After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires

SPONSORED BY THE JOINT COJ\JJ\IITTEE ON THE NEAR AND l\1lDDLE EAST, SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

AFTER EMPIRE MULTIETHNIC SOCIETIES AND NATION-BUILDING

The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Jlabsburg Empires

EDITED BY KAREN BARKEY AND MARK VON HAGEN

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For ollr grandparolfs wbo u'cr,' bam ill tbl' IfflbJiJlIIg lind OttOIl/i/1I empires tllld /i-c, ..d /lIost ~/fheir li·pes fljia empire

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I'ublished in 19,}7 in the l'nitl'd Stall's Ilfl\merir;t Iw \\'est\"il'w Press, 5500 Centr;.1 . \"l'I1Ul" Boulder, Colorad" ROJOl-2877, and ill Ihe United Kil1~dolll 1)\· \ V<'''''ie\\' Press, 12 I lid's Copse Road, CUI1I1HH [lill, Oxl<1Il1 OX2 '!J.I

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Arter empire: Ilndtil'thnic soCiclic" and Il,lti(ltl-bllildin~ : the S(l\,ict

l'nillil .Ind RII"i;\n, 0(\0111;\11, .,nd I L,hshllr~ Empires I edited I'." Karen Ihrkn' .,nt! I\lark \'On I [agen. p.

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Ind"des index. ISBN tl-8U.1-2%1-'!,-ISB~ ()-~n1-296·FI (I'hk) I. Imperialism. 2. Tllrkc\'-I [i"nn'-Onn"';II' Fmpire, 1211R-1 'HR. ".1 Lrbshllrg, 1[nllSt' of. -I, 1\IIstri;,-[ [iston'. 5, I{IIssia-llisrnn·. (,. Soviet Ullion-llistn'T. 1. Barke.", Karen', 195RII. Vnn I L,~en, 1\ lark, 195-1' .IU5'! .1\53 1'197 .U5' ..'2-
96-,OOh6

UP The paper IIsed ill this I'"blication met''' tire re'l"irt'nlt'llts of the An",ric;II' Pennallellce "I' Paper 1,"'Prin'ed Lihran I\Lnerials 1.1'),-l8-19ll-l. 7

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CONTENTS

Ack 170w/"dO'li/ellts <~

1 How Empires End, Char/, ',I TiI~l} 2 The End of Empires, I:', I Jfobs/la'wlIl

\'11

1 12

Part One Collapse of Empires: Causes 3 Thinking Abollt Empire, .I1/,ox(ll1derj Jlvlo~}'/ -+ The Ottoman Empire, Cilg!ar KLyder 5 The I Ltbsburg Empire, S%moll Himk 6 The Russian Empire, /\Iad: VOll Hagell 7 The Soviet Union, 1Tit"/Dr Zas/a'VJkv

19 30

45 58 7J

Part Two Collapse of Empires: CO\lscquences \8 9 10 11 12

Thinking About COnSel\UenCes of Empire, K,,/,'II Bark,y The Ottoman Empire, Serif/Hardin The I Ltbsburg Empire, Jj/-vdn D,'dk The Russian Empire, ROlilild G, SIII1Y Aftenn.lths of Empire and the Unmixing ofPeopks, Ragin Brubaker 13 Conclusion, Karl'lI Hark,y {lnd /VIark ,()Oll l/agm

/Jbollt the' Book {/nd Editon About tb,' COlltrib"tors Jlldex

99 115 129

142

155 181 191

1lJ2 1lJ3

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This I'oillme is the result of a conference conyened ,It Coillmbi,l Univcrsity in NovclllblT 1,)':1-+. It was spollsored bl' the foint Committee on the Ne,lr and l\liddIe E,lst of thc Social Sciencc RC'i:arch 'Coullcil, the Ccnter till' the So,'ial Scicnces, and the I I.trriman Institute of Columbi,l Uni,'ersity, Abm'c all, \\'e th,lIlk Lisa Anderson of Columbia's Political Science Dep,lrtlllent ,md StelTn Ileydemann of the SSRC ti)r initiating the project on empires and l\lexander j\ lotyl ti)r his help in organizing the l'Ollt~Tence. '''Ie are abo grateful to the participants and comlllentators at the conferencc. In addition to those who hal'e contributed papcrs to this volume, we thank: Harrison ''''hite, Jack Snyder, Ste\'(: Solnick, Richard 'Vortman, Sukru I LlIIioglu, Robcrt Paul l\ Iagosci, Rajan l\ knon, and David Good, During the discussion and rel'ision of thc p,lpers, wc hendtted from the critictl cyes and minds of Charles Till)', lIcndrik Spruyt, D,llliel Chi rot, and Antholl), VV. l\larx. Caglar Keyder and 15tv',\n Deik desen'l' spccial thanks ti)!' agrL'eing quickly and ~r,l­ ciollsl), to switch roles from cOlllmentators to authors. Our editors, l\largaret Sevchcnko and David Gibson, worked hard for long hOllrs to prepare the papers ti)l' publication and track down elusive ti)(Hllotes and tr,lnslitemtions. Finally, til!' hn help in organizing the conference we gmtefully acknowledge the dfims of t Ltjdcja Iglic. KITI'<'I1

Bad:t']!

IH(/Ii' 'UI)II flilg<'11 Columbia Unil'ersity Ncw )~lI'k

.'

