Most Americans - and likely an even greater share of Chinese citizens - do not believe their countries are empires. Princeton historian Linda Colley has argued that this collective blindness is no accident but a structural feature of how overland empires operate and legitimize themselves.

Colley, a professor of history at Princeton University and author of "The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen," laid out the case in her analysis for the Financial Times, "Hvylya" reports. The key distinction is between maritime and overland empires. Maritime empires - the kind built by Britain, France, and the Netherlands - require crossing oceans and subjugating distant peoples, making the imperial project visible and hard to deny. Overland expansion, by contrast, blurs the line between national territory and conquered land.

This is why overland empires, "however violent they may have been in construction," can appear to be the result of organic growth and manifest destiny rather than conquest, Colley noted. Citizens of such states simply assume their country grew into its current shape naturally. The result: two of the world's most powerful states operate as empires while their populations genuinely believe otherwise.

The historical record tells a different story. The early United States proved more aggressive than its former British rulers in seizing Native American lands. It then took territory from Mexico, acquired overseas possessions such as Hawaii, and its current leadership has been eyeing Greenland and contemplating Cuba. China has been constructed over centuries through conquest, coercion, and force - and Taiwan may be next.

As late as 1900, only about 25 percent of the world's population lived in nation states. The decolonization wave after 1945 gave rise to almost half of today's sovereign states, encouraging a belief that nationhood was a natural political endpoint. Yet a 2023 survey found that only 24 of the world's 190-plus sovereign states qualified as full democracies - just six of them outside the West.

Also read: The German Powder Keg: Foreign Affairs on What Will Blow Up Europe's Social Contract.