“England, in what is now Britain, wanted more land overseas where it could build new communities, known as colonies. These colonies would provide England with valuable materials, like metals, wool, sugar and tobacco, which they could also sell to other countries.”
The purpose of expanding an empire is therefore to enrich and empower the empire by exploiting labour, in the extraction of natural resources to sell to other countries. In a fanciful, modern world, a reigning empire would not need to permanently occupy or colonise other countries to enrich itself, the empire would expand its power by;
1. Inserting the world's most market dominate and disruptive companies within pre-existing colonies, extracting the most value from those colonies and paying the least taxes in those colonies.
2. Ensuring that a colony's most valued corporations are majority owned and controlled by the empire.
3. Buying companies and strategic assets in the colonies they want to extract value from.
4. Funding the media in the colonies they want to influence and extract value from. Once a colony's media is influenced by the empire, the media can then propagandise the public to manufacture consent for government policies that enrich the empire.
5. Fabricating propaganda to justify bombing existing colonies and toppling democratically elected leaders of those colonies. The empire would then plant empire friendly leaders and station themselves in these colonies for as long as it took, to; build military bases, extract valuable natural resources, and sell over priced military equipment and other contracts to colluding colonies.
For an empire to succeed under these conditions it would need to rely on the following;
1. That a colony's ruler(s), values money, public opinion and political tenure / power and therefore can be influenced by money, public opinion and positive media coverage to increase their political tenure.
2. That media proprietors and shareholders value money and therefore can be influenced by it. If media proprietors can be influenced by money, political narratives can be influenced by money.
3. That a society is generally predisposed to revering authorities, group-think, convenience, comfort and safety and therefore can be influenced by authorities, popular opinion, repeated narratives and political initiatives that allegedly promise more convenience, comfort and safety for the colony's inhabitants.
What a crazy and fanciful idea. Who would ever believe it?