1 How

EMPIRES END

C I L\RLES TILLY

From Herodotus to 1\lontesquieu ~lIld bcyond, pocts, historians, and philosophers have recurn:ntly produced one of our culture's ,t~lndard literary tlmns: the dirge rl)r ,I f~dlen empire. Relkcrioll on imperial decline has lVorld-historical reso~~nce beC
From the

SOil

1

2

Cb"d,', Tillv IH'M, rh()lI~h not a stOllt: ILlS Yct Cfllmhkd. For thl' h'lrhari,l1l has alreach' c'l'turcd the: c'iry tfom within. COI\1t', h.\I)~n);\n! Comc, vulture!'

Thus l\IumflHCI applies his theory that beyond a modest limit the growth of political power and technical virtuosity dehumanize lite, hringing on their own. annihilation. Le~s oronllld, but in the same vein, Alex l\\otyl declares that "absolutism engenders p,lthologies that Ic,ld to its own degeneration, a flct that, in terri tori ally contiguo~s empires, necessarily lc,lds to the decay of the center's control of the periphery.'" Bd(lre pertcmning learned autopsies, howe\'er, we should just be sure the body was sick, and has actually died. Over the time that the world has known subst,lntial stites, after all, e;ll~_sJlave been the dominant and largest state l~~m, carnivorous dinosaurs that nothing but a terrestrial di;;aster, it seems, could eradicate. Only now, during the twentieth cennlry, do we seem to be kal'ing the age of massive Eurasian empires that began in earnest across a b,lnd from the 1\ lediterranean to East Asia almost four thousand ~'eafS ago. To the extent that' we regard sllch intefllational compacts as the European Union, GATT, and NAFTA as embodying imperial designs, furthermore, e\'ell today's fe'luiem may prove premature. If empires are indeed disappearing, their demise raises questions just as knotty as the dinosaur,' sudden disappearance. At the end of the world's bloodie~t and most military century, does imperial disintegmtion mean that interstate military conquest will also decline, perhaps in fl\'or of civil W,l[ and genocide? Does the dispefs,t/ of previolls empires, including the massive decolonization that began in the 19605, suggest what will h'lppen to th\! debris of the most recent \ breakdowns? How generally, when, and where, docs the end of empires genefate new timl1s of conf1ict, internal and external? Do bursts of nationalism on beh,llf ofiiml1er imperi,\1 fragmellts generally accompany the dissolution of central control? (Tnder what conditions docs-or, fi:lr that m,ltter, could-sllccessor states to empires fllflTI stable democratic regimes? Whether or not we h,\\'l' reached the end of imperial history, previous cycles of decline present us with pressing questions and 'lmple bases fi.>r comp,uison, As we undertake such comparisons, we should avoid the smug assumption that empires flil simply because they generally adopt un\'iable fi>nm of rule. Historically, empires h,l\'C been h!mly beasts, Variants of the Chinese empire endured two millennia or more, the B1'zantine empire continued tClr more than a millennium, the Roman empire Iast~d tilr about six centuries, the Ottoman empire suryiyed about halfa millennium, various l\Iong"Olempires occupied the widest contiguous territorial f
solidated statcs camc to dom inatc thc continent. An lund the 1\ h:ditermncan, larger l\luslim states org-anized chid]y as empircs. I\klllWhile, l110re empircs arose and fell in South America, Africa, and SOllthe~bt ,\sia. Civcn the reccnc~' of imperial presencc ill our world, we who speak gcneralh' and detlniti,'cly of empire's end run the risk of a chamcteristic Chinese crror, 1~1istakillg thc decline of a particular regime tilr the ddtniti\'c end of a oncc-dominant political t;>rI1l. Just as wc should hcsitate to crow loudly about the irre\'crsible "deIlHKnttization" of a world where gucrrilla, gcnocidc, and politicidc have become incrcasingly commOIl practicc,' we should hold b~lck bet;)!'c dcclaring that cmpircs ha\'c departed til[Cyer to li\'e with their ~\I1ccstors. Over thc roughly ten millcllnia during which we h~I\'e some e\'idence fill' the existence of states, Illost states ILl\'e taken Olle of three ti)J'Jlls. 'I'hey lu\'e appeared as City-S£kS, agrarian Illilitary domains, cmpires, or \'arious combill~ltions (If the three, 'IS in Venice's atuc!Jlllcnt of a sclttcred maritime cmpire 10 a city-state or the Dutch Republic's uneasy federation .lmnng city-states. Onl)' during the LIst two ccnturies h'II'e consolidated sr~ltes-c()crcion-widding organizations goYcrning directly and rather unitilrlnl!' ill .1 scries of heterogencous and rle~lrly bounded territories-become the domin~lI1t statc t
CAllkx TiI~v

