Cecil Rhodes' dream of a Cairo to the Cape

[samiaseo75]

The globe "with large parts of it marked in red" must have made an indeliable impression on many who grew up in Britain in the days before she had abandoned her empire. The empire fills empty spaces on the map with the names of its harbours, settlements, roads, lanes, forts and frontiers, cities, garrisons, harbours, bridges, viaducts. Natural barriers must be broken down. The Orient and Trans-Siberian Express were the realisation of Ottoman and Russian imperial dreams respectively.

railway still remains a dream but it could become reality one day. Imperial were the great trans-continental railroads of North America, the Burmese railroad of the Japanese, Napoleon's routes nationales, the Roman roads, Hitler's Autobahnen. Imperialists are erecters of bridges, charters of seaways, defiers of natural barriers of jungle phone number list and mountain range. One of the first things which a newly established imperial administration is expected to do is improve communications. Trade must be secured and protected, goods despatched as efficently as possible and armies must be able to switch rapidly from one hot spot to another. More sea and air routes, roads and railways serve the double purpose of facilitating trade and increasing mobility, including military mobility. A nation is tribal, representative, repetitive, sedentary, conservative, rooted; an empire is contractural, turbulent, roving, changing, innovative.


To answer these questions, we need firstly to look at what empires are. For it may be that, like many another politico-historical terms, "empire" covers a variety of actually rather distinct phenomena. To do that, we need to consider more than simply societies that called themselves "Empires". If there is one less reliable use of a politico- historical term than its application to a society by political scientists and historians, it is its application by a society, or its rulers, to itself, as witness the official.