empress

From Middle English emperice, emperesse, from Anglo-Norman and Old French empereriz, from Latin imperatrix, equivalent to emperor + -ess. Doublet of imperatrix. Compare modern French impératrice.

Sit downe by her: adorned with my Crowne,
As if thou wert the Empreſſe of the world.

c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:

The female monarch (ruler) of an empire.

Empress, imperial regent, and even emperor herself (r. 797–802), Irene was an important and powerful figure at the Byzantine court in the late eighth and early ninth century.

2008, Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe: Society in Transformation, page 211:

The wife or widow of an emperor or equated ruler.


emperor

From Middle English emperour, from Anglo-Norman emperour, from Latin imperātorem, derived from imperāre (“to command”). Doublet of imperator.

The Investiture Controversy was a conflict between the Emperor and the Pope.

(political theory) Specifically, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire; the world-monarch.


empire

/ˈɛm.paɪ̯ə̯/

From Middle English empire, from Old French empire, empere, from Latin imperium, inperium (“command, control, dominion, sovereignty, a dominion, empire”), from imperare, inperare (“to command, order”), from in (“in, on”) + parare (“to make ready, order”). Doublet of empery and imperium.

British people [...] continued to believe in empire. It was what gave Britain a unique role in the world, and in return Britain had drawn strength from its empire to enable it to survive two great wars that had wrecked so many of its competitors. Imperial management in the twentieth[…]

2001 August 2, P. J. Marshall, The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 105:

Since Britain imported mainly foodstuffs from its empire, no preferences could be granted to the colonies without Britain first imposing a tariff on foodstuffs imported from other countries.

2021 April 13, Daniel Verdier, Democracy and International Trade: Britain, France, and the United States, 1860-1990, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 139:

The group of states or other territories that owe allegiance to an imperial power (foreign to them), when distinguished from the native territory of that power; imperial possessions.


imperial

en-noun

imperial (countable and uncountable, plural imperials)

From Middle English imperial, from Old French imperial, from Latin imperiālis (“of the empire or emperor, imperial”), from imperium (“empire, imperial government”) + -ālis, from imperō (“command, order”), from im- (“form of in”) + parō (“prepare, arrange; intend”). Displaced Old English cāserlīċ.

der

There are who say the sonnet's meted maze
Is all too fettered for the poet's powers,
Compelled to crowd his flush and airy flowers
Like pots of tall imperials, ill at ease.

1816, John Freeman Milward Dovaston, The Sonnet:


imperialism

en-noun

imperialism (countable and uncountable, plural imperialisms)

Though most of the cases here cover European encounters with non-Europeans, it is not the intention of the book to give the impression that genocide is a function of European colonialism and imperialism alone.

2008 June 1, A. Dirk Moses, “Preface”, in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, Berghahn Books, →ISBN, page x:

The policy of forcefully extending a nation's authority by territorial gain or by the establishment of economic and political dominance over other nations.

The moral imperialism of the Supreme Court did not end with Chief Justice Warren’s resignation nor with the departures of the Justices who made up his distinctive majority.

1990, Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law, →ISBN, page 101:

By contrast, economists of the Chicago School approach [sociology] from a standpoint of the imperialism of economics, in the sense that they advance the study of substructure into the areas of the study of superstructure, by researching it as economics.

1998, Michio Morishima, “Foreword: Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883–1950) and Yasuma Takata (1883–1972)”, in Joseph Schumpeter, Yasuma Takata, Power or Pure Economics?, →ISBN, page xxxvi:

[…] her analysis of the discourse on private belief […] “reduced” and thus “explained away” my intuitions as being something other than what I experience them to be for myself. It was therefore the imperialism of her method that I claimed to be particularly offensive.

2015, Russell T. McCutcheon, A Modest Proposal on Method: Essaying the Study of Religion, →ISBN, page 33:

(figurative, derogatory) Any undue extension of political, intellectual, or other forms of authority.


superpower

superpower (countable and uncountable, plural superpowers)

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Our superpower competition will be reunified Germany (perhaps together with its European satellites) and expanding Japan (perhaps allied with China, if they can bring that off).

1990 February 5, William Safire, “Staying a Superpower”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

The year 1945 marked the end of Europe's global hegemony and confirmed the US and the Soviet Union as global superpowers.

