Empires unify huge territories by force and administration. They collect taxes, build roads, standardize laws, and create a shared political language that can hold many cultures inside one frame.
Conquest is violent, yet the imperial system often outlives the conquerors. People may resent rulers and still inherit the bureaucracy, the scripts, the currencies, and the habits of governance. The empire’s tools become the region’s normal.
The moral picture stays mixed. Empires produce oppression and slaughter, but they also spread ideas, goods, and institutions across distances that would otherwise remain separate. Much of the modern world was shaped in imperial workshops.
The key move is universalism. The empire presents its rule as order itself, and its culture as “civilization.” Once that frame sticks, resistance is redefined as disorder, and domination begins to feel inevitable.