Empire has proved to he a recurrent, flexible fi)fJll of large-scale rule tilr n'l'O closely related reasons: because it holds together disparate smaller-scale units without requiring Illuch centrally-controlled internal transfonn.ltion, and because it pUlllpS resources to rulers without costly monitoring and repression. Regional rulers usc existing practices, understandings, and relationships to extract the requisite minimum of tribute, military support, and loyalt), ti)r the center's benefit. They can settle for extracting as much payment and service as the -regions will bear without attempting to estimate the actual capacity of regions, localities, or individuals to pay. Just so long as regional rulers deploy some fi)rce of their own and h'1\'e ready call on imperi'll tiHTe in emergencies, the imperial center need not build a dense system of regioll.t\ policing, much less the monitoring and boundary-controlling mechanisms ellt.liled by income t.Lxes, property taxes, or e\'en fine-grained excise taxes.' Impcri,t1 extraction of resources normally operates, to be sure, at the cost of enormous slip£.'.Ig~, evasion, personal intlucnee, and incqu.t1ity-one reason why ;\n empcror's suddcn demand for increascs in yield (or, COIl\'l'fsc\y, his visible loss of coercive powcr) frequcntly gencrates rebellion by prc\·iollsly co.mpliant suhjccts. But an imperial system's crude simplicity-makes it .tdaptable to many soci.t1 temtins. In contrast to the slow accretion of power in a city-st,lte, an agrari'\I1 domain, or a consolidatcd Stilte, imperial expansion therdilre sometimes occurs with star':" ding nlpidity because it combines military conqllest with political co-optation, absorbing existing systcllls of rule into webs of tributc and military alliance. lienee the quick looming of predatory Persian,l\longol, and Ottoman empires--':: all of them relying initially on armed horsemen-.tt the horizons of their agrar. ian neighbors. By the s:tme token, I~~weyer, cmpires can collapse spectacularly. Ruin sometimes rushes in because:;,(1). the empire's dominated politics remain det,lchable by virtue of weak integrati'on into any adlllinistrati\'C web; (2) their \'iceroys enjoy au tonomous power, including the power to defect; (3 ) subjugated populations retain distinct identities, memories, and grie\'anccs; and (4) information indicating that the center has become vulnerable sprcads fast among dominated units and external enemies. The Chinese empire proved more durable than others largely hecause it countered all four of these thrcatening conditions. Dy extending a relatively unitilflll administrative structure down to thc county level, by integrating county-lewl gentry into a system of competition for imperi.ll t~lI'or, by rotating imperial bureaucrats frequently and refusing to station thcm in their prO\'inccs of origin, by stimulating internal mobility and reducing public recogni tion of ethnic distinctness, and by making cffccti\'e shows of central t<)rce through much of its vast territory, the imperial statc maintained llloSt of its dynasties tilr centuries between collapses and conquests." In this light, we should remain skeptical ahout accollnts of communism's collapse that [
5

colbpse within the system. It is IIIz;'l'L'I'JlllbecllIse it cbims th,lt all such systems collapse, sooner or later, for the S,UDe reason. Similarly, Joseph Tainter base~ his 'internal .lllJ uni"ers,lli,t 'l1lalysis of "eoILlpse" mainly Oil dimillishing marginal returns to central control .. 1\Iany other explanations, in contrast, insist on the uniqueness of their case(s) and/or the externality of essenti,d l'
:1

6

that distinction docs not ob\'iollsly solve our problems; gi\'en the superi( ,rit}' of tr.n'Cllw water until the last century or so, tllr example, it is not evident that the scattered se'I-linked Venetian empire was less well-connected than the contiguous bllt brgely land-linked Russian empire, or that Venice's sut!ill'ation through Ottoman expallSion dithTed fundamentally hom the Byzantine d0b.kle which Veneti.ln-Ottoman collaborning. Still, it allows us to estimate the general ctfects of significant changes such as an interruption of the t10w of bullion from South America to Spain or the proliferation of pimtes along the trade routes .connecting a maritime empire." Either a decline in essential re\'Cnues or an 1 increase in control-related costs makes all empire less viable. An empire whose" lines of communication and supply arc expensivch' long is no doubt more vul- ; nerable to either filfm of disruption. Thus recast, r\lotyl's distinction helps iden-! ti~' a major dimension of imperial variation. What other dimensions of variation should we single out? The very character of empires as large compositc politics linked to central powers by indirect rule suggests candidates: size ought to make a ditference, as should the character of mili.!ru:.y organi~ti~~n and techlloJ91IT' relations betwecn the imperial center and outside powers, current org.lI1ization of the international system, the degree of heterogeneity among dominated segments, the extent of inequality between center and periphery, the meclunisms employed tilr direct rule, and, preeminently, the center's own economic, political, and social organization. Conditions tilr an empire's survival, mutation, or collapse, the processes by which imperial change OCCllrs, and the outcomes of imperial disintegration should, in principle, vary systematically according to most or all of these characteristics. Not mllch help, but at least a checklist for discussion. We h'I\~~e hope g'oing beyond checklists by means of an im'Crse procedure: by working hack from presumed outcomes of imperial change to lInder. standings of its regularities. Under what conditions and by what paths, till' example, might We expect democratic politics to emerge ti"Om crumbling empires? Sub~tallti\'~ and procedural definitions of dcmocracy predominate in toelay's discussIons ot the subject-"sllb~tantive" in stressing outcomes such as equality or harmony, "procedural" in emphasizing such 'Irrangements .15 free elections and succession in office." I propose, however, an old-t:lshioned "in~titutional" con-

--;;i

How Empir"s Elld ccptiOll of dt:ll1ocrac), t()('using on rdation> bt:twt:t:n citizt:ns and statcs. It rt:sts on a st:rit:s of COllCt:pts I must, alas, ddint: to avoid confusion: Statt:: an organiz'ltion controlling tht: principal conct:ntr,ltt:d mt:ans of COt:rcion within .l ddimitt:d tt:rritory and t:xncising priority in sOllle rt:spt:cts ovcr all other organizations within the salllc tt:rriton'. Polity: tilt: set of rdatiolls ,II1l0ng agt:nt:; of thc statt: al;d all major political actors within tht: ddilllitt:d tt:rritory. Rights: t:nt(Hct:aulc claims, tht: rt:ciprocll of obligations. Citizt:nship: rights and Illutual obligations binding state agents and a category of pcrsons ddint:d cxrlusivdy by tht:ir lcgal attachmt:nt to tht: samc sratt:.