1999, David Held, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture, page 97:

(countable) A sovereign state with dominant status on the globe and a very advanced military, especially the United States or formerly the Soviet Union.


colonialism

colonialism (countable and uncountable, plural colonialisms)

The policy of a country seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories, generally with the aim of economic dominance.

kolonializëm

policy of authority over people or territories


Great Satan

Calque of Iranian Persian شیطان بزرگ (šeytân-e bozorg), which is more often the name of the largest of the three jamarat at which stones are thrown during the hajj. The derogatory sense is coined by Supreme Leader of Iran from 1979 to 1989 Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 one day after the onset of the Iran hostage crisis.

coinage

Ahmadinejad, facing serious political problems, can posture about standing up to the Great Satan.

2007, Alexander Cockburn, “Will they nuke Iran?”, in The Free Press:

Or, have Muslims been alienated from the Congress because of the Prime Minister's warm embrace of the Great Satan?

2007, Swapan Dasgupta, “Muslims aren't the only voters”, in The Pioneer:

United States of America
United States of America

(derogatory, mostly used by Muslims, especially in Iran) The United States of America, particularly with regard to its perceived imperialist foreign policy.


Cocacolonization

Blend of Coca-Cola + colonization The word was first documented in 1949 in Australia and France.

(colloquial, often pejorative) Globalization or cultural colonization likened to westernization or Americanization consisting of the importing of western or American goods or cultural values to the detriment of local goods or values.


imperialist

From imperial + -ist, after French impérialiste.


manifest destiny

Popularly attributed to newspaper editor John O'Sullivan (1813–1895). The phrase was first used primarily by Jackson Democrats in the 1840s to promote the annexation of much of what is now the Western United States.

昭昭天命

cultural belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America

The political doctrine or belief held by the United States of America, particularly during its expansion, that the nation was destined to expand toward the west.

The political doctrine or belief held by many citizens of the United States of America that their system is best, and the idea that all humans would like to become Americans.

The belief that God supports the expansion of the United States of America throughout the entire North American continent except Mexico.


manifest destiny

en-verb

manifest destiny (third-person singular simple present manifests destiny, present participle manifesting destiny, simple past and past participle manifested destiny)

manifests destiny (present singular third-person)
manifesting destiny (participle present)
manifested destiny (participle past)
manifested destiny (past)

The Homestead Acts allowed millions of settlers to populate unclaimed land and manifest destiny out on the frontier.

(informal) To exercise and realize manifest destiny; to enable the cultural and political expansion of the United States of America.


neocolonialism

en-noun

neocolonialism (countable and uncountable, plural neocolonialisms)

/ˌniːəʊkəˈləʊnjəlɪzəm/

From neo- + colonialism, or neocolonial + -ism.

The control or domination by a powerful country over weaker ones (especially former colonies) by the use of economic pressure, political suppression and cultural dominance.

اِسْتِعْمَار جَدِيد

control or domination of one country by another


white man's burden

From the poem The White Man's Burden (published 1899) by Rudyard Kipling.

Uncle Sam has found his box of tricks heavy, and is having a whiff before going on with his white man's burden to the end.

1902 January 2, The Evening Telegraph, Charters Towers, page 3, column 2:

Germany's appearance as a colonizing power in Africa was greeted in no unfriendly spirit by either France or Great Britain. Each of the latter felt that it was already possessed of about all it could comfortably look after, and both realized that another shoulder under "The White Man's Burden" in the Dark Continent might make the load easier for all.

1915 October 6, Lewis Ransome Freeman, “Germany's Exit From Africa”, in The World's Work, volume XXX:

So into at least one state troops poured, a battalion of decent National Service lads, to continue to carry, posthumously as it must be supposed, the White Man's Burden.

1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 609:

The supposed responsibility of European people to govern and care for their colonial subjects.


expansionism

expansionism (countable and uncountable, plural expansionisms)

European colonialism exported its domestic, counter-revolutionary Inquisition around the world, starting with Portuguese expansionism around 1500 C.E.

