What happens the citizens of a vanquished Empire?

[everythingsxen]

A few have mentioned here lately agreement with Chavez's sentiment that:

Let's save the human race, let's finish off the U.S. empire," Chavez said. "This (task) must be assumed with strength by the majority of the peoples of the world."
http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5219169&nav=1TjD

So I am curious, what do you imagine will happen to the citizens of the Empire when the Empire is defeated? (economically, militarily or both)

[David Dunham]

1. Ask the British.

[everythingsxen]

2. Ah but they withdrew of their own will, due to public opinion...

not because they were forced to. Ditto with Switzerland, France and Spain.

[Taxloss]

4. We were fair heftily booted out of some places.

The United States, for starters.

[everythingsxen]

5. True, true..

however, you still had India and a fair amount of other holdings that were dropped because of internal public pressure, yes?

[Taxloss]

6. Yes, we left a lot of places peacefully.

Many of the handovers could have been better handled, but they WERE peaceful.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. After the American Revolution

the British Empire attained far greater levels of power and dominance than before.

So that's not a good example.

Britain-bashing, whether by Brits or anyone else, doesn't disguise the fact that Britain declined from imperial dominance with remarkable grace in general and without catastrophic domestic collapse. Not all empires have been that lucky.

Which is to say that the answer to the original question is, "It depends."

[Taxloss]

3. We whinge a lot, and have trouble remembering that we're a

drizzly island in the Atlantic and not turbo-charged kick-ass mega-state number #1.

[Selatius]

7. That's the easiest answer in the world.

We live on.

Empires rise and fall. Ours will be no different. When it falls, the people remain. When the Roman Empire finally imploded, the world didn't end. The people simply lived on and developed their own ideas, cultures, and histories. What was once one people and one language is now many.

End of story.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Stop painting #1 on our foreheads.

And, then read all the books about how yet another empire committed suicide.

[Cleita]

9. Look to the end of WWII for an answer.

Let's hope our conquerors are benevolent enough to extend a Marshall Plan to us like we did at the end of WWII.

You may get an idea by comparing the nations whose occupation was under the allies as contrary as those who were occupied by the Soviet Russians.

[Crunchy Frog]

11. What happened to the citizens of the British Empire?

What happened to the citizens of the Roman Empire? They usually just go on living, just no longer under the former imperial authority. It's not like this is something unprecedented in human history.

Actually, we were citizens of the British Empire prior to 1776. Do you think that the American Revolution was a catastrophe?

[UTUSN]

12. Depends. If they, the vanquished, have a powerful cohesive CULTURE

they eventually emerge again. China has been conquered and re-conquered several times, yet the conquerors were eventually subsumed by the Chinese culture. American culture is more diverse, scattered, diffuse...so...

[nealmhughes]

13. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

[Minstrel Boy]

14. Here's what Chavez says about Americans and the end of empire:

"One day the decay inside U.S. imperialism will end up toppling it, and the great people of Martin Luther King will be set free. The great people of the United States are our brothers, my salute to them.... We must start talking again about equality. The U.S. government talks about freedom and liberty, but never about equality. They are not interested in equality. This is a distorted concept of liberty. The U.S. people, with whom we share dreams and ideals, must free themselves… A country of heroes, dreamers, and fighters, the people of Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez."

From his address at the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre

[Rex]

15. Equality and unregulated markets don't mix.

America ain't an empire, maybe close but not quite. When Bush gets his new law passed and starts locking up Senators, then we are done as a Republic and I can't see Congress-critters letting that happen. Then again, I can.

[Odin2005]

16. Being a republic and an empire are not mutually exclusive.

The definition of an empire is a state that is a major power in it's region and exacts tribute from vassal states (the modern form of tribute would be inforced "free trade" regimes in countries by the IMF, which is a US lapdog organization), how the ruling state governs itself is irrelavent. Don't take the term "empire" to mean "a state ruled by an Emperor," since that literalist definition not the one used by historians. Rome was an empire in the non-literalist sense a century an a half the conquest of Greece and Carthage) before it became one in the literal sense.

[Rex]

18. But Bush thinks he's Caesar.

I think we are getting around to this period in Rome's life.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/ROME/3RDCENT.HTM

"When Marcus Aurelius died in 180, his son Commodus assumed the imperiate. Marcus Aurelius had been appointed by the Senate and proved to be a thoughtful and highly efficient administrator. His son, however, was slightly imbalanced. Fancying himself to be a reincarnation of Hercules, Commodus was both brutal and incompetent. He openly defied the Senate and revelled in all sorts of perversities. He was so violent and vicious, that the palace guards murdered him in 192."

[1932]

17. Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark -- all do well not trying to be

empires. They have happy, healthy, employed populations with high standards of livings.

Countries that try to be empires at all costs tend to run out of gas and become impoverished, desperate, miserable places to live for a while after empire falls.