World domination (disambiguation)

"World conquest" redirects here. For other uses, see World domination (disambiguation).

World domination (sometimes world conquest, world takeover, global domination, or colloquially taking over the world), in which a single political authority rules over all the inhabitants of planet Earth, has been attempted by several individuals and political systems throughout history, and remains a popular theme in fiction.

Ideologies advocating world domination

Religious ideologies advocating world domination

See also: Dispensationalism

Proselytising religions such as Fundamentalist and Evangelical sects of Christianity and Islam are universalist, viewing it as their task to convert as many people as possible to their religion, without restrictions on national or ethnic origin (although certain sects of these religions, such as Quakers or the Druze, are not). This spiritual domination (see, for example, Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God) is usually seen by most people to be distinct from a temporal domination, but certain fringe groupings within these religions have an established goal of global theocracy.

Political ideologies advocating world domination

Similarly, some devoted adherents of many different ideologies, such as anarchism, democracy, fascism, neoconservatism, social democracy,capitalism view their credo as the ideal form of societal organization, and actively encourage its implementation throughout the world. The period of the Cold War in particular was seen as a period of intense ideological polarization across the globe, with supporters of the two rival camps expressing hope that their ideology would emerge triumphant over the other and become the pre-eminent form of government worldwide. Elements within the allied blocs led by the Soviet Union and the United States accused each other of having objectives of global domination. By some standards the United States was triumphant, and in holding the global position of super-power can perhaps be seen as having achieved world domination although only over a single decaying foe just through pure endurance.

After the end of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union's collapse, Francis Fukuyama in The End of History predicted that liberal democracy would become the favoured form of government throughout the earth. This period was called by some the new world order.

Arnold Toynbee's concept of a universal state

Before modern times, the reach of political control and military force was limited by rudimentary transportation technologies and knowledge of geography. The Roman Empire had goals of global domination, and indeed the empire was able to conquer most of the "known world" (i.e., the Mediterranean) throughout its long history. The Qin and Han dynasties as well as the Tang of China were also successful in conquering the known world of Chinese civilization. Historian Arnold Toynbee used the term Universal State to refer to an empire like the Roman Empire or Chinese Empire that conquered the entire world known to a particular civilization.

Examples of universal states

As noted above, a universal state is an empire that has conquered most of the area known to a civilization.

Assyrian Empire

The Assyrian Empire at its height in the 934 BC under Tiglath-Pileser III, was the strongest empire in the region with its influence stretching as far as Mesopotamia, the Levant, Lower Egypt, Eastern Turkey, Western Persia, and Northern Arabia.

Persian Empire

The Persian Empire was the worlds first great worldwide empire. At its height in 525 BC under Cyrus II the Great, it was Earth's first sole superpower.

Macedonian Empire

Alexander the Great

The Macedonian Empire was formed as a result of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire. At his death in 323 BC it encompassed most of the world that was known to the ancient Greeks.

Mauryan Empire

Ashoka the Great, after defeating the Kingdom of Kalinga in the Kalinga War, renounced violence, and at the height of his empire in 250 BC adopted Buddhism. He became a person who is sometimes regarded as the most enlightened ruler ever and envisioned a world governed by the compassionate eightfold path of Buddhism, sending out missionaries from Ancient India to as far as Ancient Rome and Egypt.

Roman Empire

As noted above, the Roman Empire ruled the entire Mediterranean world and much of Europe during the Pax Romana.

Caliphate

The Muslim Caliphate reached its maximum extent in the 8th century. A caliphate is the Islamic form of government representing the political unity and leadership of the Muslim world. The head of state's position (Caliph) being based on the notion of a successor to the Prophet Muhammad's political authority and was known as the head of state or Amīr al-Mu'minīn (أمير المؤمنين) "Commander of the Believers". Each member state (State = Wilayah) of the Caliphate (United States = Khelaphah) had its own governor (Wali). In areas which were previously under Persian or Byzantine rule, the Caliphs raised taxes on non-Muslims, known as the jizya or poll tax. The Muslim overlords provided greater local autonomy for the native Muslims, greater religious freedom for Jews. Peace was brought to areas of former Byzantine-Persian areas of conflict.