2007 September 27, Leslie Feinberg, “Western rulers imposed anti-gay laws throughout world”, in Workers World:

The policy, of a nation, of expanding its territory or its economic influence.


colonialization

colonialization (countable and uncountable, plural colonializations)

Bringing into subjection or subjugation, and implies the subjugation or pacification of a people, and taking of a pre-populated land.


Lebensraum

Unadapted borrowing from German Lebensraum (literally “living room”).

ubor

(in German history from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth Centuries) Territories considered appropriate for German habitation, regarded as vital for the natural flourishing of the German race:

(in early usage) an empire in the form of overseas colonies, in imitation of contemporary powers such as Britain and France.


Rising Sun

A number of places in the United States:

An unincorporated community in Leflore County, Mississippi.


cybercolonialism

Colonialism with regard to the Internet or cyberspace.


American Empire

The one thing that Noam Chomsky and Paul Wolfowitz might agree upon is the reality of an American Empire.

2005, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “The American Empire? Not so Fast”, in World Policy Journal, volume 22, number 1, page 43:

The United States of America together with its allies, viewed as having the qualities characteristic of an empire.


Great Game

(historical) The strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia, mainly during the 19th century.


neocolonialization

(sociopolitics) Exacting control or domination through economic pressure, political suppression and cultural dominance, especially by a developed and powerful country against a developing former colony.


Eurasianism

neo-Eurasianism

specifically the ideology by Aleksandr Dugin and the like

Ruscism

a movement supporting Vladimir Putin and militarism

(politics) A far-right movement and its ideology promoted by Alexandr Dugin, often seen as a Russian kind of fascism


Duginism

(politics) The political ideology of Russian political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin.


Ruscism

Borrowed from Russian раши́зм (rašízm) or Ukrainian раши́зм (rašýzm), blend of Ра́ша (Ráša, “Russia (chiefly derogatory)”) + фаши́зм (fašízm, “fascism”), the first an unadapted borrowing from English Russia. Compare Russian Росси́я (Rossíja, “Russia”) or Ukrainian Росі́я (Rosíja, “Russia”).

blend

Pro-Ukrainian commentators also used the word Rashizm. Derived from Rasha (from the English “Russia”), combined with the Russian fashizm, and perhaps best translated as “Ruscism,” this term is . . .

2015, Elizaveta Gaufman, “Memory, Media, and Secularization: Russian Media Framing of the Ukrainian Crisis,” in Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society (→ISSN), v 1, n 1, pp 160–61

Pro-Ukrainian commentators have also used the word ‘Rashism’ (conflation of ‘Russia’ and ‘fascism’) to emphasize the aggressive intentions of Russia.

2016, Elizaveta Gaufman, “Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis” (New Security Challenges series), Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, p 107

On the other side, a large segment of the Ukrainian press has been presenting the Putin regime as fascist: commentators have coined the nickname Putler (Putin + Hitler) and the term Rashism, which conflates Russia and fascism.

2020, Marlene Lurelle, “Reductio ad Hitlerum as a New Frame for Political and Geopolitical Conflicts,” in Eric Shiraev, Jennifer Keohane, Martijn Icks, and Sergei A. Samoilenko editors, Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management, New York and Abingdon: Routledge, p 315

[…] science, and science-based ultramodern technologies (AI) invented for progress have transformed into cynical means of conducting the third world war by immoral intellect of the ideologists of Ruscism [4].

2020 April 27, Actual problems of science and practice, International Science Group, →ISBN, page 175:

“We have beat fascism, and we will defeat Ruscism,” said Pavel Kirilenko, governor of the Donetsk region, who arrived with heavily armed guards to lay flowers at the monument.

2022 May 10, Michael Schwirtz, “Invasion upends a shared World War II history with Ukraine”, in The Boston Globe, volume 301, number 130, page A8:

(politics, neologism, slang, derogatory) Russian fascism, Russianism, Great Russian chauvinism; the ideology of Russia, seen as fascism or as fascist.


settler colonialism

A form of colonialism in which colonizers seek to displace Indigenous populations from their land in order to establish permanent settlements of their own.


colonial empire

en-noun

colonial empire (plural colonial empires)

(historical, geopolitics) A collective of territories that are either contiguous with the imperial center or located overseas, and settled by the population of a certain state and governed by that state.


global empire

(geopolitics) An empire that extends its territory or influence on a wide or global scale.