Apologists of empire underplay the deprivations

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The material interests of an empire do not necessarily include the material interests of all the subjects of an empire, indeed they seldom do. One of the major paradoxes of empire is that in the course of its growth it increases the number of subjects, who, from the nature of the operation undertaken (the enrichment of the imperialists), have more to lose than to gain materially form an imperial strategy. These fall broadly into two categories: the economic losers at home and the economic losers abroad.

The losers at home are the former citizens or natives of what was once a nation or city state, free farmers, craftsmen, small producers and artisans who in former times produced and supplied for the home market. They are impoverished by the increased competition from foreign labour/slaves and the lowering price of their products (because of the job function email list increase in supply of products). The few adapt successfully to new circumstances and become commercial or industrial magnates, the many sink to wage bondage. The economic losers abroad are the natives of the conquered lands in so far as they lose their land or their rights to it, and have probably their religion.

Certainly their culture curtailed or even destroyed, by their new masters. While of the first kind of losers, hostile critics of empire exaggerate the material losses of the second kind. When peoples are conquered by an empire it is normally in large part precisely because such peoples are economically more vulnerable ("backward") and seen to be so: the temptation to imperial conquest arises when scouts, traders or explorers discover a land whose potential wealth is not reflected in a concomitant strength or will on the part of its natives to exploit and/or defend it.