The Muslim Empire during the Umayyads Caliphate grew rapidly geographically expanding westward across North Africa and into Hispania and eastward through Persia and ultimately to Sindh and Punjab in modern day Pakistan. This made it one of the largest unitary states in history.

Mongol Empire

Genghis Khan

The Mongol Empire (Mongolian: Их Монгол Улс, meaning "Greater Mongol Nation"; 1206–1405) was the largest contiguous land empire in history, covering over 33 million km² (12 million square miles) at its peak, with an estimated population of over 100 million people. This was one-third of the population of Earth, thus making the Mongol Empire the sole superpower of its day. The Mongol Empire was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206, and at its height in 1294 under Kublai Khan, it encompassed the majority of the territories from East Asia to Central Europe. The Mongol Empire was the first known empire to use paper money on a large scale (it had been issued on a smaller scale in China as early as the 6th century AD).

Ming Empire

In the 15th century, the Ming Empire of China was a dominant power in Asia. The Yongle Emperor sent out, beginning in 1405, under the command of the admiral and explorer Zheng He, vast fleets of ships to explore and trade with Southeast Asia, India, Arabia, and Africa. The expeditions continued until 1433.

Inca Empire

At its height, the Incan empire encompassed virtually all of the world known to the Incans, and indeed, the Quechua name for the empire was Tawantinsuyu which can be translated as The Four Regions or The Four United Regions, indicating their belief their empire encompassed most of the world.

Examples of global empires

Since the Age of discovery the entire globe has become known. There have been many global empires since then, but no empire has yet been formed that has embraced the entire world into a universal state. Arnold Toynbee said that that the people of the world ought to rise up and demand that the nations of the world agree to form a world government (which would be the first truly universal state) in order to prevent the extinction of humanity in a nuclear apocalypse.

Ottoman Empire

The empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. With Constantinople (now Istanbul) as its capital city, and vast control of lands during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent which largely corresponded to the lands ruled by Justinian the Great exactly 1000 years earlier, the Ottoman Empire was, in many respects, an Islamic successor to the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

Portuguese Empire

After the expedition of Vasco da Gama, discoverer of the African way to India, the Portuguese built a huge empire. The Portuguese Empire is considered the first global empire in history, and also the earliest and longest lived of the Western European colonial empires, existing from 1415 to 1999, ending with the loss of Macau to China.

Habsburg Empire

The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had control over Austria, Spain, southern Italy, parts of Germany, recent conquests in the Americas. Least of all was the de jure control of Germany as Holy Roman Emperor.

Spanish Empire

Philip II of Spain.

The nations closest to world domination in territorial terms were both the Kingdoms of Spain and Portugal when they were merged in 1580 (until 1640) during the reign of Philip II. The Spanish Empire covered almost all South and Central America, as well as a large area of southern and western North America, almost all African and Indian maritime territories and other important regions such as the Philippines, Guam, the Mariana and the Caroline Islands in Asia Pacific, and the Netherlands (known as Spanish Netherlands), parts of France and a significant portion of the Italian peninsula, in Europe. Other territories included the Mediterranean islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Malta and the North African cities of Oran, Mers-el-Kébir, as well as Ceuta and Melilla which remain Spanish to this day.

Napoleon Bonaparte.

French Empire

The English-led coalition of opponents in the west and the Russian Empire in the east often claimed that Napoleon Bonaparte had sights on global domination, and portrayed him as being the quintessential global conqueror. Napoleon declared the following to Benjamin Constant before the infamous Battle of Waterloo: "I wanted to rule the world, and in order to do this I needed ultimate power...I wanted to rule the world-who wouldn't have in my place? The world begged me to govern it..." When his imminent fall became obvious to him, Napoleon proclaimed, "I shall bury the world beneath my ruin!"

