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Niall Ferguson, UK-born historian at Harvard, would probably take issue with your position. He wrote Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Indeed, he and others often use the term "American empire" with good reason. With over 750 bases around the globe (some put it at over 1000), no nation has ever dominated the planet, commercially and militarily, as America does today. It might be said that America took a giant step as an imperial power in 1898, when it intervened in the Cuban war of independence from Spain and subsequently acquired Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
It don't matter what he called his book!! For an empire you need to rule over 'foreign lands', you do realise don't you that its not just the American military with oversea's bases???
And the Danes, Hungarians, and even the Bulgarians all had their days as powers... The Portuguese had the first colonial European empire. Poland-Lithuania was once the largest state and one of the biggest military powers of Europe. And so on and so on...
The Danes were integral to anyone to speaks English. Despite their short reign in the Danelaw, all but a few who made south east England their home stayed and melded into the genetic pool. But even more they heavily influenced the development of the English language. The words that describe basic place names are often derivitive of Danish language.
Empires often leave behind those who are settled and continue to influence the place they controlled after the control is done.
And this should be a lesson to us. Some day we'll be perhaps a collection of regions who run themselves and people might be astonished that we once were a world mega power. Every dog and nation has their day and all of them end sometime.
The USA IS NOT an empire!! It is just a country the size of a continent, an empire is a collection of countries governed by a 'foreign' overseas nation, the USA does not govern anywhere BUT the USA.
Depends on your definition of "empire." One could certainly argue that the US is a hegemonic empire.
This is the flow of history. Empires come and go. Since the USA is an empire, it has its day, but it will not last. Rot from within will kill it, or is already killing it. Just imagine the Romans. Now the Italians haven't got much.
So true. If you ask a Roman citizen who lived in say 100 ad if in time they'd be a country that attracted tourists for their ruins but was just another state in Europe, they'd not believe you. And Rome lasted for a long time. Today things move faster and we may not last so long. I think we are so fascinated with Rome since we live in the same world they did.
I think you are using "empire" in a restrictive, lexicographical sense. Many writers beside Niall Ferguson -- Gore Vidal, Chalmers Johnson et al -- have written of the "American empire." Niall Ferguson refers to America as an "empire in denial." I would like to cite a link to an article by Ferguson dealing with the subject of empire:
Give GreyKarast an empire...any empire...and he will show you how the origin of that empire is Russian.
PS The only reason the rest of us don't know this is because western historians have hated Russia and spread lies about Russia for the past several hundred years.
Its funny you mention Sweden and the Netherlands, both of which were considered major powers in the 1600s. Here in America, the Dutch had a colony (New Netherland) along the Hudson River which eventually became the State of New York. Meanwhile the Swedes has a smaller colony down by the Delaware River (New Sweden). New Sweden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
During the Second Northern War, New Netherland conquered New Sweden.
Both of these countries had problems so they eventually fell out of the ranks of the major powers.
Sweden built up a high quality army in the 1600s but in the long run Sweden did not have a large enough population and economy to compete with larger nations like France and Russia. It is hard to imagine now but Sweden was still strong enough to declare war on Russia as late as 1788. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-S...8%E2%80%931790)
The Netherlands was a very wealthy country in the 1600s and built a large navy and army. There was sort of a three way competition between the Netherlands, Great Britain and France. The problem was the Netherlands was the smallest of the three and became squeezed between the two larger powers - they had to have a large army to defend themselves from the French army and they had to large navy to compete with the British. In the long run they began to fall behind.
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Sweden and The Netherlands
