Imperial divisions are theoretical and practical

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Both kinds of division, like that introduced by the Heath government in Britain, paid more respect to geography than to popular tradition and cultural or historical differences, which indeed it sought to undermine. People are expected to accommodate themselves to the bureaucratic system and not vice- versa. Although working in a national framework, in all three cases, the divisions were intended to be models for the division of a future united Europe. Mr. Heath's divisions recalled the German Gau and the artificial post-war Laender and foreshadowed similar economic divisions in France which deliberately cut through provincial boundaries. Regional division, where it is accompanied by genuine economic self-determination, is the death of empires.

Not only does the imperial mind attempt to rationalise administration in all aspects but it also seeks to improve human behaviour. Only in empires such as those of Islam or the Aztec empire, where job function email list religion marks the entire structure of society, is it left to non-human powers to decide how man should be improved but in general, imperial conquerors proclaim their mission to "civilize" and otherwise improve the human material they find, whether this material, their new subjects, should wish to be improved or not.

Even in Islam the notion that the empire of the faith offers the way to human self-improvement is very much part of social consciousness. And of course strict Islamic observance involves a reglementation of all human behaviour down to the details of everyday life. Being a citizen of an empire is not unlike belonging to a broadly tolerant religious community: it signifies that "I have been improved-I am priviledged and proud of my priviledge. I pity the outsider. I hope that one day he will have the same as I."