Empire and ethnicity†

ABSTRACT. Historians and social scientists have typically assumed a conflictual or exploitative relationship between empire and ethnicity. On the one hand, empire might be seen (as perhaps Ernest Gellner saw it in Nations and Nationalism) as a superstructure of coercion to which a group of ethnic units were subject. On the other (according to an influential view), empire fabricated ethnicities (tribes or castes) to divide and rule. This article suggests that both of these views are too crude. In the British case at least (and in the modern history of empire, no generalisation that excludes the British case has much value), ‘imperial ethnicity’ was a much more subtle phenomenon. It existed ‘at home’ as one element in a more complex identity. It was a powerful force in British settler societies, where an indigenous identity could not be imagined. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was deeply attractive to some colonial elites in Asia and Africa – at least for a time.     

帝国论与俄罗斯帝国的形成及其特点

20世纪是"帝国崩溃的世纪",国内外学者们对帝国学和帝国的关注度逐渐提高。本文将立足于帝国学的角度,分析帝国的类型,并考察苏联的前身——俄罗斯帝国的形成过程及其特点,指出俄国斯帝国是一个中央集权的强大的非殖民帝国,在自身社会发展过程中结合了东方专制制度和欧洲专制主义的特性,是各民族团结的典范。