Napoleon also dreamed of conquering India. His reason was to take from Great Britain its most profitable colony: "India will be lost to the English by foreign invasion." Napoleon figured that the conquest would rank him alongside Alexander the Great, after the expected French conquest of Egypt. He mentioned that Indians were incapable of ruling themselves: "[They] will not grow up, they always remain children."

British Empire

The British Empire, in demographic and geographical terms, came closest to achieving global domination. By the reign of Queen Victoria the British Empire had gained direct political control of about two fifths of the world's population and about one quarter of its land area, and hegemony over nominally independent areas such as parts of China and South America, thus establishing the Pax Britannica. British imperialist advocate Cecil Rhodes proposed that the United States and the British Empire jointly establish a world government and make English the official world language. The British Empire is generally considered to have arisen as a result of Britain's trade objectives rather than an attempt to establish military dominion, however, and was dismantled after World War II without substantial bloodshed towards the end of the reign of King George VI. The British Empire transformed itself into the Commonwealth of Nations.

Soviet Union

File:World October revolution poster.jpg

An early Soviet poster: "Long Live World October! The workers conquered power in Russia and will conquer the entire world."

Since the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks envisioned their regime as the first step to Communism dominating the world. The Comintern was established in 1919 in order to encourage Communist parties across the world and promote international proletarian revolution, although Stalin seemed more interested in consolidating Communist control in the Soviet Union rather than promoting worldwide revolution (Socialism in One Country).

Japanese Empire

Beginning in 1894 with the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Empire then launched an aggressive war of conquest against China and Southeast Asia culminating, under the leadership of Hideki Tojo, in the attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor and the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere before the Empire's final defeat by the Allies in World War II in 1945.

Nazi Germany

In World War II, the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, established what they called the New Order and had ambitious plans for directly controlling all of Europe, and then obtaining a position of power that would make them a formidable superpower in global politics. In Hitler's Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf, written in 1928, Hitler envisioned an apocalyptic air war of conquest against the United States by his successor in 1980, conducted by a great fleet of German long range bombers. At the time of the initial invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa) in June 1941, Hitler had expected to win victory in World War II by 1945, and he then planned, after completing the construction of the Welthauptstadt Germania plan of Albert Speer for Berlin, to hold a great World's Fair in Berlin in 1950 and then retire to his hometown of Linz. He also initially believed that he would take Russia and expressed to Speer that "a mere 20 or 30 divisions would be all that was necessary to conquer India (a land centered around Aryan mysticism). Nevertheless, he took little interest in the possible conquest, believed that any remaining Aryan blood was tainted by the dominance of dark races. Upon his imminent fall, he mimicked Napoleon in proclaiming, "We may be destroyed but, if we are, we'll drag the world down with us, a world in flames."

United States of America

Main article: American Empire

The United States of America has been occasionally referred to as The American Empire to emphasize the great power and influence of the United States in the world both economically, with its extensive business investments around the world, and militarily with its extensive system of alliances, to the officially stated goal of defending global trade, freedom, and democracy.

The origin of the "American Empire" in concept is possibly traced back to 1898, in the aftermath of the Spanish American War. Others date its formation to 12 July 1947 with the signing of the National Security Act of 1947 by President Harry S Truman. Truman then organized the Rio Pact on 2 September 1947, NATO on 4 April 1949, and ANZUS on 1 September 1951, thus uniting many non-communist nations into a single Western Alliance to implement the policy of containment in order to prevent the expansion of the Soviet Union, both in territory and influence. A primary goal of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was to create a Pax Americana in the American sphere of influence. In his final speech in 1960 before leaving office, Eisenhower did warn against allowing the military-industrial complex to gain too much power.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, critics of American foreign policy have argued that the United States seeks, or indeed actually has, global hegemony. On September 11, 1990, the President of the United States, George H.W. Bush gave his famous speech, Toward a New World Order[3] to a joint session of the United States Congress. On September 20, 2002, the George W. Bush White House posted on its website the full text of the (at that time) newest National Security Strategy of the United States, composed primarily by prominent neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz. In this document, the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war was outlined. The Bush Doctrine was first put into use on March 20, 2003 when the Bush Administration launched the United States into war with Iraq (see Iraq War).

