lord of the blog

« Charles Kennedy | Main | Responses »

Sunday, December 18, 2005

America and empire

There was an interesting article by the Professor of History at Princeton University (Linda Colley) in the Guardian on Saturday. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/

She makes the point that although the US doesn't want to see itself as an empire it's behaviour shows many similarities.

I have argued for some years that the issue is not so much empire as the conventional problems of the dominant power of the day. I am a fan of Professor Paul Kennedy's argument in the Decline and Fall of Great Powers published about ten years ago.

The British and US experience is similar and I suspect it is not all that different to other great powers throughout history - although clearly the technology makes for fundamental differences.

Britain as the world's first industrial power and therefore the first with a global reach was bound to be replaced as soon as a continental sized power with an industrial base developed. That was likely to be the US because it had drawn its culture and economic ideology from Britain at the same time that Britain was industrialising.

You can even learn some hard lessons from Britain trying to deal with the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the Middle East when Gladstone intervened in Egypt, mainly for financial reasons but also with the hope of encouraging the development of the rule of law and democratic structures. Having taken over the reigns in Egypt Gladstone's cabinet then spent much of the next few years discussing how they could withdraw. See any parallels?! (See: Africa and the Victorians. Published in the 1960's. I don't have the details with me right now but could get them if anyone is interested.)

One of the books that helped form many of my views on this was Thucydides The Peloponnesian War. Written a mere 2.5 thousand years ago it is an instructive read for students of international relations.