What’s the difference between these two titles?
One is in charge of a kingdom, the other is in charge of an empire.
Well, what’s the difference between a kingdom and an empire, then?
A king only rules one country, an emperor rules several.
The term “emperor” derives from the Latin imperator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperator) originally a military title (“commander”), used in the later Roman Empire to designate the ruler, and later adopted by Charlemagne and, later, Otto the Great (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire). In Europe, its usage has always included an element of claiming the ancient Roman title, or of asserting equality with it, as when Napoleon made himself emperor of the French; and Bismarck created the German Empire; and Peter the Great of Russia promoted himself from tsar (“caesar”) to emperor (the title “tsar” was first used by Ivan the Terrible to assert equality with the recently vanished Byzantine rulers). When translating titles of non-European rulers, the word “emperor” sometimes is used to designate a monarch who, even if he does not rule a multinational empire, seems to be accorded a status too exalted to be ranked a mere “king” – e.g., the tenno or emperor of Japan.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor:
The article also traces the historical development of the title/concept from the earliest Roman “emperors” (who did not use the title).
Henry VIII, by the way, in declaring “This island is an empire,” was not claiming the right to style himself by the imperial title, but merely asserting that England was a completely independent sovereign state, owing no allegiance to any foreign prince, such as the Bishop of Rome or the Holy Roman Emperor.
It depends on what time period you’re looking at. But there are two things that can be said with some degree of confidence:
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For most of history, a king was king of a nation and/or a people, while an emperor was emperor of an imperium, i.e., a multi-national political entity. There might be a dominant people in that empire, as with the Persians, but it was one where the subject peoples were welcome to preserve their own ethnicity and customs while being politically and economically subsumed into the imperium. (I trust you can see why I didn’t use “empire” for imperium in this context.)
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There was a longstanding concept throught medieval and early modern times that there was only one Empire, although there might be multiple Emperors claiming emperorship. This was, originally, the product of Diocletian’s creation of "Augustuses "and “Caesars” as means of ruling an empire grown too unwieldy for one man, reinforced by the unstable situations after the fall of Rome.
Other than Persia and the short-lived empire of Alexander, Rome was the first true empire in sense #1. And when multiple emperors became needed, they retained the legal fiction that there was only one Empire, administratively divided into parts ruled by distinct emperors but metaphysically a single unit. After the fall of the West, Justinian tried to restore this unity but was unable to defeat all the successor states. The justification for making Charlemagne emperor was in part because the throne in Constantinople had no emperor, Irene being Empress Regnant at the time. And as the Byzantines’ fortunes fell and the Holy Roman Empire waxed, the attitude was that it was the empire. Other states had Kings (and the Emperor or his son was “King of the Germans” but there was only the one empire and one emperor over it).
As usual for him with political innovations, Peter the Great was the first to challenge that, becoming Emperor of Russia. The term was then adopted over the next century or so for a variety of other multiethnic realms, including the Mikado, the Son of Heaven in Peking, the Negus of Ethiopia, the Sultan of the Ottomans, Napoleon, the decision of the Archduke of Austria to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire and become Emperor of Austria. In 1871, the King of Prussia became the suzerain of a wide variety of Kings, Archdukes, Counts, Electors, Margraves, and Lord High Whatsits in a reunited Germany, and assumed the title of Emperor of Germany in consequence. And Queen Victoria in the U.K. assumed the title of Empress of India, held by her successors until 1947.
Other than the Mikado, there are no surviving Emperors or Empresses, even ones who were dethroned, the last living ex-Empress being Elizabeth the Queen Mother who was consort Empress of India for ten years.
There’s no real difference. The title of emperor was relived by Charlemagne (in western Europe. In the east, the roman empire an emperors lasted in Byzance until the 15th century). It meant he was deemed the successor of the roman emperors, quite simply (and the equal of the emperor of Byzance). After the frankish empire was divided, the title of emperor was kept by the German branch of the Carolingians, so founding the Holy Roman Empire. Eventually, this title ended up in the Austrian Habsburg family (before that, it was elective, not hereditary, title).
Kings were supposed, at least originally, to be of lower ranks than emperors, but of course they quickly denied any claim of sovereignty to the Holy Roman emperors. For instance, the king of France had his legists stating that “the king is emperor in his realm”. The idea that the emperors had even simply a higher status quickly faded away too when the HR Emperors ceased to hold a significant power.
Similarily, the Czars of Russia considered themselves as successors of the emperors of Byzance (Czar is derived from “Cesar”. Same with the German “Kaiser”).
Napoleon titled himself emperor, I would assume, mostly because “king” was a bad word at this time in France, and as an imitator of the founders of the Roman empire (successful general saving the republic, Consul, then emperor, there’s a trend, here, remembering Cesar…though Cesar never was an emperor).
When Germany was united by Prussia in the late 19th century, the King of Prussia became emperor of Germany, so putting himself above other German kings (the king of Bavaria, for instance) and on an equal standing with his former rival the emperor of Austria.
As for emperors outside of Europe (like in Ethiopia, Japan, China), I wouldn’t know why the title of some of these foreign rulers were translated as “emperor” rather than “king”.
I’ll leave to someone more aknolewdegable the original history and meaning of the title “imperator” and the word “imperium” in Rome.
Actually, “empire” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire) would be a better word for what you’re describing. Imperium usually means something different – e.g., the authority of a state or ruler. (In the Roman Republic, each elected magistrate – consul or praetor – held a specified degree of imperium, i.e., executive and judicial (there was no clear distinction) authority and jurisdiction.) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperium
I swear ** Brainglutton [/b) and ** Polycarp ** 's posts weren’t there when I wrote mine…
In the case of Japan, the Emperor rules not at all. His is a purely figurehead office and the Japanese constitution states that sovereignty rests with the people of Japan.
Right, but he did rule until the Americans made the Japanese adopt a new constitution stripping him of his power.
…in theory, in Constitutional provision. As with the U.K., what formal custom implies and political reality are two different things.
In practice, an Emperor had not exercised authority since the Heian period, around the 1300’s IIRC. Until the Meiji Restoration (1868), rule rested in the Shoguns. (Imagine Oliver Cromwell’s dictatorship with the Stuarts still on t he throne, and handed down hereditarily through the Cromwell family, to get a Western parallel.) After that, it was fragmented among Genro, Diet, ministers, Army, and Navy until September 1945, when Hirohito did the one completely free act of his emperorship: made it the Imperial Will (which he would normally have been “advised” to do in the same way as Tony Blair “advises” Elizabeth II what to do) that Japan surrender.
And of course Monty is right under the MacArthur constitution adopted after the war.