0;::; In this C'Onct:ption a polity is dClllocratic to the dt:grct: that it establisht:s (1) broad citizt:nship, (2) cqual citizenship, (3) binding consult',ltion of citizens with rcspect'to govc;'nlllcntal pcrsonnd and policics, and (-I) prott:ction of citizt:ns trom arbitrolry statc action. No polity eyer achicves full delllon.lc)' by such standanis, but rt:al politit:s array thL'lllst:h-L'S trom deeply undclllocratic (narrow, unequal citizcnship without binding consultation or prot(xtion) to relativdy dt:mocratic (high on all jllllr valut:,). By tht:se niteria, st:glllt:nts of clllpirt:s can in principle 'lchic\,t: some dcmocracy but whole empires rem,lin unde1llocratic by definition; .It .lIl imperial scale their segmcntation and reliance on indin.:ct nile bar equal citizcmhip, binding consultation, .lnd protection, if not ncccssarily breadth of Illelllbt:rship. This dctinitional work helps spccit}' what an impcrial tLlI1sition to dcmocracy cntails: either (a) thc dismillltling of thc prior empirc into scgments within which rcgional institutions lend themsc,,"es to broad, equal citizcnship with consultation and protection; or (b) the dissolution of indirect rule ill favor of a more dircct, unit()fJ11 citizcnship gencrating sets of tics bctween ccnter and periphcries. f Iistor), providcs a few cxamplcs of (a), but nOlle of (b) so I~lr. Yet on a rcgional scalc path (b) set:ms to hal't: been a nL'CCSsilry condition for dcmocratization, illong with subordination of military forccs to cil'ili~l control, bn,lad class coalitions in supp(irr of thc statc, al;d extensin: dOlllcstie taxation ent'liling rcprescnt.ltion of t'Lxpaycrs." \ Vithollt suhstantial dissolution of indirect rule th' Iiihts of citizcns rcmain wc,lk and 1II1el't:n:.-That obst:rvation, indt:cd, identiflcs the critical tlaw in rccurrcnt anarchist ,lIld capitalist programs of dcccntralization (or uttcr dismantling of the state) as the road to democracy; without an agency that cnt()rres rights unitl>nllly and dfccti,'ely, rights themschTs disappear." N,ltion,t1ism prm'idcs another casc in point I low dose and geneLtI ,I tic exists betwccll outhre.lks of lutionalislll and cnds of cillpires? Thc question matters not only bCC
('b,II/c1 '[i/~v "

because intri)!;\lin)!; an;\lo)!;ie~ appear between those recent cpisodes and Ottoman or Austro- flull)!;arian declinc, but also becllIse the question identifies a zone of potentially fruittill disa)!;reelllcnt in studies of n.uionalism. A wide range ofan.llyses, not ;11l consistent with e.lCh other, suggest that imperial decline and nationalism should generally coincide, for example because a.1l nations resist subordination when they can, because empires actually create nationalities, and/or because as imperial disintegration begins outside powers promote sep,u.ltism on the part of imperial subjects." A set of historicist analyses, equally contradil'ton' in their causal accounts, rcply that nationalism has ~
Notes 1. Lewis 1\ 11I1ll f,)rci , '1b,' Cit\' ill Hi.liar,,: lIs Or~r;ills. Its 'nw/I!orJlli1liolH, IIlId It.1 Prr;s/,I'r/, (New York: Harcollrt, lkln:
9

n](lndi~di'~lti()n des ()lItlits: ellL'orc un siec\c dc n'hclli!)I1'" [;llId,'s Illt,'m,lliolio/"s 2-1

(19<)3): 513-5.12; Janice E. Thomson, "St,lt" Sm'cn:if!:nt\· in Intcrtlational Relatiolls: Bridging the Gal' BetweC!1 Thcm:' and Empirical Research," /Iltalllllioll," SllIdi,'s Q"Ilrtcrl)' 3') (1 ')')5): 213-23-1; and ('h'lrks Till.I" "(;lobaliz;ltion Threatens LtllDf'S Rights," III t<' rII dtio II II! l,II/JOr Iliid ffr.,rhllg CZI.,S Hi,lon' -17 (1 Y95): 1-2.1,

5, Gahrid Ardant, :rI.',;ori,' .Io,·iv/vgi'l'h' "" /,ililpot, 2 \'
(1993): 1h3-185.

.

6. KLJnf!:-Ch\l~1I1 I Isi;\(), RIII," (;!,illll: IIII/,ailli COlltrol ill If,( Nilld,'t' S/II/,': SA',''''!'''.\' o(/b<, Chi,It's,' lIod\, J'()!itit' (Stantimi: St~lll­ fixd llnin:rsity Press, 19811); \Villi.11ll G. Ski,~ner, "l\larketin.L; ;llltl Soci~d Stnlcture ill Rural China,".Iolll'lllil vlA';11I1 S/II'/i," 2-t (1 <)6-1): 3--13; idcIlI, "The Structure of Chinese History,"jol/llilil oIA,i
10

ton, "lnCl:ntin~~

1\1

Princil'"I-;\),;cllt Rdatiotl~hil's," ./()/(rJ/,i/ ot' E.·ollom;c l'.'n/,<'cti1."'S 5

(l ')') l): ~ 5-1'>("

12. John H, Pr\'()r, GL'ogr,,/,bl', '/;,r!l/Iologl',

""d m/l': Sf/(di", ill fb,' ,1]or;li/l1<' l1i.,to,y o/Ih,'

