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The awakening or return of the imperial phenomenon, and more precisely of imperialism, seems to be a central feature of this moment. After guiding a 1400-page volume bringing together 64 authors from 6 nationalities that is now in bookstores and takes a world history as its stance, does this assessment strike you as pertinent?
Like any univocal diagnosis laid over a complex reality, such a claim has the merit of highlighting a crucial feature of our present, but it must be nuanced, because it perhaps tells us more about our geographic situation than about historical reality.
The sense of witnessing a revival of imperialisms indeed appears most vividly among Europeans, who rightly feel squeezed between Russian, Chinese and American appetites. This malaise stems from the Copernican reversal of the global geopolitical order: Europeans, accustomed since the 16th century to exercising imperialism at the expense of others, now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of being on the receiving end of imperial power.
From the perspective of what is now commonly called the “Global South,” i.e., countries that have suffered Western imperialism for centuries in all its forms, there is not a return of imperialism so much as an expansion of the ranks of its victims, experienced by many as a delicious revenge or an irony of history in which the imperial arrosé finds itself watered in turn, like a Frankenstein who has become the target of his monstrous creation.
That is why what Europeans perceive as imperialism in Russia’s or China’s attitudes can be presented by them and their supporters as anti-imperialist. Because of the still painful memories of Western imperialism in large parts of the world, anything that undermines Western arrogance—including the most cynical predations—tends to be understood in the rest of the world as a blow against imperialism, viewed as an intrinsically Western deviation.
Nicolas Beaupré — Indisputably, our volume, whose project grew out of the continuity with our World History of the XXth Century (PUF, 2002), is set in a new global geopolitical context with Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the election of Donald Trump for a second term in 2024.
Some see in it the emergence of a new neo-imperial or neo-imperialist era. If the prefix “neo” can be debated, it seems striking that the power politics of “old” imperial powers such as Russia or China, or the “younger” ones like the United States, can almost certainly be described as imperialist. This raises for historians the question of continuities with the two preceding centuries when imperial domination was far more widespread than it is today.
Paradoxically, we position ourselves in a period that is at once post-imperial and imperial. In this sense, the 2020s marked a brutal awakening. The end of European colonial empires after 1945 or the collapse of the USSR in 1991 did not turn the page on the history of imperialism. And if one returns to Jean-Baptiste Duroselle’s premise that “Every empire shall perish”, one might add that the death of empires does not imply the death of imperialism.
This is also reflected in a shift in historiography on imperial phenomena: we are not dealing with a finished phenomenon relegated to a past forever closed. It would be a regrettable eurocentrism to think that the end of a particular imperialism, European colonialism, would signal the end of imperialisms in general.
Precisely, how do you define imperialism?
Florian Louis — The concept of imperialism proves difficult to use and pin down for historians because, historically, it began as a concept of struggle, of polemical and political contest, more than a scientific analysis. This explains the strong pejorative charge, whereby many states proudly—though not always rightly—identified as empires, while none ever claimed to be imperialist. In the speeches of historical actors, imperialism designates always the attitude attributed to a rival actor in order to demonize him.
Despite this difficulty, historians have long sought to offer an objective definition of imperialism. The currently dominant definition in the historiography, developed by our colleagues Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper in their sweeping synthesis of 2010, conceives imperialism as a “policy of difference,” i.e., a set of strategies aimed at cohabiting diverse populations within a single sovereign entity. It is an intriguing approach to cover many millennia of history, but it benefits from refinement when one focuses on a shorter historical sequence, as we do in this book.
We are paradoxically situated in a period that is both post-imperial and imperial.
Nicolas Beaupré
Concerning the contemporary era, imperialism seems to be characterized by five criteria: expansionism, vastness, multiethnicity (or multinationality), asymmetry, and coercion. An empire is thus a composite political formation, expansionist or inheriting expansion, within which coexist, over a broad territory—continuous or not—peoples who regard themselves as distinct and one (or more) of whom imposes its primacy over the others.
Nicolas Beaupré — It is also worth noting that “imperialism” as a notion was gradually forged during the period we study in the book, and we are indebted to the increasingly numerous attempts by contemporaries to describe what they saw around them from the late 19th century onward. One may cite John Atkinson Hobson who, in 1902, during the Boers’ War, published Imperialism, A Study in which he highlights the link between capitalism and imperial expansion, while proposing an initial distinction between colonialism and imperialism.
