Empires Because they are composed of peoples of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, all empires are ____ held together by ____ and the ____ of forcible reconquest. Imposing their rule on diverse political structures, they are characterized by the centralization of power and the absence of effective ____ of their component parts. Although force is thus the primary instrument of imperial rule, it is also true that history records many cases of ____ empires that were governed peaceably for considerable periods and were often quite successful in ____ order within their ____. The history of the ancient world is the history of great empires — Egypt, China, Persia, and imperial Rome — whose autocratic regimes provided relatively ____ government for many subject peoples in immense territories over many centuries. Based on military force and religious belief, the ancient despotisms were ____ also by their achievements in building great bureaucratic and legal structures, in developing vast irrigation and road systems, and in ____ the conditions for the ____ of high civilizations. Enhancing and ____ all other political structures in their sphere, they could ____ to function as effective schemes of universal order. In contrast to the empires of the ancient world, the colonial empires of ____ times did not function as effectively. The disintegration of these empires ____ with astonishing speed. The two world wars of the 20th century sapped the power of the metropolitan centres, while their own doctrines of democracy, equality, and ____ ____ the principle of imperial rule. Powers such as Britain and France found it ____ difficult to resist claims to independence couched in terms of the ____ concepts on which their home governments were based, and they lacked the ____ and economic strength to continue their rule over restive native populations. In the two decades after 1945, nearly all the ____ colonial territories won their ____; the great colonial empires that had once ruled more than half the world were finally dismembered.

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