,1/,'dil,m/l,,',rll, 6-19-1571 (ClJllhridge: Camhridgc llni\'(:rsit)' Press, 1988), ]3, J, H, Elliott, illl/,<'1;,,1 -"/,di}}, 1469-1';](. (London: Edward Arnold, 1961); \{i,'hard

liCIT, I~II1'(/1 Cbtl}}g,' ,/lId R~\"t! Fi",/IIc,',,- i}} _~/,oill (/11/1 .. Elld OJ'I/>'- Old Rcgi"", (Berkeley: Uni\'ersin' of Cllif<>rJlia Prcss, 1989); Alherto Tenellti, l'ir,,,'I' ,//,,1 Ibc D,-dill,- oll;'l1ic<" 15S0-16i 5 (lkrkelc\': Ullin:rsin' ofCalif()rnia Press, 1<)(, 7); ;1I1'c\ Janice E. ThoIllS;)Il, Al,'/'("lIori,"', Pi""I,',(, "11'/ SQ·;-"""i!;".,: 'Sltlh,-Bu;ldillg ,/1111 L'.Y/I·: I'ros/'<'Clsjor D<'IIlO(l'(rCl' (Baltimore: Tllc Johns Hopkins llni\'crsity Press, 1986); Rob\:rt n. Plltnam, Jl.Jllhllg DI'IIIOOiItT /1'&1'/': Ci"'ie 1i",I;t;oIlJ ill ,lla"",." 11(/(\' (Princcton: Princcton University Press, 19(3); Dietrich Rllcschcmeyer, E\'c1\'J1c Huher Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalisl Dc'1.,,'lo/,lII<'Irt rllld D<'!IIoCl'ilcv.(Chicl~(): University of Chicl~o Press, llJ<)2);
'i~ Charles Til\~', "Glohali'l.ation Thre;\tens Labor's Rights," TI'ol}:illg

{,'/rlJ.f

illlerl/atioll"/ 1.rl"or alld

Historv 47 (1995): 1-23.

17. \'V;llkcr Conn'or, "Ethnonational.ism," in cd, l\lyron \Veincr and Samuel P Hllntin~­ ton, Ulldr'}'st'''ldi''g J'olitiCill D"'1,do/'I/I<'1,1 (Bo>[on: Litrlc, Brown, 1987); Karl Dcutsch, Nd/iall,r/islII rllld SQ.-i." COlll lllllll i(,- Origin ,/I,d S/,I'<'lId fJ/Nlllioll,Ii;1I1I (London: Verso, 19')1); Erncst Gellncr, Nrllion' rllld l\'t1liljllalislI/ .(lthaca: Cornell lllli\'crsir~' Press, 1<)8.1); Liah Grccnfdd, ,\;'liQ/I,dillll: Fi·<" Road.. to

l!

j\1od<'l"IIitv (Calllbridf!;l', J\1ass.: J bn'anl Unin;rsit" l'res" 1')<)1); ,lIld l\ lims!.II' H mel., 50,;,11 j>r<",ull
2 THE END OF EMPIRES

E. J. HOBSBA\V1\I

I n the rvventicth century 1l1ore empires ha\'e ended than in any other; we know this, even though it is b~' no means clear what we me,tll hy this statement. Like Walter Bagehot's "natioll," our "empire" is recogllizable even when we can't defIne it. The empires that have collapsed, or have been liql~i~hl~d, in our century belong to sever,ll t~ves; they seem to ha\'C little in common except that in them some (llHly!ng region or regions arc ruled ti'oJ1l a more or less remotecenter which is not belie\'Cd to represent the interests of their il:!..h:.lritants or local rulers. E\'(~n then the distinction is by no means cle,tr. The rhetoric of separatist' nationalism tends to dctlne the situation of its comtituency as "internal colonialism." Perhaps not very coll\'incingly, but in principle, the situation of \ Vales \'is- ,l-vis London is more dependent than that of KazakhsLU1 "is-it-vis l\ [oscow in the Sm'iet era. (And how ,liT we to classify t(>nner colonies which have been administratively integrated into the center? Puerto Rico and l\ Iartinique arc ,llmost certainl), better otl' in their present star-us than they would be if they had cut all links with France and the United States, which they probably could do.) Is the relationship belween London and Northern Ireland "imperial" in any sense which differs from, say, the relationship belween New Delhi and S01l1e Indian state in which the president's rule has been imposed? However, I don't think these ddinitional obscurities need to get in our way when we actually discuss our subject. Nor have the\'. i'he t:lllen empires'of our century arc of several types: (1) the co]onialempires of the imperialist period; (2) the tradition,ll empires of the reg-ion of European internation;ll politics; (3) the USSR, which both belongs and docs not belong to Illy class 2; and (4) the traditional, and sometimes very ancient, empires of Asian,lmcly the pre-communist Chinese empire and the modern versiol\ of the Persi,lIl empire. 12

