As I was preparing course content for next week, I found myself musing on the nature of empire and the advice in Adler and Van Doren’s How to Read a Book, regarding being specific about our terminology, which they called “coming to terms”.
It is interesting that a key difference between empire and nation-state is the tolerance of ethnic, racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity in the case of empire, and the doubling down on ethnic distinctiveness and homogeneity in the case of the nation-state. Coming out of the "age of empires" with the end of imperialism (empire as "ism") and colonialism (where there's a center and periphery, i.e. colonies), it seems a major issue was self-determination. As empires dissolved, nation-states arose as distinct peoples demanded self-determination of their own political boundaries and systems -- or at least their elites did.
America seemed to promote this idea of self-determination through being an early stable democracy -- but not along ethnic dividing lines. Historically, the US bears the character of an empire, a nation-state, and something else as well.
It is interesting that a key difference between empire and nation-state is the tolerance of ethnic, racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity in the case of empire, and the doubling down on ethnic distinctiveness and homogeneity in the case of the nation-state. Coming out of the "age of empires" with the end of imperialism (empire as "ism") and colonialism (where there's a center and periphery, i.e. colonies), it seems a major issue was self-determination. As empires dissolved, nation-states arose as distinct peoples demanded self-determination of their own political boundaries and systems -- or at least their elites did.
America seemed to promote this idea of self-determination through being an early stable democracy -- but not along ethnic dividing lines. Historically, the US bears the character of an empire, a nation-state, and something else as well.