As Florian Louis notes, the notion is also defined by its critics. In a work such as this, one must both offer a workable definition that can grasp the phenomenon in its complexity—an inheritance of a very rich historiographic tradition presented in the book by Talbot Imlay—and also take into account how contemporaries themselves described the phenomenon in which they took part.
How did you structure the work?
Nicolas Beaupré — After an opening section devoted to the legacies of modern European empires, entrusted to Jean-Frédéric Schaub, and a reflection aimed at laying out the conceptual, chronological, and historiographical frameworks, we decided to divide the book into three large parts.
In the first part, we revisit the history of “imperial projections” from their centers: all the major empires and contemporary imperialisms are studied there. Then, in a second part, we examine the effects of these projections in the different spaces that had to endure them (the “theatres” of imperialism): we highlight how different imperialisms interacted on the ground. Finally, in a third part, we address, in thematic terms, the “stakes” of this history for both imperial and imperialized societies.
In the speeches of historical actors, imperialism designates always the attitude attributed to a rival actor in order to demonize him.
Florian Louis
This third part thus offers syntheses on the longue durée that show how imperialism could permeate—and sometimes still permeate—fields as diverse as the law studied by Isabelle Surun, education (Lydia hadj-Ahmed), the visual arts (Marion Lagrange and Daniel Foliard), the environment (Christophe Bonneuil)… With my colleague Nadia Vargaftig, for example, I studied the question of heritage and how the collection of innumerable objects—later displayed and patrimonialized—closely ties to imperial expansion. The debates currently shaking museums worldwide about restitution are a direct inheritance of this era and vividly illustrate the continuing relevance of a living history.
Is imperialism confined to the West?
Florian Louis — In the contemporary period on which the book concentrates, the West, and more specifically Europe, is the hub of the most numerous and powerful imperialisms. It thus occupies a central place in our volume.
But if we insisted on writing a world history of imperialisms, it is not only because European, British and French imperialism spread across the globe. It is also because imperialism did not originate solely from the West. This is true of earlier eras, but also of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
We often fail to perceive this due to a tendency to put historical actors into boxes and to overlook the ambiguity of their positions. The reality is that many actors are both victims of imperialism and its practitioners. Thus China or the Ottoman Empire, which in the 19th century suffered Western (and Japanese in the case of China) imperialism while also imposing their own imperialism on neighboring regions.
That said, it is important to remember that while the reality it designates is universal, the notion of imperialism originates in Europe and should be used with care when discussing civilizations outside that horizon. The very existence of a “Comanche Empire,” popularized and studied by Finnish historian Pekka Hämäläinen, remains a historiographical subject of debate. Highlighting a North American imperialism helps restore agency to the “vanquished” of history who are too often reduced to their supposed subaltern status. But it also risks erasing their otherness by projecting Western interpretive grids onto their political practices. Similar questions arise regarding political formations such as Samori Touré’s Wassoulou Empire or the Sokoto Caliphate. The chapters dedicated to them by Brian J. Peterson and Paul Naylor aim to question their imperiality to enrich both our understanding of these West African states formed in the early 19th century and our grasp of what imperialism is.
Nicolas Beaupré — Proposing a history of imperialism over more than two centuries highlights the geopolitical evolution of the imperial world, with a tectonic shift of ever-evolving empires, marked by decline and fragmentation of some, while others rise, expand, and retract. This long span—nearly two and a half centuries—also allows us to study internal changes within the empires themselves.
You make coercion one of the criteria of imperialism. Yet you also remind us that there exists an informal imperialism that relies on gentler methods of domination.
Florian Louis — Indeed. This is what David Todd calls velvet imperialism in relation to 19th-century France, a way of extending power into spaces without conquering or subjugating them outright. Yet even when it takes an informal route, relying on economic strength and prestige rather than military force, imperialism still presumes an uneven relationship between two poles, one imposing its domination on the other.
China in the 19th century offers a good example. It remained sovereign, yet it came under the yoke of foreign imperialist powers that imposed their preferences and did not hesitate to employ extreme violence when challenged. The Opium Wars (1839-1843 and 1856-1860), the destruction and looting of the Summer Palace in 1860 by French and British forces, attest to this. The crackdown on the Boxer Rebellion in 1901 by a coalition including the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Germany, the United States and Japan reminds us that informal imperialism is not “gentler” than others, by any means.
Nicolas Beaupré — Many works dating back to the 1970s also emphasize the search by colonial powers for “collaborators” or “indigenous collaboration systems” which help to establish and sustain imperial domination. These systems can vary widely, from seeking allies and formalizing treaties with locally identified powers to recruiting and training administrators. In return, these efforts highlight the agentive capacity of the imperialized peoples.
