Meaning of the Term "Roman Imperialism" Essay

Paper Type:  Essay
Pages:  5
Wordcount:  1282 Words
Date:  2022-08-15

Imperialism is a process of creating and maintaining an empire. Imperialism's main focus lies on motives, process and the result of the empire endeavors. The use of the term imperialism in Roman sources requires a lot of explanations and investigations. In Rome, the term imperialism has been used over quite some time before its meaning changed and developed. The term "Roman Imperialism" refers to a policy of extending Rome's influence and power by the use of military force or diplomacy (Newson Paul, pg 281). An understanding of the term "Roman imperialism" is an important aspect towards developing ideas about the physical Roman Empire. The analysis of the term helps to understand the concept of how ancient Romans have seen the nature of their power and authority changing drastically.

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The rapid expansion of Roman imperialism started during the republic period of 509BC-27BC. The approach behind the rise of Roman imperialism was facilitated by the Roman desires to acquire and conquer the entire Rome territory (Heichelheim, N.P). During the republic, there existed several mechanisms through which citizens would express their sovereignty freely. In the event, all sectors of Roman people were capable of participating and contributing to all decision making processes. During Roman imperialism, there existed numerous bodies responsible for making discrete decisions. However, in contrary, the imperialism occurred when the whole empire was under the rule of a hereditary monarchy.

The term Roman imperialism is used to define both geographical extent of places that were under the Roman rule and the period in which the empire ruled. During this period, several administrative arrangements were made to aid the control of Italian peninsula. In 241 BC, Rome conquered the Carthage city-state under a long-standing conflict (Heichelheim, N.P). The victory added Rome its first overseas province which was the Island of Sicily. Later on, with the support of a series of shady dealings, Romans managed to conquer both Corsica and Sardinia. During this time, Rome was exercising full territorial power over spaces that were outside the peninsula of Italia.

After Rome acquired new territory, it regularized and organized a process by which they could send Roman armies to secure the conquered regions. For instance, even after defeating Carthage city-state, Roman also sent its troops there. Immediately after it defeated Carthage for the second time, Rome emerged as undisputed, and hence it extended its power to the regions of Western Mediterranean (Heichelheim, N.P). As a result, Rome started to focus on large kingdoms especially in the Eastern of the Mediterranean. Such kingdoms, later on, developed and became quite sophisticated states. Several campaigns were conducted for the Rome to win the Eastern Mediterranean decisively. In the second half of BC century, Romans became tired of their battle of conquering many states. As a result, it started to administer and taking over other countries directly.

The pace of Roman imperialism proceeded into overdrive in the 1st century BC. The reason for the occurrence was behind political competitions between aristocratic generals and the landowners who were seen to be elite. Pompeius Magnus was among the individuals who pushed the above process forward (Gardner Andrew, N.P). Under his command, Rome managed to defeat several Hellenistic kings together with their territories where he headed up creating Roman provinces instead. During that period, the Roman Empire grew quite drastically.

The aspect of trying to understand Roman imperialism lies on the importance of knowing the difference between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. In the west, Carthage was the only state-level competitor which Rome faced. In the east, Rome faced three state competitors. Most scholars point out the role of the Italian workforce was to bring out a clear picture of Rome's success. One advantage about Romans is that they were able to field quite a large number of soldiers than their enemies could afford. For example, when Rome was in the process of acquiring the peninsula of Italian, they invested more in troops rather than taxes (Gardner Andrew, N.P). More so, when Rome was fighting, it received support from both its citizens and the citizens of the regions which they had conquered. Their controlled military efforts were even unparalleled in other agrarian societies. For example, over a span of 200 years, Rome had about 15% of adult men in their military.

There are several theories which explain aspects that motivated Roman imperialism. They include philhellenism, diplomatic entanglements, and defensive imperialism among many others. The idea of philhellenism discusses the love of Greek items by the Romans. During that period, Rome developed interests in learning the superiority of Greek culture (Steak Tesse, N.p). Rome fought a series of battles to guard Greeks by protecting its autonomy against dangerous and powerful Hellenistic kings. The theory of diplomatic entanglements narrates on how Romans utilized their chances of keeping promises. At that time, several formal treaties were created among a series of states (Steak Tesse, N.p). As a result, the Rome was dragged into the challenges of these states. The theory of defensive imperialism reveals that Rome had a drive of safeguarding peninsular Italy and not to expand their territory. In other words, Romans aimed at protecting the heartland and not to annex land.

The Roman imperialism was facilitated by three significant elements of imperial Roman states. They included the military, central and provincial government. The imperial military component of the Roman state took the role of establishing total control of the territory by conducting wars. However, when the city was turned to be under a treaty, military mission converted to policing (Steak Tesse, N.p). Roman had little workforce and resources to implement their rules by force alone. Therefore, it decided to collaborate with local power elites to maintain order where necessary. In most occasions, Romans would exploit internal political divisions by reinforcing one section over the other. As a result, the discord among the factions that lied within cities resulted in the loss of self-governance among the Romans.

The notion of Roman imperialism was established on the basis of converting the world to become one. Rome had desired to unite the whole world in its civilization (Steak Tesse, N.p). Their belief supported an idea that civilization was among the best culture which was rich in all nations. Therefore, Rome used their small allies to serve as the perpetrators of the war. As seen in several cases, Roman imperialism was much determined to help Roman allies. Their tradition was quite encouraging. For instance, they would establish connections and create friendships with lesser states by protecting them against the enemies. Such relationships assisted Rome to participate in more wars.

Conclusion

Roman imperialism was quite a struggle for survival. Its success demanded support from various systems of alliances. The support enabled Romans to expand its friendship network beyond its territory. After that, the established friendship allowed Rome to conquer several new states. Rome conducted repeated negotiations and frequent signing of treaties with neighboring countries to achieve its objectives. However, despite the presence of agreements and negotiations, Rome was compelled to participate in a series of extreme conflicts. The critical analysis of the term "Roman imperialism" helps individuals to learn and understand ideas of how ancient Romans have seen the drastic changing nature of their power and authority.

Works Cited

Gardner, Andrew. "Debating Roman Imperialism: critique, construct, repeat?." TRAC 2015. Proceedings of the 25th Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. 2016.

Heichelheim, Fritz M., Allen M. Ward, and Cedric A. Yeo. History of the Roman People. Routledge, 2016.

Newson, Paul. "The consequences of Roman Imperialism: cultural change in the Basalt Region of Homs, Syria." Levant 47.3 (2015): 267-292.

Steak Tesse D. "Roman imperialism, globalization and Romanization in early Roman Italy. Research questions in archaeology and ancient history." Archaeological Dialogues 21.1 (2014): 30-40.

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Meaning of the Term "Roman Imperialism" Essay. (2022, Aug 15). Retrieved from https://proessays.net/essays/meaning-of-the-term-roman-imperialism-essay

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