l.i

Our papers han: de~tlt excillsinly with groups 2 alld 3, though from them the German empin:; twiec bllell in the century, has becn omitted ~\Ild nu)' bc treated .IS a special casco I t may ~llso be rea5()nablc to omit pre-communist China and pre-Islamic Jrail. t lowe\,er, ill purdy quantitati\T terIllS, the t;t!l of the colonial empires of the imperialist period is much the largest phenomenon of its kind. The bl! of the Ottoman, I bbsburg and Russian empires (tsarist and llo[:'" sheyik) generated about thirty new states in all; the ((11 of the colonial empires generated three times as many. It would therefore ha\'e to be considered, if only fix comparati\"C purposes . .;f I would prefer to say nothing ahout the ({/IISf.r of the b11 of empires; the broken empires of our century han' too little in common in this respect. One can reasonably place Ottomans, l-lahsburgs, and Roman()vs in to the same pigeonhole; all were obsolcslTnt politicil entities in an era of nation-state building, to which they otlered no alternative ..AIl were weak (relativc to their official size and resources) and therefore endangered players in the international power game. All were regarded as doollled, or at least as on the slide, til!' many decades before the), actu.tlly fcll. On the other lund, tsarist Rw,sia and the USSR cannot be so easily equated. Although \Yorld \Var I broke the h~lck of the I labsburg, ROnLIIl()\', and Ottoman cillpires, the October Revolution aetually reconstituted the tsarist empire on a new basis-i.e., it provided exactly what the old empires Iud hiled to do, namely an "un-national" (the word was applied to the USSR in C. A. l\ lacartney's Natiollill Stlltes (lild Natiol7al .11illoritit's, a Chatham House publication of 1"i3-t) ~dternati\"e to the nation-state. The causes of the USSR's c()lIapse arc quite ditrerent ti-om those of the ROlllanm' empire. Its internal tensions were quite ditferent, and so was its situation in the world and the. international situation in which it disintegrated. And, by the way, it Iud not been seriously expected or predicted, even by those who regarded its system as increasingly inviable. In short, there is not much in common between the ftll of the rre-191-t empires and imperialist colonial empires. 'fo tind a COllllllon cause or set of causes t
E. j

f/Q/'.Il'd'l/J17I

t
IS but in f;ll't equally multiethnic, ,tates. It also fevolutionized their political systems, substituting llOlllin,llI), liberal del\locracies generally lacking adequate roots filf 1l10nardlies Of communist states. Equally important, it broke what had been the web of intenMI n:blions within a single state illto incoherent fr'lgments. In the case of the USSR, which had ,len.:loped as a planned ,Ill-union economy lI"ith an all-union di\'ision of labor, the immediate result, were particllhrl~' disastrous, lcaving--to take one example-Litllllani,1 with the plant clpacity to produce ')0 percent of the USSR's light bulbs, hut cut ot"t" from its old m;lrkets. ! jo\\'eYer, lessef probkms were traumatir C\lough. The fall of the Ilahsburgs automatically turned the 25 percent of the Viennese popui.ttion born outside the frontiers of the new Austri;1 into t(lreigners, unless they chose to opt telr citizcnship. I don't think this ,Ispect of the end of clllpires has been quite sunlciently t,lken account of in our discllssions. The comequences of the end of the empire tilr the te)nner imperialist colonies were, almost without exceptioll, cyell more dranliltic than tln- the renter, except where they im'oh'ed the ti)\'\lla] independence of mainly whire settler countries, which had alre;ldy becoll1e \'irtually indcpendent--e.g., the British "dominions"-and where the ma,s of settlers did not coexist with ;\ majority, or a large bloc, of indigenous inhabitants. 1\ lost of the imperialist depclllkneies consisted not of established states conL]lIl'red by the Europeans, hut of territories to which olJ);r\le new i\llp~rial administratio;1 had given strllcturc and defillition. Theii: ) borders, their existcnce as admillistratiw units, their I'0litict\ idelltity, indeed ; often the language of their politics and administr,lt ion, \\'cre gi\'en to them through their colonia] status. They possessed no political clites Of potential cac!!:es of government other than those cre,lted duril~g anj by Ihe colonial era;_and inso"f,ir as the~' had stIch dites here ,1110 there, the new kadcrs of the indcpendcnt {states rejcctcd them, tt)r reasons into which wc need n()t go. The last thing the )new Gh-ana or the new Indi;l wanted was indirect "I)ycrnlllcnt via Ashanti clites \ n " -" lor princely stItes. VVith rare exceptions, sllch as the Indian sllccession states, the '-posr-coloni,d states started with nothing except thcir horders. Henec the obvious contradiction between their tt>rIl1al constitutiollS and politicill l11oJds-iuherited ti'o!11 the metropolcs or inspired "by reYolllti{Hl-,ll1d their politiGll realities. Hence ,doo their tendency to drift inlo military governlllent, which is striking, even in the would-lx~ COI;1I1lunist states, whose' political essence since 1'117 h,ls been the rigid suhordi nation of armed ttlfCes to p;lrty. Here the comparison with the end of the old European empires is instrllctive. \Vhere these had !l\WiOllS inheritors, often with an <\vaiLtble infr;lstrll(ture of gOYCrnl111'nt and administratiolJ, the transition waS simpk, as in most of the Habsburg slIccession states. The major problem \\';IS whethn and how to unit~, and standardil.e the institutions of the nelV st,ltcs composed of units with very ditYerent provenance, e.g., Serbi,\, ex-t\ustrian Slo"enia, and l'x-I [ungarian Croatia, or a Poland with a triple administn1ti\'e and legal heritage. Compared to the post-colonialist cntiti,~s, not n1;\m' ,t;ltes were set Ill' without any historic precedent, i.e., go\"erilmelll,ll contillui;y-Jt)(' instancc, I'resllllubly, but [ don't kilO\\',

