Difference Between "vassal" and "vassal State"
Many empires have created vassal states out of cities, kingdoms, and tribes that they wish to bring under their auspices without having to conquer or govern them. In these cases, vassalage (or suzerainty) just means forfeiting foreign policy independence in exchange for full autonomy and perhaps a formal tribute. A lesser state that might be called a "junior ally" would be called a "vassal" as a reference to a domestic "fiefholder" or "trustee", simply to apply a common domestic norm to diplomatic culture. This allows different cultures to understand formal hegemonic relationships in personal terms, even among states using non-personal forms of rule. Imperial states that have used this terminology include Ancient Rome, the Mongol Empire, and the British Empire.
Read more about this topic: Vassal
Famous quotes containing the words difference between, difference and/or state:
“I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don’t see them.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)
“If the propositions of this Discourse are tenable, the “state of progressive collapse” is precisely that state in which alone we are warranted in considering All Things.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)