Empires have good and bad consequences. Ethical categories sit badly with historians. Historiography consists in the periodization of time. Historians define all sorts of categories: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Glorious Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Thatcher years, and so on, from the very long to the very brief. (This is hardly to say that historians are agreed on these categorizations, as, e.g., Industrial Revolution which can have begun any where from the 12th to the 18th cents. in Europe.) The best that the complexities of history permit are discrete balances of right and wrong, which even then never produce simon-pure results. Empires span the whole of history and here it is impossible to have any sort of ethical accounting. The most that can be said is that history, by myriad devious means, embodies the aspirations of mankind. Any list of these must include the rights to a livelihood, to appeal against wrong, and to profess beliefs freely. These aspirations are realized mainly through "subconscious cognitive processes", which is just a highfalutin way of saying that the "for-lack-of-a-nail" approach to history is probably wrong. Individuals and fortuitous events are not the key to history: humanity as a whole is.

Humanity then is the "engine of history" of last account, although this is but part of a coherent whole, which includes the concept of cultural density in the sense of an aggregate of circumstances yielding, significantly for the history of empires, technological advances, among which political organization must be included. Hence, very summarily, the better-organized Achaemenid Empire overwhelmed the Near Eastern kingdoms, the Phalanx bested Persian battle scenarios, the Legions lorded it over the Mediterranean world and most of Europe for centuries, the Carolingian idea of empire imposed itself over less compelling forms of statehood, cannon gave the Ottomans the edge over the peoples they conquered until they they came head on against West Europeans (who invented cannon), and material progress in all fields permitted the formation of European colonialist empires. Exceptions as usual tend to prove the rule (although we are not talking by any stretch of "historical laws") and Islam grew explosively, as it seems, from the force of a powerful religious idea, which is in part how the Holy Roman Empire also developed. And the Chinese and Rusian empires, which were begotten almost simultaneously, benefited as much from the resources they possessed as from the weaknesses of their neighbours.

Empires are a reality of history. It would be an exaggeration to say that a history of empires is the history of the world. But empires have been crucial and in telling the history of empires it is possible to encompass political geography since the beginning of history in Sumer. But today it is possible to say that empires no longer exist. Say that "globalization" has taken their place, say anything, but empires not only are a thing of the past, they also appear to be no longer viable. Technology might have to do with this, as when Afghanistan was able to throw out the Russians with sophisticated American weapons its resistance fighters barely knew how to use. An explanation seems uncontestable and it is that the "westernization" of the world, which is not incompatible with the subsistence of regional traditions, makes empires obsolete. A world civilization does not require empires. No civilization is at risk today. No culture has to be defended against extinction. Cultural anthropologists could quarrel with this, but they would be losing sight of the wood for tiny shrubs. History like empires can be pitiless and its processes must be taken as they come.

The achievements of empires

What in sum did empires achieve? What were empires for? One thing is for sure and it is that empires have been more influential than lesser states. Bigness counts in history whether we like it or not. But not any sort of bigness. Not bigness per se . It must be in some way connected to mankind's goals through the ages. To put it succinctly, empires have been the greatest political expressions of civilizations, which are the necessary context of cultural density. They are the cradles of civilizations (Persia, Rome, Islam), they are bastions of cultures (Byzantine Empire, Carolingian Empire, Habsburg Empire), and they are the vehicles for their expansion (Ottoman Empire, European colonialist empires, Russia). This is not the same as saying that cultures necessarily disappear without the protection of empires, as the survival of Hinduism in India demonstrates. At most empires have been crucial at certain historical junctures for the survival, stabilization, and spread of civilization. This means that the rise and fall of empires--and, it must be added, their successor states--is of the essence in the world-historical process. Not for nothing the fate of individual empires has been re-enacted in our times as the paroxysm and demise of the imperial concept itself. So to ask what empires were for is almost like asking what history is all about today.