The Role of Marginal Entrepreneurial Figures in Imperial Expansion

European colonial empires once spanned the globe and today persist in our memories as marvels of political force. The platitude that “the sun never sets on the British Empire” recalls the sheer vastness of its dominion, but we should be careful to avoid projecting the idea of a conquering state’s political will into the past. Abernethy’s assertion that metropoles consciously create empires is invalid because it ignores the role of individual agency and falsely attributes the rise of European empires to decision-making at the state level. In contrast, Jasanoff shows that imperial development can actually begin as a piecemeal evolution due primarily to economically motivated marginal characters. Empires are eventually built by the state, but men on the make plant the initial seeds.

Abernethy’s background as a political scientist is apparent in The Dynamics of Global Dominance, as he attempts to synthesize social science and history in a series of specific time periods of imperial contraction and expansion. European empires expanded during two distinct phases, from 1415 to 1773 and from 1824 to 1912 (Abernethy 24). During these times, European nation-states intentionally created their respective empires using political control. He defines the word “empire” as “a relationship of domination and subordination between one polity (called the metropole) and one or more territories (called colonies) that lie outside the metropole’s boundaries yet are claimed as its lawful possessions” (Abernethy 19).

While a concise, exact definition of empire is useful for Abernethy's social science analysis, it is limiting in that it focuses on imperial expansion and territorial acquisitions as political units. This approach neglects the political and economic roles of countless travelers and expatriates who gradually infiltrate different societies, creating informal economic links along the way which eventually become integrated into the metropole’s political sphere....