These systems of collaboration, in their great variety, do not exclude recourse to coercion and violence whenever the “center” deems it necessary. The search for local intermediary powers in the russified Poland or the creation of a university in Warsaw in 1816 do not prevent Tsarist Russia from bloodily repressing Polish national uprisings. The crushing of the Budapest and Prague uprisings in 1956 and 1968, in a very different context, also illustrates this resort to force when local collaborators of the Imperium fail or simply weaken.
Let us add that among the most frequently sought recruits by imperial powers are auxiliaries for the armies, tasked with maintaining order. In the case of France, the army massively relied on colonial troops to repress the Malagasy uprising of 1947 with extreme violence. Sooner or later, from entry to retention to disengagement from empire, violence and coercion are part of the repertoires of imperial domination. A notable feature of the contemporary period is that it equips imperial states with increasingly modern and sophisticated military and police tools. The “policy of difference” is also a policy of technological and military difference.
Violence is present in almost all chapters of this book, but we chose to assign a dedicated chapter to the “various forms of imperial violence” to one of its leading specialists, Erik Linstrum, who offers a very fresh reading showing that “the places of imperial violence were not only battlefields and barracks, but also police stations, camps, farms, workplaces and homes.”
What distinguishes imperialism from colonialism?
Florian Louis — Colonialism is a particular form of imperialism characterized by a strong heterogeneity between the imperial center and the peripheries it subjugates, resulting in a more condescending, oppressive, and violent treatment of the latter than in empires that comprise more homogeneous populations. This pronounced center-periphery heterogeneity, expressed both culturally and economically, is especially prevalent for empires spanning several continents, which is why imperial continental empires are sometimes contrasted with colonial empires. Yet there are instances where continental imperialism adopts a colonial stance, as with Russia in the Caucasus or the German Second Reich in Silesia or Galicia.
Nicolas Beaupré — Upon reflection, as we’ve already mentioned, context likely played a role in our approach and in the book’s title. Choosing to study imperialism allows us to undertake a global approach that encompasses all empires. Moreover, the abundance of studies and syntheses on the history of colonial worlds is probably also a product of a post-colonial Western-centric context. Colonial history nonetheless holds a very important place in our book. For us, choosing to study imperialism rather than merely colonialism does not amount to downplaying European and Western colonial history, but rather to broadening the approach geographically and chronologically.
Should imperialism therefore be considered in the plural?
Florian Louis — Indeed, the five criteria of contemporary imperialism that we propose give this category coherence but certainly not uniformity. Imperialism is protean and ever-changing. That is why it is problematic to speak unambiguously of a “French,” “Chinese,” or “British” imperialism, as if they were uniform and immutable. They are not. The studies gathered in the book’s first part on different imperial projections clearly show that ruptures are as important as continuities in this domain.
Even when it takes an informal turn and relies on the economy and prestige rather than military force, imperialism presupposes an uneven relationship between two poles, one imposing its domination on the other.
Florian Louis
As an example—and as Aurélien Lignereux shows in the chapter devoted to it—there exists a French imperialism that extends over the long duration from the sixteenth century to the present day. But the imperialism of Louis XIV bears little resemblance to that of Napoleon, which itself differs from that of the Third Republic. Under the Third Republic, imperialism takes neither the same form nor the same meaning depending on whether one is in Algeria (divided into three départements since 1848), in Tunisia (under protectorate since 1881), or in Madagascar (a colony since 1897).
Why begin your history of contemporary imperialisms in the nineteenth century?
Florian Louis — Imperialism is one of the oldest historical phenomena. Its appearance can be traced back to the very origins of the state, three millennia before our era. This is why it has given rise to vast historiographical syntheses of great length, whether Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper’s work mentioned earlier, or the collection led by Peter Fibiger Bang, Christopher A. Bayly and Walter Scheidel. Our aim was not to duplicate these benchmark works but to take a step aside by focusing on a precise and relatively brief period within the long history of imperialism: the contemporary era. We begin in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, convinced that there was a decisive turning point after Napoleon rather than after Tamerlane, as John Darwin suggested, in the history of imperialism.
The nineteenth century indeed constitutes a pivotal hinge in the history of imperialism, as it dialectically fuses a new force that is at once antagonistic and congruent: nationalism. Antagonistic because the nation-state project acts as a powerful solvent of empires. Congruent because nationalism also serves as a powerful catalyst for imperialism, with imperial expansion conceived as both a vector and a manifestation of national unity and power.
