Abstract

It used to be said that empire was a thing of the past. No one can really believe that anymore – with a Russian war of expansion in the Ukraine, a globally more assertive China and even the current American president contemplating territorial expansion. International relations have responded by turning to “hierarchy” as a theoretical concept to tackle this problem. This paper, however, argues that we need to go all the way. Empire cannot be avoided, but is a powerful concept to study order among states. It is not so much empire that has disappeared, that is the claim of this paper, as it is Western Europe that has ceased as the centre of imperial power. When President Wilson announced in 1918 that “the days of empire and conquest” were over, a wave of decolonization followed in the wake of the end of both World War 1 and World War 2. And that used to be taken as the meaning of the “Wilsonian Moment”. What this paper argues instead, is that the Wilsonian moment gave birth to a series of global, ostentatiously anti-colonialist, but in fact no less imperial powers. We need a more long-duree perspective to understand this development. The paper will end by suggesting to resurrect the notion of a succession of imperial regimes, going right back to antiquity, to better grasp the question of world order.