An empire is sometimes defined as a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual political entity or state. A state becomes diverse through the process of integrating, usually by force, peripheral or neighboring areas. These territories have their own ethnicities (or from a biological perspective, their own gene pools), their own languages or dialects, and their own religious worldviews, traditions, and rituals. The imperial ruler or rulers may choose to allow for religious difference or may seek to establish religious homogeneity and suppress minority religions. We find examples of both approaches in history.
The Mughal Empire in India provides us with a helpful example of how one and the same state might adopt different religious policies in an imperial context. Akbar the Great (r. 1560–1605) saw himself as a patron of all religions and sought to create a new religion, borrowing from Islam, Hinduism, and even Christianity and Zoroastrianism. This policy essentially translated to religious toleration. Meanwhile, Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) tended to strive for homogeneity through the imposition of Islam, the taxation of non-Muslims, and the conversion of Hindu temples to mosques or their outright destruction.
This question's a bit difficult, because different empires have different contexts, and in each case the answer to your question will be very different. In some cases, the expansion of empire has very little in and of itself to do with religion at all (nineteenth-century imperialism, for example, was a mostly secular affair, driven largely by economic motivations), while there are other examples in which religion plays a very strong role as one of the key driving forces or even the primary driving force. The Islamic expansion from Arabia into the Byzantine Empire, the Sassanid Empire, and Western Europe had a very strong religious motivation in defending and spreading the Islamic faith. Centuries later, the Ottoman Empire would have its origins as one of many Ghazi States existing on the edge of Islamic territory, waging war on their non-Muslim neighbors to expand the Muslim world. From a Christian context we can observe the Spanish monarchy in the Spanish Golden Age, which saw itself as a bulwark for the Catholic faith and was very active in trying to defend Catholic interests in Europe, as well as support missionary work in the New World. If we were to delve further into the question of European colonization, the question can be broken down further: in the Spanish case, religious activities were largely focused on converting the native populations to Christianity, but the Puritans in New England were largely concerned with creating their own "Godly societies" beyond the reach of the Church of England.
Of course, this answer has so far only applied to imperialism and conquest, but religion's role in politics and empire runs far deeper and more subtly than that. Nation states and monarchies have often seen religion as a tool for state-building, as a way of centralizing and imposing power and strengthening their own claims of legitimacy. Whether we're looking at Justinian or Ferdinand and Isabella, often those monarchs who set themselves up as defenders of religious piety also used those religious institutions to strengthen their own political authority. Indeed, it should be noted that the Spanish Inquisition was actually under the direction of the Spanish monarchy, not Rome. We can also look at the historical example of the Greek Orthodox Church and the authority vested in the Byzantine Emperor.
To conclude, it's a very big topic, when you look at the ways religion and empire intersect, and one that is really best looked at on a case-by-case basis.
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