Our first site in Egypt, be it by larceny or be it be emption, will be the almost certain egg of a North African empire, that will grow and grow ... till we finally join hands across the equator with Natal and Cape Town, to say nothing of the Transvaal and the Orange River on the south, or of Abyssinia or Zanzibar to be swallowed by way of viaticum on our journey. William E Gladstone, Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East 1884
Imperialism, sane Imperialism, as distinguished from what I may call wild-cat Imperialism, is nothing but this – a larger patriotism. Lord Rosebery, speech 5th May 1899
A major consequence of the war was the slow death of European colonial empires. The first and the most dramatic step in this process was the decision by the British in 1947 to set aside the jewel in the imperial crown: India. World War II: The Complete History: The Presence of History, Discovery 2000
[Edward] Said investigated the art of the world’s empires. And what he found was nothing less than cultural hijack. Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words III: Culture Wars, BBC 2011
Orientalism revealed the dark side of civilisation ... Imperial powers had used art to create poisonous myths about the people they colonised. ibid.
C L R James was born in the British West Indies in 1901. He showed how empire had used culture as a tool of control. ibid.
He [Said] challenged how the West dominated the East, not simply by guns and direct occupations, but in the way it portrayed what the East was to its own people. Tariq Ali
I was saying really that there is no such thing as the Orient – the Orient is much more complicated, much more varied, much more heterogeneous, and above all much more detailed than any of these grand generalisations. Edward Said, interview BBC
Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilise, bring order and democracy, and that it only uses forces as a last resort. And, sadder still, there is always a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s own eyes watching the destruction and the misery and the death brought about by the latest civilzatrice. Edward Said, Orientalism
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people as customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
If any of the provinces of the British Empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances. ibid.
America is an empire. I hope you know that now. All empires, by definition, are bumbling, shambolic, bullying, bureaucratic affairs, as certain of the rightness of their cause in infancy, as they are corrupted by power in their dotage. Felix Dennis
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war. Charles de Montesquieu
This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that. John Perkins
Extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces for the purpose of extracting or accruing value. Tom Nairn and Paul James, Globalisation and Violence
A great empire and little minds go ill together. Edmund Burke
Napoleon Bonaparte, thirty-five years old, was about to be crowned Emperor of France. ‘I found the crown of France in the gutter,’ he said, ‘and I picked it up.’ It was December 2nd 1804. Within three years Napoleon’s conquest would extend his empire across almost all of Europe. Empires: Napoleon I: To Destiny, PBS 2000
He had made himself the head of a provisional Italian government. Empires: Napoleon II: Mastering Luck
After marching two weeks across the desert Bonaparte’s army came within site of the pyramids. ibid.
The battle of the pyramids was over in an hour. ibid.
In the spring of 1800 he took his men over the Alps. ibid.
It was how it was imposed on Africa. It was here that clear breakthroughs were made that helped develop the West’s most unlikely and killer app ... the medicine. Niall Ferguson, Civilisation: Is the West History? IV Medicine, Channel 4 2011
The French empire had begun with slavery. ibid.
Here was another kind of imperial hero – the bacteriologist. ibid.
The scramble for Africa has become a byword for the ruthless exploitation of an entire continent by rapacious Europeans. But it was also a scramble for scientific knowledge. With the spread of railways went the spread of western civilisation and its killer app – modern medicine. This was the original medecins sans frontieres – doctors without borders. It is a point often overlooked by those like Gandhi who maintain that the European empires had no redeeming feature. bid.
The Germans were the latecomers to the African party ... For the Germans it was a testing ground for racial theory. ibid.
The Austrian Empire rose to a position of splendid dominance in central Europe. Niall Ferguson, Civilisation: Is the West History?
Frederick the Great was committed to the rational rule of Prussia. ibid.
He set out to create a series of spectacular buildings. One of the first edifices in what Frederick [the Great of Austria] thought of as a kind of forum in the heart of Berlin was this wonderful theatre – the State Opera House. ibid.
People in Prussia were free to pray as they pleased. As long as their beliefs didn’t stand in the way of scientific enquiry and secular progress. ibid.
The majority of Austrians welcomed the Germans into their country. The Austrians too had suffered as their empire was dismantled in the settlement at the end of World War I. The Nazis: A Warning From History: The Wrong War, BBC 1997
We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism – and it must be defeated in a world of confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capitals, raw materials, technicians and cheap labour, and to which they export new capitals – instruments of domination – arms and all kinds of articles; thus submerging us in an absolute dependence. Che Guevara
3,000 years ago the world was being churned and pulled apart in the first great age of empire. This was a time of vicious civil wars. Andrew Marr’s History of the World II, BBC 2012
In 1911 young American explorer Hiram Bingham arrived in Peru’s sacred valley. Bingham was looking for a fabled lost city ... A place overgrown and all but forgotten. What Bingham saw astonished him. Dr Jago Cooper, The Inca: Masters of the Clouds I: Foundations, BBC 2015
Their empire was the biggest in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. ibid.
These storehouses were an important logistical element to the growing of the empire. ibid.
This was an empire of the mind. ibid.
A catastrophic clash of two completely different cultures. ibid.
The Inca built an empire without rival. It spanned almost an entire continent. The Secrets of the Incas, 2000
Yet the Inca left no written record. ibid.
Following tantalising legends, Spanish Conquistadors invaded Peru in 1532. They came in search of one thing: gold. ibid.
There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a great Castilian. Francisco Pizarro
When has it ever happened, either in ancient or modern times, that such amazing exploits have been achieved? Over so many climes, across so many seas, over such distances by land, to subdue the unseen and unknown? Whose deeds can be compared with those of Spain? Not even the ancient Greeks and Romans. Francisco Xeres, report on discovery of Peru
When I set out to write for the people of today and of the future, about the conquest and discovery that our Spaniards made here in Peru, I could not but reflect that I was dealing with the greatest matters one could possibly write about in all of creation as far as secular history goes. Where have men ever seen the things they have seen here? And to think that God should have permitted something so great to remain hidden from the world for so long in history, unknown to men, and then let it be found, discovered and won all in our own time! Pedro Cieza de Leon, Chronicles of Peru
The Inca were the Romans of the New World. Incomparable artists and engineers, they built Machu Pichu, constructed the most sophisticated road network in the Americas, and created beautiful artworks and countless treasures out of gold. But their true genius was empire-building. The Great Inca Rebellion, PBS 2007
When Pizarro arrived in Peru the Inca Empire was already disintegrating. It had been formed only a hundred years previously when the Inca armies had spread out from their capital city of Cusco to overwhelm the many different Indian chiefdoms of the region. By 1532 many of the empire’s some 10,000,000 inhabitants were disenchanted with Inca domination and all too willing to ally themselves with the Spaniards in a bid to break free of it. ibid.