Nationalism radically changes the nature of imperialism: empires are no longer merely in conflict with other empires seeking to displace them, but also against nations seeking to bring them down to make way for other political arrangements—nation-states. These states can themselves, in turn, slip into imperialism, giving rise to an hybrid, even oxymoronic reality: imperial nation-states. A cocktail as surprising as it is explosive, the origin of many geopolitical upheavals known to the world since the nineteenth century.
The central role of nationalism in imperial dynamics changes the very nature of these dynamics. They no longer respond exactly to the differential logic emphasized by Burbank and Cooper: in the case of China in Xinjiang or Russia in Ukraine, we are dealing with imperial powers that not only treat different populations differently, but who also, in a assimilationist logic, strive to erase this difference, by sinicizing or forcibly Russifying societies that have formed their identity and wish to preserve their distinctiveness.
Nicolas Beaupré — It can indeed be said that the nineteenth century is both the era of the “concert of nations” and the “ball of empires.” It is also the period in which the great divergence between empires with strong financial, economic, industrial and technological capacities and those more left behind becomes increasingly apparent, altering inter-imperial balances while greatly increasing the means of projecting and maintaining imperial order for those who possess them. This multiplication of power affected not only rivalries but also cooperation among empires that had good reasons to fear a military conflagration. In turn, it likely created a dependence on resources drawn from territories under imperial domination.
Can one discern phases in the history of nineteenth-century imperialisms up to the present?
Nicolas Beaupré — While the trajectory of each empire has its own unique history, we found it possible to sketch a periodization, which we explain in one of the opening chapters of the book.
The years from the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), sometimes regarded as a first world war, to the 1830s, marked by Franco-British rivalry, are those of a withdrawal of Latin empires (France, Spain, Portugal) and the beginning of the decline of several multi-centennial empires (Ottoman, Indian, Chinese, Persian). These years also mark the early construction of British hegemony at sea that remained virtually unrivaled, at least globally, until around the 1870s.
The 1830s-1870s are, in turn, characterized by the emergence of anti-imperial movements within empires, due to the assertion of openly anti-imperialist ideologies, with nationalism at the forefront. The strengthening of state and military apparatuses allowed many empires to weather these crises and, in some cases, such as Germany, to emerge both as an nation-state and as an empire.
The construction of modern states, the power amplified by capitalism, and the crystallization of imperial ideologies open from the 1870s to the Great War an era defined by both rivalry and inter-imperial cooperation. This period yields an imperialized world and tutelage over Africa and Asia. The British Empire continued to dominate, but other empires—especially European ones—expanded through colonial conquest (France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and others) while new imperial powers outside Europe emerged. The year 1904 marks, on the one hand, Roosevelt’s assertion of American imperial ambitions, and, on the other, the beginnings of the Russo-Japanese War which confirms Japan’s imperial vocation.
The era opened by the Great War and ending in the 1960s-1970s is defined by a de-Europeanization of the global imperial system and by decolonization. It does not, however, signal the end of imperialism, since the Cold War can be read as a confrontation between two empires and two imperialisms.
The end of the USSR seemed for a time to herald a fully post-imperial era. We now know that it was not the case, and that this post-imperial era was at best a brief interlude and at worst a grand illusion.
Are imperialisms inherently generators of wars?
Florian Louis — Imperialism indeed gives rise to numerous armed conflicts, whether to subdue populations by force or to extend the territorial base of one empire at the expense of another. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904 provides a prime example of an intense armed confrontation directly provoked by the antagonistic expansionist ambitions of two competing imperial powers.
However, one must be careful not to reduce imperialism to this polemical dynamic alone. First, an empire can also imply peace or at least present itself as such, as in the propagandistic rhetoric of Pax Britannica. Second, far from always clashing, imperialisms can also cooperate to achieve their aims. The Berlin Conference (1884-1885), orchestrated and desired by Bismarck, was not simply a “partition of Africa” in the strict sense, but aimed to regulate access to the continent to prevent predatory powers from sliding into a global war. It stands as an illustration of cooperation among imperialist powers whose rivalries did not prevent synergies.
