Empires, modern states, and colonialism(s): A preface

Abstract

We should distinguish between state in the sense of the modern national power state and empire in the sense of a pre-modern polity of loose political structure, characterized by a plurality of territories, peoples, and languages. Maritime colonial empires are an additional overseas achievement of modern national power states separate from the metropolis. They start as strongholds or as settler colonies and end as a system of colonies of rule. In contrast, continental colonial empires start with the conquest of additional territory which afterwards is controlled by strongholds and penetrated by settlers of the empire’s leading people. In these cases, there is no difference between imperial and colonial conquest. In maritime empires state building precedes empire building, of continental empires the opposite is true.