ABSTRACT
Although it is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, we define empire in simple terms as the expansion beyond national boundaries of economic activities, especially investment, sales, extraction of raw materials, and the use of labor to produce commodities and services – as well as the social, political, and economic effects of this expansion. Empire has achieved many advantages for economically dominant nations. Ventures to expand empire have involved both capitalist countries and socialist superpowers (including the ‘social imperialism’ of the former Soviet Union). For centuries, empire included military conquest and the maintenance of colonies under direct political control. The decline of colonialism in the twentieth century, however, led to the emergence of political and economic ‘neocolonialism,’ by which poor countries provided similar advantages to richer countries as they had provided under the earlier, more formal versions of colonialism. Why use the term ‘empire,’ rather than ‘globalization’? The latter term
proliferated rapidly since the early 1980s, roughly corresponding to the growth of neoliberalism as a set of policies that dominated international relations. The theory of neoliberalism argued that market exchange maximized the social good and that human well-being could advance best by enhancing individual entrepreneurial activities within the framework of strong property rights, a free market, and free trade (Harvey 2005). Neoliberalism claimed that economic growth was beneficial for everyone, at least in the long term. One of the theory’s main assumptions was that economic development, accompanied by regular growth of the economy, comprised a necessary and sufficient condition to solve the problem of poverty.1
