THE ANGLOPHONE EMPIRE.(Iraq war)

During the past few months, much has been said and written on the subject of a "new American empire."This term, however, is a misnomer. If the Iraq war is to be seen as a kind of imperial venture, then the project is neither new nor purely American. What President Bush likes to call the "coalition of the willing"is dominated, after all, by America, Britain, and Australia--three English-speaking countries whose allegiances are rooted not just in a shared culture and common institutions but also in a shared history of territorial expansion. Seen in this light, the alignment is only the newest phase in the evolution of the most potent political force of the last two centuries: the Anglophone empire.

I am an Indian, and my history has been shaped as much by the institutions of this empire as by a long tradition of struggle against them. Now I live in New York; for me, the September 11th attacks and their aftermath were filled with disquieting historical resonances. I was vividly reminded, for example, of the Indian uprising of 1857, an event known to the British as the Great Indian Mutiny. That year, in Kanpur, a busy trading junction beside the Ganges, several hundred defenseless British civilians, including women and children, were cut down in an orgy of blood lust by Indians loyal to a local potentate, Nana Sahib. Many of the Indians involved in the rebellion were erstwhile soldiers of the empire who had been seized by nihilistic ideas. The rebels' methods were so extreme that Indian moderates were torn between sympathy, revulsion, and fear. Many Indians chose to distance themselves from the uprising. Others went so far as to join hands with the British in the two violent years that followed the rebellion. A similar process is clearly under way in today's Middle East, where Islamist fundamentalism has inflamed some Arabs while alienating others.

The phrase "shock and awe,"used by the United States military to describe the initial aerial attack on Baghdad, provided another reminder of the 1857 uprising in India. In the aftermath of the mutiny, the British mounted a campaign to create terror and awe among rebel forces throughout the Indian subcontinent. The road from Kanpur to Allahabad was lined with the corpses of Indian soldiers who had been hanged; there were public displays of rebels being shot from cannons. British soldiers sacked cities across the north of India. The instruments of state were deployed in such a way as to reward allies and punish areas and populations that had supported the rebels. The effects of these policies were felt for generations and can, arguably, still be observed in the disparities that divide, say, the relatively affluent region of Punjab and the impoverished state of Bihar.

The right and wrong of the British actions are not at issue here. Nor do I want to overstate the analogy to the present circumstances; the "coalition of the willing"is clearly not going to use nineteenth-century methods in Iraq. I want, rather, to pose a question that is not articulated often enough: Do such acts of power work? Many believe that displays of military might are always erased or offset by countervailing forces of resistance. But those who are accustomed to the exercise of power know otherwise. They know that power can be used to redirect the forces of resistance.

In the case of the 1857 uprising, the truth is that the reigning power's brutal response resulted in some significant changes in Indian political life. Britain's overwhelming victory was instrumental in persuading a majority of Indians that it was futile to oppose the empire with an armed struggle. This consensus led many in the next generation of anti-colonialists to turn in a more parliamentary and constitutionalist direction, and was the necessary backdrop to Mahatma Gandhi's tactics of nonviolent resistance.

Some of today's imperial enthusiasts have pointed to Indian democracy as proof that a ...