Nicolas Beaupré — This lesson seems to have held at least up to 1914. On several occasions, imperial rivalries could have spiraled into war—such as at Fachoda in 1898 between the French and the British, or in Morocco in 1905 and 1911 between the French and Germans. Yet diplomacy ultimately prevailed. World War I was indeed a war between empires, which helped globalize the conflict, but it was not, as a Marxist reading long claimed, a war triggered solely by imperial expansionist motivations. In the aftermath of the conflict, while this factor was not the sole explanation, the victors were those who could mobilize most efficiently the resources of their respective empires.
The end of the USSR seemed for a time to be read as the entrance into a fully post-imperial era. We know today that this was not so.
Nicolas Beaupré
World War II, for its part, had clear imperialist roots, so much so that it has been described as “the great imperial war” par excellence. The Nazi regime, which triggered the war, proclaimed and implemented a radical imperialist ideology from the outset. More than in the Great War, all the resources of the warring empires were mobilized and they became battlefields and ruins of a world war. With it, the final sigh of European imperialism rose.
What differentiates today’s Chinese, Russian, and American imperialisms from those of the 19th and 20th centuries? And are they of a similar nature to one another?
Nicolas Beaupré — To begin with, perhaps, to echo Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau speaking of the “denial of war” among European societies living in the comforting illusion of perpetual peace, are we simply emerging from a “denial of imperialism”?
Perhaps we Europeans projected onto the world our own long and painful exit from an imperial era, without seeing that other imperial powers did not take that path. Evidently, for Vladimir Putin, the collapse of the USSR as an empire represented a catastrophe, which, however, had to be overcome and redeemed. As Sabine Dullin shows in her chapter on the long duration of Russian imperialism in light of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, it is possible to reread interventions in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria as the continuation of a Russian imperial destiny fully embraced by the present power.
As for Ludovic Tournès’ chapter on American imperialism, it highlights the continuities between Trumpist imperial rhetoric and its references to Cuba, Panama, Venezuela and even Greenland, and the Roosevelt-era corollary to the Monroe Doctrine as well as an even older claim of a “manifest destiny” justifying American expansionism.
The case of China, treated in our book by Clément Fabre, is perhaps more complex and newer relative to a legacy of imperialism interrupted by Western powers’ stripping China of its autonomy. If the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control and the persistent claim over Taiwan’s belonging to China, as well as border tensions with India, and the internal crackdown on identities perceived as divergent can be read within the long history of the Middle Kingdom’s empire, the current regime projects influence on a broader scale that resembles more of an “informal imperialism,” largely foreign to China before the 21st century. Today, technological, financial, and commercial dependencies are being carefully woven on a global scale.
Florian Louis — We do not sufficiently emphasize the originality of Putin’s imperialism. There is indeed a tendency to find it natural that a defeated empire seeks to rise again when opportunity presents itself. Yet this is a completely unprecedented attitude in contemporary history: neither Japan, Germany, Italy, France, nor Great Britain—among the major fallen empires of the 20th century—had ambitions for Reconquista as grand as those promoted by the current master of the Kremlin. Countless imperial powers have attempted to oppose the emancipation of peoples seeking to free themselves from their rule, be it France in Indochina or Algeria, or the Netherlands in Indonesia. There are also many cases where a former imperial power manages, more or less subtly, to maintain forms of influence or even coercion over its former possessions (the notion of “Françafrique” comes to mind). But there is no example of an imperial power simply re-annexing a former province decades after independence, as Russia is attempting in Ukraine today. In some respects, imperialist Nazi Germany was driven by a desire to avenge the loss of the first German empire in 1918, but it did so by targeting Eastern Europe, not former colonies in Africa or Oceania. The empire was shifting its offensive toward new prey.
The current Chinese imperialism follows another logic. With the exception of Taiwan, Xi Jinping does not seek to merely annex territories. His aim is rather to make China the heart of a global, hierarchical network of dependent states—allegiant and otherwise—that would secure global action and influence capabilities, in order to establish an efficient but discreet hegemony that maintains a front against imperialism while demonizing Western rivals.
As for the Trumpist imperialism, it shows strong similarities with the Monroe, Roosevelt, or McKinley era in that it proclaims American hegemony over a “Western Hemisphere” that is treated as Washington’s natural hunting ground. As his predecessors did in the 19th century, Donald Trump defends his imperial claims by arguing that the United States must counter incursions by extra-American imperialism on “their” continent. But whereas during the Monroe Doctrine period (1823) the aim was to counter European empires, today it is China’s ambitions in places like Panama or Venezuela that serve as pretexts for American intervention. A whole symbol of the Copernican reversal I mentioned at the outset of our conversation.