World domination in popular culture

Board Games

• The popular board game Risk is often labelled as the "world domination game" or the "game of global conquest".
• The board game Summit was a popular game among board game players of the 1960s and 1970s that allowed one to strive for world domination.

Cartoons

• In the November 6, 2006 New Yorker on page 102 there is a cartoon of a king waiting for a bus the destination sign of which states that it is headed for “Total World Domination”.

Computers

• Linus Torvalds, developer of Linux, has also described his goals as "world domination, fast". Because of the ubiquity of Microsoft products in the computing world, company founder Bill Gates has been parodied as seeking world domination.

Film

• World domination is often perceived to be the most common plot line in the James Bond film series. However, in actuality, the villain is much more likely to demand ransom money than seek global hegemony, something that has happened only three times. In Dr. No, the famous spy is already weary of foes who seek to dominate the globe and calls it "the same old dream".

Music

• World Domination was the name of a 1986 single by the dance music group the Belle Stars that reached #5 on the U.S. hit parade.
• World domination is a slang term used in the music industry. If a rock group, solo artist, or DJ has attained a successful career that includes hit singles, gold record or platinum record level CD sales, and going on world tours, they are referred to as having achieved "world domination". Examples of musical artists who have achieved world domination include Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson (in the 1980s), U2, and Paul Oakenfold. Metallica also jokingly referred to world domination as their main objective in the early 1980s
• There is a German band called The World Domination or TWD.

Science Fiction

• Global domination is frequently used in some science fiction stories (e.g., Star Trek) as a desirable, praiseworthy, and inevitable step in the progress of human civilization (though in this case it is achieved by co-operation, not conquest). Others treat it as the sinister ambition of the story's villain. This in turn is often a source of parody, frequently in cartoons such as Pinky and the Brain in which a super-intelligent lab mouse and his dim-witted cohort pursue elaborate schemes to take over the world that inevitably end in failure. The cartoon's famous catchphrase is: "Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?" "Same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world!"

Television

• In the television series, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the character of Rita Repulsa repeatedly tries to conquer Earth, using a wide variety of monsters.
• The television show Pinky and the Brain, often featured The Brain scheming new plans for world takeovers
• Stewie Griffin from the cartoon Family Guy has fanciful dreams of taking over the world.
• In the TV series Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Salem Saberhagen was turned into a cat for a 100 years by the Witches Council for attempting world domination. According to him, they were understanding about the fact that he aspired to rule the world, but were upset that he actually worked towards it.
• In the final episode of the anime series Code Geass, the main character Lelouch vi Britannia acquires total world domination but is killed months later in a death scenario that he himself designed.

Video Games and Computer Games

• A great many video games, often in the strategy genre, have a goal of global domination - for example, Global Domination, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the Civilization series, Rise of Nations, the SuperPower and SuperPower 2 games and, to a lesser extent, the Command & Conquer series. In addition, games such as Day of the Tentacle and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders feature plots of foiling attempts of global domination.
• Evil Genius A game developed by Sierra Entertainment in which the player must buy an island and play the role of an evil genius, who has plans (through crime) to take over the world.
• In the Pokémon series of video games & the long running anime, Team Rocket & other organizations attempt to take over the world, but have never succeeded in their dreams of world conquest.

See also

• Brave New World
• The Grand Chessboard
• List of Largest Empires
• New world order (political theory)
• New World Order (conspiracy theory)
• Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Unrestricted Warfare