Empire, Imperial Federation

The political unification of diverse but related peoples under a common sovereign authority, which leaves each individual people autonomous and free.

A federated empire is united, but not blindly homogenised, like the egalitarian nation-state. It revolves around the function of sovereignty, while preserving the diversity of its other functions. Its existence is legitimated by the power and longevity of its peoples, federated within a political and historical community. The empire’s vocation is not to become a ‘World State’, like Islam or the American System, but instead embraces and guides the destiny of those peoples who historically, culturally, and ethnically feel themselves to be part of the same general community.

There’s also a negative conception — a suicidal conception — of empire. This is the model of the late Roman Empire, following the edicts of Caracalla (who granted Roman citizenship to all the Empire’s subjects, whatever their origins); this is the model of Alexander, who sought a single ensemble of Greeks and Orientals; this is also the model of Europe’s former colonial empires, which is today colonising Europe itself. The ethnopluralist, multi-racial model of empire must be rejected, for it inevitably stirs up internal dissension and, ultimately, ends up destroying the empire’s founding stock.

The sole positive conception of Empire is that which doesn’t oppose the idea of Nation — in the Roman sense of ‘being natives of the same great people’. Empire is a federation of ethnically related peoples — a Grand Federal Nation, of sorts. A true model of empire. The Empire is not a ‘nation-state’, both cosmopolitan and centralised, but an ensemble of free nations ethnically, culturally and historically related, federated in a great continental empire. The idea of Empire is not admissible, however, if it’s a universalism whose drift is toward a ‘World State’.

In this sense, Empire is a decentralised Federation, equipped with a strong central power yet restricted to certain specific domains and regulated according to principles of subsidiarity: as such, this power addresses the domains of foreign policy, border control, general economic and ecological rules, etc. The imperial principle is not one of homogenisation; its various components are autonomous and can be organised in different ways, according to their own internal policies (regarding justice, institutions, fiscal autonomy, education, language, culture, etc.). The Empire maintains the ensemble’s unity and the general civilisational project — but it’s not to be seen as a fluid, confederated association, totally heterogeneous, open to all the world: a discipline of the whole is necessary, to imbue it with a firm, central, clear direction. In this sense, the present European Union, this will-less administrative aggregate, is far from representing the European imperial idea.

The national (or regional) components of the empire would be imbued with a ‘probationary freedom’ that accepts the ‘grand policy’ of the ensemble and the sovereignty of its central power, but this power, in exchange, would concede their specific identities, accepting that each nation or region, in conserving its freedom, has the right to leave the Federation at any moment. The notion of Empire presupposes a collective project and longevity in history. Europe would provide an ideal frame in which to constitute an Empire, for it would regroup all Europeans, in their diversity and their unity. To realise a future ‘Eurosiberian Empire’, including Russia, Europeans will have to decide if the federation is going to be based on the nation-state or the historic region. But whatever their response, the idea of imperial Federation seems, in the end, the sole way by which Europe will be saved.

(see Eurosiberia; nation)

	Carcalla (188-217) was the Emperor of Rome from 209 to 217. He granted citizenship to all free men who were subjects of the Empire, and the same rights to all women as Roman women had, in an edict in 212. However, apart from this he is best remembered for his cruelty and his capricious abuses of power. He was eventually assassinated. 

	Subsidiarity is a principle which emphasises the importance of the people having as much decision-making power as possible in regard to the issues which affect them, while decisions regarding the welfare of the larger community are left to the central government.