Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Empire, imperialism and conceptual history

  • Article
  • Published:
Journal of International Relations and Development Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Hierarchy in world politics has to be discussed by means of specific concepts. Concepts come with specific historical and social baggage. They are defined by their meanings and uses and become powerful in battle with other concepts. The concepts discussed in this article, ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’, have lately made their return to the grand stage of world politics, most significantly as descriptions, and indeed, self-descriptions of the role and position of the United States. How is this return possible? What does it mean? To answer these questions we draw on the long-standing scientific discipline and method of conceptual history, or Begriffsgeschichte, in the way it has been theorised and practised by the German historian and theorist of history Reinhart Koselleck. In a second step, we discuss how this way of writing the history of social and political concepts has been challenged by other approaches, most importantly by the Cambridge intellectual historian Quentin Skinner. At the hands of Koselleck and Skinner conceptual history contributes to opening our eyes to the historical specificity of the uses and meanings of concepts in particular contexts, in a long historical perspective ranging from the Ancient Romans to the Bush administration.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We choose this indirect form because the expression was in fact not used in the Roman Empire; it was first used in Europe in the 1800s. The reasoning the expression refers to was well known long before. Nuances like these are typical nuggets for conceptual historians.

  2. Hermeneutics begins and ends with the life world of the actors; it seeks in its analyses to recreate the world that the actors experience. The most important objection discourse analysis raises to such an approach is that hermeneutics easily misses the conditions for action that the actors perceive and out of which they co-create their room of action. There is a materiality, a regularity, and a slowness inherent in the social that hermeneutics fails to grasp. Conceptual history can in this context be viewed as an empirical solution to this dilemma; by displaying the different life worlds in chronological order and by showing the breaks between them, they do justice to the richness of the life worlds, at the same time as they show how earlier life worlds and other conditions combine to make up the conditions for action in a specific life world. A theoretical problem is thereby tackled partly with the help of empirical research.

  3. The concept of Europe was also in use around the time of Charlemagne, only to disappear later (Neumann 1999).

  4. We noted in the introduction that conceptual comparison of the imperial ‘Western’ and Chinese/steppe traditions are not our topic in this article. Since the two meet in Russia, however, we should at least note the historical literature that tries to gauge the relative impact of the two; Cherniavsky (1959/1970).

  5. For a recent discussion from within IR fastening on the concept of civilisation, Bowden (2009: 47–75).

  6. A concept used to refer to a future communist Europe was ‘the United States of Europe’ (Neumann 1999).

  7. Stephanson (2009) later confessed to thinking that the end of the Cold War would bring an end to American exceptionalism. He acknowledges being wrong, but now puts his trust in the possible destabilising effects of the choice of Barack Obama as president.

  8. In this article we will refer to a transcript of the debate itself, published on the organiser's website. See http://www.aei.org/events/filter.eventID.428/transcript.asp (21 September, 2009). Quotations without any other specific reference are taken from this source.

References

  • Armitage, David (2000) The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bacevich, Andrew (2003a) ‘Introduction’, in Andrew Bacevich, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, ix–xiv, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacevich, Andrew (2003b) ‘New Rome, New Jerusalem’, in Andrew Bacevich, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, 93–101, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barfield, Thomas J (1989) The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bender, Peter (2003) ‘The New Rome’, in Andrew Bacevich, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, 81–92, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowden, Brett (2009) The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Chris (1981) ‘Galtung and the Marxists on Imperialism: Answers vs Questions’, Millennium 10 (3): 220–228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carl, Schmitt (1921/1928) Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf: Mit einem Anhang: Die Diktatur des Reichspräsidenten nach Art. 48 der Weimarer Verfassung, München: Duncker and Humblot.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cherniavsky, Michael (1959/1970) ‘Khan or Basileus: An Aspect of Russian Medieval Political Theory’, in Michael Cherniavsky, ed., The Structure of Russian History, 195–211, New York, NY: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colás, Alejandro (2006) Empires, Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooley, Alexander (2005) Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Nations in Transit, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Carvalho, Benjamin (2006) Sovereignty, Religion, and the Nation-State, Ph.D. dissertation, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/nordic/concepts/hocn6_web.pdf (accessed 15 September, 2009).