16

Alb'lnia, the new B,utic H.'publics of 1918, and the Arab satellite states of Britain ill the l\Iiddle East. The breakup of the USSR ga\'e independence to the entities that had long existed within the Soviet system. On the other hand, they had one thing in common: especiall~' in the ex-comlllunist zone immediately after the overthrow of the old regimes, those countries did encounter an acute problem of tlnding competent and experienced non-communist cadres to run their affairs; that is one reason wIn' the old cadres of the communist era arc returned to office so often in, e.g., Litl~uania, Hungary, and evell Poland. Nevertheless, it seems dear that the post-communist structures of the ex-Soviet Union are still so provision,u and unstable that we can't predict in what direction they arc likely to develop, except that the direction of Western liberal democracy is among the least likely outcomes. . A second comparison mav also be in order. The colonial heritage of post-colonial stiltes was incompatibl~ with the ethnic-linguistic forms of the nation state, even though these sOlJletimes inspired the liberatioll movements. These territories were multiethnic, lIlulti-linguistic, and usual1~' multi-religious, and the only kind of nationalism which could take them ()\'(.'r was one based on an eighteenth .to nineteenth century uni~'i~lg statep.nriotism, lIlaking concessions-rather as the t hbsburgs had eventually dOl;e-t<; local ethnic, linguistic, and other intere~..The post-colonial states have maintained this comprehensi\'e ullity as an ideal, and so far mostly in reality as well. There are some major exceptions, such as the partition of India, but when we cOllsider the tellsions within these scores of multiethnic and multi-religious states, the weakncss of secessionist national l11m'ements of the Western type remains striking. By contrast, the old multiethnic national empires and the USSR were replaced by ethnic-linguistic nationstates ~uong the lines of the nation·,u model unfortlll1atcly shared by Woodrow \Vilson and Joseph Stalin. The attempt to turn plur,t! entities into homogencous· national states mayor m'IY not succeed, but its human costs have been, and continuc to be, appalling and intolerable. We have so ftr considered the end of empires. HO\vc\'er, in conclusion I vvant to draw your attcntion to what mayor may not be a similar phenomenon, namely the breakup of hitherto unified nation-states, centralized or decentr,uized, by secessionist movel11ents. Such tendencies can be seen in senral old states of Europe and in Canada. Indeed in these regions they preceded the much later mO\'el11ents after the breakup of the USSR, though probably not the separatist movements in YugosLwia. So fIr, in spite of the substantial political weight of these movemcnts, 110 old natiollal state has actuallr heen split up-not even Belgium-unless we count the setting up of a new c:lI1ton in Switzerland in 1979. Ne\'ertheless, for thc first time such breakups must be regarded as a serious possibility. To what extent they would produce consequcnces comparahle to those ,:'lllch h,n'(.' been discussed at this conference is a question which I kn'c with you tor another conference. .

PART ONE

Collapse ofEmpires: Causes

3 THINKING ABOUT EMPIRE

ALEXANDERlMOTYL

Common sense tells us that empires rise and t:dl. vVe know that the Roman, Habsburg, Ottoman, and R0I1LlIlO\' re;llms were called empires, alld we kllOWtrom history or, more precisd~', tl"Olll historians-that the~' had tempor;llIy identifiable beginnings and ends, Not surprisingly, we conclude tl);lt the history of entities called empires Illust hold the exphul;\tory key to the rise and ftll of empires, The i~ltllition is correct, but only up to a point. It is of course trivially true that historical knowledge about sdf-st~kd empires is indispensable to theorizing about empires, I Uut, as the case of the So"iet Union shows, empires in name arc not all there is to empire, For if we may, as we ill (Icr do, terlll the USSR an empire, e\'en though its leaders nen;r called it that, then, surely, we arc equ;llly entitled tn gil ag;linst the terminological prdt:rences of self-styled emperors and insist that their realms really may IIQt have been empires,' Coming to grips with the rise and fIll of empires as ;1 cLtss of objects with certain properties Illust also im'oh-c sOlllething so obvious-and so obviously rcdious for 1llost historians-as a conceptu;li an;tlysis,; Only after the concept of iempire (as well as of rise ;lllel t~dl, but that is a ~ubiect ttl[" another essay) has been ! delil"lea~"d ;lnd defined, with respect to its sem.lntiL" fIeld ;l1ld in terms of history, 'experience, kno\\'ledge, intuition, and the like, is ;\1l empirical inquiry ;Ippropriate. On its own, hi,tnricd im'estigalion, 110 Ilutter how rich, detailed, and nuanced, is powerless either to explain why empires rise and t:dl or evell to identit), the class of entities t1ut rise and E111. After all, induction, like deduction, presupposes the ;lbility to distinguish r;1\eIl5 from nOll-raVens and bbck li'om nonblack. I' This argument docs not dispute the ontologiell reality of historical events, bllt it dn\:s assullle that they are kno",ahle ()nI~, through the mediation of 0111' own. langll;lge ;\llll concepts. ' It may thus he interesting to ask why and how historicli

20

suhjects percei\'ed their reality as they dill, but it is m.lIlifestly imp.oss~I~Ic-pa[<, I.eopold von Ranke's aspirations-til(' liS to recn:ate or experience Jt.' 1he w{~rk of Robert Damton shows that a sense of bewilderment inevitably accompanIes our confrontation with historical actors." \Ve may study their language, their texts, and their opinions, bu t we can ne\·.er break ou t of ou r own hermeneutic circle and enter theirs. 1\ lore important, if we could pull off such a trick, our understanding of history would acttmlly be imp.\ired. As Arthur Danto has persuasively argued, the concern.!al distance imposed upon llS hy the passage of time makes history possiblc.-It is precisely "('(IllISe our perspective is rooted in the future that we c.1Il comprehend the past, and not merely chronicle past e\-ents.

