ABSTRACT
The claim that the Grand Duchy was an empire raises the question of how it could be that the finest specialists in the Grand Duchy's history did not see that the Grand Duchy was indeed an empire. The imperial character of the Grand Duchy as a state becomes obvious if we do not limit ourselves to this contrast (so deeply entrenched in the Lithuanian consciousness), but include more empires in the field of comparison. This is being done in contemporary comparative studies of empires, where empires are not just political entities that lay claim in one way or another to the legacy of the Roman Empire. The concepts of empire used in this body of research are broad enough to embrace also the polities that were beyond the European sphere of consciousness up until the modern age and vice versa. The British ruled over many other colonies in the same way, which had the status of vassal states or protectorates.