  • den Boer, Pim (2003) ‘Adriaan Koerbagh and the Comparative History of Concepts — The Past and the Future: Introduction of the Fifth Conference of the History of Concepts Group’, History of Concepts Newsletter 6: 20–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dorrien, Gary (2004) Imperial Designs, New York, NY: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Doyle, Michael (1986) Empires, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, Frantz (1961/1967) The Wretched of the Earth, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, Niall (2003a) Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, New York, NY: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, Niall (2003b) ‘America as Empire, Now and in the Future’, The National Interest 29, http://nationalinterest.org/article/america-as-empire-now-and-in-the-future-2390 (accessed 10 October, 2009).

  • Ferguson, Niall (2004) Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, New York, NY: Penguin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisch, Jörg, Dieter Groh and Rudolf Walther (1982) ‘Imperialismus’, in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, eds, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, Vol. 3, 171–236, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geanakoplos, Deno J (1976) Interaction of the ‘Sibling’ Byzantine and Western Cultures in the Middle Ages and Italian Renaissance, 330–1600, New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gierke, Otto (1951) Political Theories of the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, Alexander, John Jay and James Madison (1787–88/1961) The Federalist, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardt, Michael and Toni Negri (2000) Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horne, Alistair A (1988) Harold Macmillan, New York, NY: Viking.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ismailzade, Fariz (2006) Russian Energy Policy in Azerbaijan: A Comparative Study of the 1990s and the 2000s, London: GMB Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joffe, Josef (2006) Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America, New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Chalmers (2004) The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, New York, NY: Metropolitan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jordheim, Helge (2007) ‘Conceptual History between Chronos and Kairos — the Case of “Empire” ’, Redescriptions. Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History 11: 115–145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kagan, Robert (2003a) Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, London: Atlantic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kagan, Robert (2003b) ‘America as Global Hegemon’, The National Interest 29, http://nationalinterest.org/article/american-as-global-hegemon-2391 (accessed 10 October, 2010).

  • Kazhdan, Alexander (1992) ‘The Notion of Byzantine Diplomacy’, in Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, eds, Byzantine Diplomacy: Papers from the Twenty-Fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1990, 3–21, Aldershot: Variorum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kiely, Ray (2007) The New Political Economy of Development: Globalization, Imperialism, Hegemony, Houndmills: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kjærnet, Heidi (2007) ‘I stormaktens skygge: to russiske energiselskapers rolle i forholdet mellom Aserbajdsjan og Russland’, Master's thesis, ILOS, University of Oslo.

  • Koebner, Richard and Helmut D. Schmidt (1964) Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840–1960, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koselleck, Reinhart (1959/1973) Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koselleck, Reinhart (1967) ‘Richtlinien für das Lexikon politisch-sozialer Begriffe der Neuzeit’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte XI (1): 81–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koselleck, Reinhart (1972) ‘Einleitung’, in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, eds, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland vol. 1, XIII–XXVII, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koselleck, Reinhart (1979) ‘Zur historisch-politischen Semantik asymmetrischer Gegenbegriffe’, in Reinhard Koselleck, ed., Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, 211–259, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koselleck, Reinhart (1981) Preuen zwischen Reform und Revolution: Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848, 3rd edn., Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koselleck, Reinhart (2000) ‘Historik und Hermeneutik’, in Reinhard Koselleck, ed., Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik, 97–118, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koselleck, Reinhart (2006) ‘Die Geschichte der Begriffe und Begriffe der Geschichte’, in Reinhard Koselleck, ed., Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache, 56–76, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krauthammer, Charles (1990) ‘The Unipolar Moment’, Foreign Affairs 70: 23–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lake, David A. (2009) Hierarchy in International Relations, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lal, Deepak (2003) ‘In Defense of Empires’, in Andrew Bacevich, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, 29–46, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

