Modern Imperiology Theories and Problems of the Study of Ancient Empires

The historical importance and omnipresence of empires in world history cannot be overstated. In total, more than 200 empires are known. The concept of ‘empire’ is applied to polities that are vastly different in their nature and dates of existence, ranging from the earliest states in Western Asia and classical antiquity to modern political entities. Even polities previously treated as proto-states are now described as empires, including formations without a state at the heart of power, as for example the empire of the Comanche Indians. Various social and humanities disciplines offer their own theories of empire. Beginning in the 1960s and especially in the 1990s, one can observe an explosive interest in the phenomenon of empire, resulting in the so-called ‘imperial turn’ and the emergence of a broader discipline conventionally called imperiology (this term is much more popular in the Russian academy than in Western scholarship), as well as ‘new imperial history’. Its subject matters and methodologies are substantially based on theories of postcolonialism and postmodernism, and correlate with such categories as nationalism, ethnicity, race, and archaeology of knowledge. Some theorists see the main task of imperial studies in justifying the empire as a politically formalized peak of the development of a specific civilization or culture of a given superethnos