What is an Empire?

In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, which urged colonists to declare independence from the British Empire. In the introduction, Paine wrote:

“The Cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword [and] declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling.”

Paine’s prediction proved correct. The American Revolution would continue to inspire anti-imperialist movements well into the twentieth century. But to understand America’s revolt against empire, we must first ask what an empire is.

Above all else, empires are expansionist, continually aiming to extend their boundaries. It took only two years after the first English settlement in North America for the king to claim dominion over the entire continent.

Empires are territorial. When competing empires claim sovereignty over the same area, they wage war to settle boundary disputes. Thousands of colonists died defending Britain’s territorial claims in America, which Paine saw as an indictment of empire. “Let Britain wave her pretensions to the continent,” he argued. “We should be at peace with France and Spain.”

Empires are also centralized. The British Empire stretched across the globe, but the laws governing these distant territories were decided by political elites in London. These policies included a centralized economic system known as mercantilism, which required all foreign trade to flow through England so the Crown could collect customs revenues.

In Common Sense, Paine recognized how centralized authority replaced commerce with conflict. “Europe is our market for trade,” he wrote, but “submission to Great Britain, tends directly to involve [America] in wars with nations who would otherwise seek our friendship.”

Finally, empires—like all governments—are coercive. By the 1770s, Americans could not escape the violent reality behind Britain’s efforts to compel their submission. Paine concluded his call for independence by proclaiming that “All subjection to Britain ought to have ceased” after colonists witnessed “the violence done to our persons; [and] the destruction of our property by an armed force.”

After waking up to the dangers of an expansionist, territorial, centralized, and coercive government, Americans became convinced that the greatest threat to liberty was the instrument of imperial control: a permanent, professionalized military. To understand how the United States started down its own path toward empire, we must look first to how certain political leaders overcame America’s fear of standing armies.

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