    Google Scholar 

  • Memmi, Albert (1957/1991) The Colonizer and the Colonized, 2nd edn., Boston, MA: Beacon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mill, John S. (1989) On Liberty and Other Writings in Stefan Collini, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mondlane, Eduardo (1969) The Struggle for Mozambique, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Motyl, Alexander J (1999) Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Motyl, Alexander J (2001) Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muthu, Sankar (2003) Enlightenment Against Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neumann, Iver B (1999) Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neumann, Iver B (2005) ‘Russia as a Great Power’, in Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen, eds, Russia as a Great Power: Dimensions of Security Under Putin, 13–28, London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neumann, Iver B (2008) ‘Discourse Analysis’, in Audie Klotz and Deepa Prakash, eds, Quantitative Methods in International Relations: A Pluralist Guide, 61–77, Houndsmills: Palgrave.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Nexon, Daniel (2009) The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires and International Choices, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nexon, Daniel and Thomas Wright (2007) ‘What's at Stake in the American Empire Debate’, American Political Science Review 101 (2): 253–271.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nietzsche, Friedrich (1977) ‘Zur Genealogie der Moral’, in Karl Schlechta, ed., Werke in drei Bänden, Vol. 2, 761–900, München and Wien: Carl Hanser.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pagden, Anthony (1995) Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire In Spain, Britain and France c.1500 — c.1800, New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Palonen, Kari (1999) ‘Rhetorical and Temporal Perspectives on Conceptual Change’, Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought 3: 41–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pocock, J.G.A. (1972) ‘Virtue and Commerce in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3: 119–134.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pocock, J.G.A. (1975) The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rieff, David (2003) ‘Liberal Imperialism’, in Andrew Bacevich, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, 10–28, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skinner, Quentin (1971) ‘On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Actions’, The Philosophical Quarterly 21: 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skinner, Quentin (1972) ‘Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts’, New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 3: 393–408.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skinner, Quentin (1988) ‘ “Social Meaning” and the Explanation of Social Action’, in James Tully, ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, 119–132, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skinner, Quentin (1996) Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Skinner, Quentin (1998) Liberty before Liberalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skinner, Quentin (2002a) ‘Hobbes on the Proper Signification of Liberty’, in Quentin Skinner, ed., Visions of Politics. Volume III: Hobbes and Civil Science, 209–237, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Skinner, Quentin (2002b) ‘A Third Concept of Liberty’, Proceedings of the British Academy 117: 237–268.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spruyt, Hendrik (1994) The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stephanson, Anders (1995) Manifest Destiny: American Exceptionalism and the Empire of Right, New York, NY: Hill and Wang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stephanson, Anders (2009) ‘Än en gång om den amerikanska “exceptionalismen” ’, Internasjonal Politikk 67: 2–3.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tilly, Charles (1990) Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tilly, Charles (2002) Stories, Identities, and Political Change, New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Védrine, Hubert (2003) Face à l’hyperpuissance: Textes et discours 1995–2003, Paris: Fayard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waltz, Kenneth (1979) Theory of International Politics, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Tarak Barkawi, Jens Bartelson, Benjamin de Carvalho, Patrick Jackson, George Lawson, Halvard Leira, Erik Tängerstad and two anonymous referees for comments, and Einar Wigen for research assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kultrans, ILOS, University of Oslo, PO Box 1003 Blindern, Oslo, 0315, Norway

    Helge Jordheim

  2. NUPI, PO Box 8159 Dep, Oslo, 0033, Norway

    Iver B Neumann

Authors
  1. Helge Jordheim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Iver B Neumann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Jordheim, H., Neumann, I. Empire, imperialism and conceptual history. J Int Relat Dev 14, 153–185 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2010.21

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2010.21

Keywords

Search

Navigation