Hegemony - History

History

Antiquity

In the Græco–Roman world of 5th-century European Classical antiquity, the city-state of Sparta was the hegemon of the Peloponnesian League (6th – 4th centuries BC) and King Philip II of Macedon was the hegemon of the League of Corinth in 337 BC (a kingship he willed to his son, Alexander the Great). In Ancient Eastern Asia, Chinese hegemony was present during the Spring and Autumn Period (ca. 770–480 BC), when the weakened rule of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty led to the relative autonomy of the Five Hegemons (Ba in Chinese ). They were appointed by feudal lord conferences, and thus were nominally obliged to uphold the imperium of the Zhou Dynasty over the sub-ordinate states. In late-16th– and early-17th-century Japan, the term hegemon applied to its “Three Unifiers” — Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu — who ruled most of the country by hegemony.

Middle Ages and Renaissance

As a universal, politico–cultural hegemonic practice, the cultural institutions of the hegemon establish and maintain the political annexation of the subordinate peoples; in Italy, the Medici maintained their medieval Tuscan hegemony, by controlling the production of woolens by controlling the Arte della Lana guild, in the Florentine city-state. In Holland, the Dutch Republic’s 17th-century (1609–1672) mercantilist dominion was a first instance of global, commercial hegemony, made feasible with its technological development of wind power and its Four Great Fleets, for the efficient production and delivery of goods and services, which, in turn, made possible its Amsterdam stock market and concomitant dominance of world trade; in France, King Louis XIV (1638–1715) and (Emperor) Napoleon I (1799–1815) established French hegemony via economic, cultural, and military domination of most of Continental Europe. After the defeat and exile of Napoleon, hegemony largely passed to the British Empire, which became the largest empire in world history, with Queen Victoria (1837-1901) ruling over one-quarter of the world's land and population at the zenith of the empire's existence. Like the Dutch, the British Empire was primarily seaborne; many British possessions were located around the rim of the Indian Ocean, as well as numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Britain also controlled large portions of Africa, as well as the entire Indian subcontinent.

20th century

The USSR (1922–1991), Nazi Germany (1933–1945), and the USA (1823–present) each sought regional hegemony (sphere of influence), then global hegemony. In 1939, Nazi Germany launched the Second World War (1939–1945) to gain geographic dominance of Eurasia and Africa, initially, by means of empire (direct control), then by hegemony (indirect control). Afterwards, in 1945, the USA and the USSR fought the Cold War (1945–1991) for control of the global European empires of France, Britain, the Netherlands, et al., which were politically destroyed by the global warfare of the Second World War.

In the mid-20th century, the hegemonic conflict was ideologic, between the Communist Warsaw Pact (1955–1991) and the capitalist NATO (1949-present), wherein each hegemon competed directly (the arms race) and indirectly (proxy wars) against any country whose internal, national politics might destabilise the respective hegemony. The USSR defeated the nationalist Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the USA precipitated the US–Vietnam War (1965–1975) by participating in the Vietnamese Civil War (1955–1965) that the National Liberation Front fought against the Republic of Vietnam, the Asian client state of the United States.

21st century

In the post–Cold War (1945–1991) world, the French Socialist politician Hubert Védrine described the USA as a hegemonic hyperpower, because of its unilateral military actions worldwide, especially against Iraq; while the US political scientists John Mearsheimer and Joseph Nye counter that the USA is not a true hegemon because it has neither the financial nor the military resources to impose a proper, formal, global hegemony.