found themselves at conflict at all sides. It cost them money and man power, and the Colonies wanted to be independent at that point.

The British army, when they had the soldiers they were killing machines. At Mons in 1914 they've cut down Germans with only their Lee Enfields without little use of machine guns. But when they've started dying, conscription was used and the British just had ordinary soldiers.

That was Britain's professional army, that, the proper 'BEF', the 'old contemptibles' as Kaiser Bill (allegedly) called them. The Battles of the Mons and Marne River destroyed that army and, c. 1915, Britain was relying on Kitchener's 'New Army', patriotic volunteers who answered the call of duty of, ''your country needs you''. Then, when that army was in turn being battered at the Somme, Britain passed conscription (window dressed as, 'national service') to cope with the spiraling casualties and man power shortage.

By the fighting of 1917 and 1918, the British army had changed beyond recognition. From the small professional army of 1914, the army of 1918 was now a gargantuan, conscripted, army, a true reflection of the class divisions and regionalism which beset British society. People who went to Harrow and Eton fought alongside, miner's sons and farmhands. The working and middle classes were now, officers - basically because the, predominately public school monopolised officer class of 1914, was dead!

The Great War transformed Britain, probably more than WW2.

My great grandfather had a finger shot off by a sniper. I have his discharge certificate and trench bag.

[Georgy Zhukov]

What about his finger?

[Georgy Zhukov]

One thing that needs to be said. Today's Italians and Italian-Americans are not the same as Romans.

[netcat]

but the expression "in vino veritas" is still relevant

[magisme]

I remember when W's Iraq war kicked off. At the time there was a lot of hemming and hawing about whether the US was an empire. The acceptable answer for the mainstream at the time was, of course the US isn't an empire. Empires do bad things and try to take land. We do good things and try to help people. Quietly we accepted that we are in fact an empire, but we're still holding onto the idea that we are somehow benevolent. We're slow as fuck over here. Apologies.

[netcat]

Land grabbing and taking the cattle (or natural resources) of the defeated party is not the fundamental feature of the empire. The basic idea is creation of conjoint universal political and cultural space, a Cosmopolis. Everything else is just a method

[magisme]

Land grabbing and taking the cattle (or natural resources) of the defeated party is not the fundamental feature of the empire. The basic idea is creation of conjoint universal political and cultural space, a Cosmopolis. Everything else is just a method

Exactly. And that is precisely what most USA empire deniers can't get their heads around. At least until the past couple years when we've decided we did a pretty nice job of the whole empire thing we said we weren't doing for so long.

Edited December 29, 2014 by magisme

[netcat]

yeah soft power

[luciusfunk]

I don't know enough about the Roman Empire to make a contribution. I've always been interested in people's comparisons with the collapse of the Roman Empire and the supposed conspiracy collapse of the USA, so if anyone would like to send a report I'd be happy to read it.

The Roman Empire lasted for over 400 years (if you don't count the Holy Roman Empire).

We're good.

Holy Roman Empire has nothing to do with the Roman Empire.

[DieselDaisy]

Whichever way you look at it, the United States fulfills most of the requirements of Empire.

- America began as a 'settlement' colony, by which, the displaced indigenous population, the native Americans, were marginalised, pushed to the periphery and/or liquidated in order to leave room for a 'Neo-Europe'. This is analogous with Britain in Australasia or the Boers in South Africa.

- A large section of that colony economically subsisted on the importation and exploitation of slaves until the 1860s, analogous with Britain in the West Indies or Portugal and Spain in South America.

- American 19th century 'westward' expansion, 'manifest destiny', is analogous with the, coterminous, imperialism enacted under the Romanovs and Tang in Asia.

- America now, since World War Two really, has practiced a form of 'informal empire' through air force bases and clientage systems; this is analogous with Portugal's enclave emporium, Britain's Indian 'princely' states or even Rome itself (who surrounded herself with a string of client puppets in the east). Equally, America has created a sort of cultural and intellectual imperialism, (best witnessed in a low brow ''fast food culture'') which exists in polities which do not even (appear to) conform to America's informal empire.

- America even threw off all pretense of anti-imperialism and cooperated (with other European powers) in Palmerstonian gun boat imperialism during the 19th century in order to proliferate, free trade, e.g. the Opium Wars, suppression of the Boxers or the ending of Japanese sakoku. During a similar time frame, America bought into a 'greater European' white supremacy to justify such imperialism.

- America utilised population displacement to fulfill immense labour demands. You can see this in the exploitation of Chinese workers in California. This has some similarities with the British appropriation of Indian labour in South Africa.

- America even acquired bona fide colonies, e.g. Puerto Rico.

[Snake-Pit]

Empires rise and empires fall.

London, once capital of an empire that happened and now here we are, 'hello English speaking world' and to everyone else too, what the Hell, but walking around you see a lot of war memorials and statues too. It's all cool, that actually went over my head until someone pointed that out to me once - guess it's because we've won lots of wars...

[DieselDaisy]

You don't use those war memorials for your, dogging, exploits, I hope?