Empire Is the Default Mode of State Organization

There is no need to take up a dogmatic position on the truth or untruth of these various claims (some of which are discussed later) to see their limitations as a depiction of empire and of Britain’s in particular. The underlying assumption, on which almost all else hangs, is that empires are abnormal, a monstrous intrusion in a usually empire-free world. No error could be more basic, or perhaps more revealing of an unconscious Eurocentrism. Empire – as the assertion of mastery (by influence or rule) by one ethnic group, or its rulers, over a number of others – has been the political rule of the road over much of the world and over most of world history: the default mode of state organization. Nor was it just the modern world that was created by empire. This suggests that the conditions that give rise to empires are neither peculiarly modern, nor peculiarly rooted in European behaviour, technology or values.

--John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (London: Penguin Books, 2013), 6-7.