Imperialism is the policy or goal of extending the power and rule of a government beyond the boundaries of its original state, and taking into one political unit other nations or lands. There are variations in the extent to which the imperial power assumes administrative and political control for the states that make up the empire; some retain degrees of independence and identity, while others are subsumed entirely into the institutions of the imperial state. Neither is it necessary that an empire has any specific form of central government, though there must be one central and ultimately overwhelming force, otherwise it is more likely to be an alliance, league or loose federation. The British Empire at its height was a constitutional monarchy, but Queen Victoria had lost most of the power of the previous English monarchs, and the Empire was essentially a parliamentary one.
In fact, though there have been many empires in world history, few have lasted as long as the modern nation states of Europe, and most have collapsed either because of political disunity at the centre, or because of the enormous difficulty of exercising central rule over long distances and against the instincts for local autonomy that always spring up.
The motives for creating an empire vary greatly, but imperialism in itself should not be confused with colonialism, which is a specific form and motive for holding political control beyond national boundaries. A crucial aspect of imperialism, and one of the best aids to categorization, is the way in which imperial citizenship is handled. If only citizens or subjects of the original ‘homeland’ can be seen as citizens of the empire, and the rest of the inhabitants are no more than subject peoples with no hope of political power or legal protection, the empire is likely to veer towards the principally exploitative version that is better thought of as colonialism. On the other hand, and the later Roman Empire may be the best example, citizenship, with its legal rights and duties, may be extended to the entire population, or some part of the population, of the whole empire, rather than just the descendants of the nation that built it. In this case the empire is more in the nature of a supranational state which, given the artificiality of many national borders, need be no less legitimate than any nation-state. Despite this, ‘imperialism’ in modern political language is nearly always used pejoratively, suggesting an illegitimate desire to extend one’s power or authority for reasons of self aggrandizement, as, for example, when Richard Nixon was dubbed an ‘imperial’ president for seeking to take over powers that belonged to the US Congress.
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