What Empire :Might Be Let us begin the conceptual analysis of cmpire by unpacking what may bc its two k.lst unacceptable ddining characteristics:' 1\lost scholars would prob.,bly agree that el-ery empire consists of something called a core and something called a .rerip.ill:r)':' And most might agree that both core allZI periphery, wh,lte\'er they are, arc sinlated in geographicallyb;..lUI1d.ed sp.lces inhabited by cultural1y Qitt~r­ cnt.0Jed clites and popuhtions.'" By "culturally differentiated" I ~ean that core' clites and populations share certain cultural ch,l\",\cteristics and arc ditfen:nt, with respect to these characteristics, from their counterparts in the periphery. It matters not whether these characteristics are physicall~' real or merely imagined. If cores arc situated in hounded spaces, what, then, is situated inside cores? A sensible an SIVer, and till' two reasons, is OIgmziz.lltiom, and not, as one might; expect, institlltions. One reolson is that such a notion of core echoes 1\ lax \,yeber's classic ddinition of the stolte, and empires ar," states. Another is that, thanks to the "new institutionalists," institution has come to mean virtually everything under the sun, thereby becoming almost useless as a concept." The organizations that constitllte a core must, I suggest, be (1) political, economic, and sociocultural (multidimensional); (2) located in a bounded_geographic space (territorially concentrated); (3) SUl;\10rti\'e of one another (mutllally reint(lrcing); and. (4) endowed. with signitic\11t decision making authority (centralized). In sum, a core is a multidimension.\l set of territorially concentrated ,lIld mutually reinforcing organizations exercising highly l:entralized authority in a state. In contrast to cores, pcripheries arc the territorially bounded .Idministrative outposts of centml organi'l..ltions. While there can only be OIH~ core in an empire, there must be at least two peripheries til!' empires to be dis-ll tinguishable from biti.lfcated states, such as the fiHmer Czechoslovakia. J Not surprisingly, the relationship of corc to Core elite is already implicit in the two concepts. Thus, we expect core elites to run core organizations. By the same logic, peripheral clites run peripheral organizations. The rullning of corc organizations manit~sts itself in a variety of ways, sOllle ~'Picil of nonimperial states and SOllle [le<:l!Iiar to empires. \Ne expect core clites,Iike .Ill state clites, to craft 'ti)reign and defense policy, print the curretlcy, and control borders. But imperial

21 ,elites nlllst also have other prerog-~lti\'Cs to be worthy of the moditier. They direct 'the finances of peripheries; the.\' appoint peripheral governors or prctccts; and they arc not accolllltable to the periphery, which, in turn, has 110 legal basis t(lr influencing the .tppointment of core otlicials and the choice o( core policies. 'While the relationship ()f core dite to peripheral elite lIlust therct(lre be termed dictatorial, that of (Orl' elite to core population and of pnipheral elite to peripheral populatioll is indeterminate," 1 emphasize that this understanding of empire, in its exclusi\'e emplusis on the core-periphery relationship, has nothing specific to S'l}, about the regime either of the core polit}' or of the peripheral polity. Whik a species hoth of multinational state and of dictatorship, an empire is not merely a dicLltorial multinational state, but a peculiar kil~d of dic.t~torial 'mu~~I~lal state. Figure 3.1 silu.ttes the concept of empire within a titlllily of related politics. Ethnoterritori.ll federations, such ,IS C.tnada, !()\"Iner socialist Yugoslavia, and post-Soviet Russi~t, have culturally distinct administrative units, but no core institutions. Stich Illultinational dictatorial statL:S as Franco Sp.lin and Saddam llussein's Ir.lq haw cores, hut lack cultural1~' bounded administrati\'C lunits.l\lultill'ltionalnolldict.ttorial states and territorial federations stich as the ~ United States and Switzerl.md possess neither cores nor distinct cultural subunits. I n empires, meanwhile, territorially bounded cores and peripheries arc coterminous with culturall\' distinct administrative units. l\ lore th,m a simple ,- \dictatorial multinational srate, an empire is a highly centralized, territorially segmented, and culturall~' differentiated state within which centralization, segmen(tation, alhi diti~renti-.tti()n m:~rLql.'; - Although I am certain tl;;\t this definition, like all ddinitions, will not meet with universal acclaim, 1 am e<jually certain th,lt it makes some sense conceptually and C\'C1l fits the filets historically. Because the Persian, Roman, early Byzan-

-

Core Present

Clllturaliv distillcr

Empire

Administrative units Nondistil1ct

Ahsent

Ethn(lterritorial federation

1\ lultinational 1\ I uIri national dictatorial state

l1ondictatori ;tl state; territorial tederation

A!cx({lIc/a/ lUof!'!

22

tine, l\ longol, OttoID,IIl, I Iabsburg, Romallm', FrCllch, British, an~ Soyil't polities possessed the ddlning- charactl'ristics of l'mpire, we are justihe~l in saying that they were indeed empires. In each, the organizations clustered III a culruraliI" distinct region usuall)· centered on a capital city and its hinterland exercised dil:ect cOIltrol OITr thl' fin;Jncl's and c1itl's of the rl'st of the empire. Fullv appreciative of the historian's delight in historical richness, we arc not surpri;l'd that thl' dl'grl'c of culrural distinctil"cJll'ss, like the degrcc of control, "aricd, that all re,ll empires only appf()xin~ated the dcflJlitional idcal t)"Pe. The Ottoll1
How Empires Rise As a mental category that servcs only to distinguish one chss of objl'cts from other classcs of objccts, the concept of empire says nothing about the C