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³ Niall Ferguson prefers the term ‘empire’ to ‘hegemony’. ‘To compare . . . the United States and the United Kingdom as hegemonies is to miss differences that become obvious when the two are compared as empires.’ Distinguishing between US hegemony and British empire would highlight the differences Ferguson seeks to emphasize: ‘A century ago, the United Kingdom's formal empire was very large indeed, covering nearly a quarter of the world's surface and ruling roughly the same proportion of its population. Today, on the other hand, the United States’ formal empire includes just 14 dependencies (of which the largest is Puerto Rico) and covers less than 11,000 square kilometers.’ ( Ferguson, Niall, ‘Hegemony or Empire? Book Review’, Foreign Affairs, 82 (2003), pp. 160–161CrossRefGoogle Scholar.)

⁴ President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela recently claimed in the United Nations that the United States was led by ‘the devil’.

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¹⁴ Our argument is by no means incompatible with the view that moral suasion helped to end empire. See, for example, Jackson, Robert, ‘The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative Change in International Relations’, in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 111–138Google Scholar; Crawford, Neta, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yet to use such arguments runs the risk of being overly congratulatory about the triumph of Western ethics over Western avarice. Western civilization set aside ethical qualms for hundreds of years. The very dawn of empire is punctuated by acts like the encomiendo that nominally guaranteed Church protection in the New World, but which effectively gave authorities a free hand with indigenous populations.

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¹⁹ Zacher, ‘The Territorial Integrity Norm’; Fazal, State Death.

²⁰ Our comments on the literature are necessarily brief. They are not intended as a thorough or balanced representation of available perspectives. Instead, we focus on contemporary debates and our own view of salient controversies.

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⁴³ All appendices are available online at: http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jps.

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⁷⁹ All appendices are available online at: http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jps.

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⁸⁴ Black, Jeremy, War: Past, Present and Future (New York: St. Martin's, 2000)Google Scholar. Few states are able to integrate military technologies effectively, while forces optimized for conventional war are at a comparative disadvantage in asymmetric conflicts. See Biddle, Stephen, ‘Assessing Theories of Future Warfare’, Security Studies, 88 (1998), 1–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁵ One could also imagine that fighting effectiveness decays in the distance between metropolis and colony: , where d = distance, or assumes a specific function, as in the gravity model: (1 − ρ) = ωd ², where ω is exogenous.

⁸⁶ All appendices are available online at: http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jps.

⁸⁷ See, for example, Kahler, Decolonization in Britain and France; Snyder, Myths of Empire; Strang, David, ‘The Inner Incompatibility of Empire and Nation: Popular Sovereignty and Decolonization’, Sociological Perspectives, 35 (1992), 367–384CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁹³ Economic development results in higher values of α_EN, α_PN, ρ_EN, ρ_PN, which increases x_EN, x_PN, y_EN, y_PN, though not necessarily at the same rate. The net effect of democracy thus varies with time and development.

⁹⁴ All appendices are available online at: http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jps.

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⁹⁶ These simplifying assumptions are not critical to the main results of the model.

⁹⁷ We again focus on the unique interior Nash Equilibrium with , .

⁹⁸ The following parameter values are used for the solid lines (they are symmetrical for both players): A = 0.16, B = 0.8, K_S = 1, ψ = 0.4, , λ = 0.5, D_S = 0. For the dotted lines we have A = 0.24.

⁹⁹ With γ in the denominator, the reaction function (14′) is undefined when γ = 0. It makes sense to treat free trade as an absolute that is only approximated empirically (after multiple World Trade Organization rounds, trade is still not ‘free’).

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¹⁰⁸ COW provides military expenditure agues in nominal (current year) British pounds (1816–1913) and US dollars (1914–2000). We used GDP deflators available at EH.net (URL: http://eh.net/hmit/) to obtain constant (2000) dollars. See Johnston, Louis D. and Williamson, Samuel H., Economic History Services (Chicago, 2005)Google Scholar; Officer, Lawrence H., Exchange Rate Between the United States Dollar and the British Pound, 1791–2004 (Chicago, 2004)Google Scholar; Officer, Lawrence H., The Annual Real and Nominal GDP for the United Kingdom, 1086–2004 (Chicago, 2005)Google Scholar. These documents and additional information are available at: http://www.measuringworth.com/index.php.

¹⁰⁹ A lowess regression and scatter plot of the military technology variable on GDP per capita reveals the declining marginal relationship that is assumed by the model (plot available from the authors).

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¹¹³ We also examined a regression in which we added a quadratic term for fighting technology. Both the linear (−) and exponential (+) fighting technology variables are statistically significant, but the overall effect of the two variables is negative for most values, with coefficients and means as follows: (−58.098 × 0.0190) + (149.924 × 0.0025) = −0.7346.

¹¹⁴ Energy Cons./Pop. and Fighting Technology are moderately correlated (r ≈ 0.3). While linear and squared terms are highly correlated, multicollinearity is not indicated, as the linear terms are statistically insignificant by themselves, the non-linear variables are significant, other variables are unaffected, and theory dictates this specification.

¹¹⁵ A variable coded for the proportion of territories that are colonies (colonies/(colonies + countries)) yields equivalent results.

¹¹⁶ We drop the Colonies variables that are highly collinear with the systemic/hegemonic development variables.

¹¹⁷ All models presented in this analysis have been replicated using iron and steel production in place of the energy consumption variables. In most cases, the iron and steel production variables provide an even better fit than energy consumption. However, the interaction term between iron and steel production and military technology is generally not statistically significant. All results are available from the authors.

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