Hegemony refers to the supreme direction, the preeminence or the predominance of one thing over another. More usually it is used in a political sense to designate the supremacy of one State over another or others. The word comes from the Greek ἡγεμονία (hegemony), which means ‘direction’, ‘leadership’.
In this sense, the supremacy of one people over others, or, in other words, the superiority that a country has over others, will turn this nation into a hegemonic state.
The hegemony implies a position of influence is recorded at various levels and walks of life of nations. It may be political, economic, cultural or military hegemony, since the latter manifests itself in the warlike potential of a nation in terms of armament, contingent, ammunition, etc.
The history records hegemonies from ancient Greece, when three city-states differed from the rest: Sparta, Athens and Thebes. It was then that the king of Macedonia decided to invade Greece, joining with other peoples, to bring down the Greeks of the hegemonic seat and thus claim for Macedonia political-military hegemony.
Cultural hegemony
The cultural hegemony refers to the supremacy of one culture over another or others. As such, it is a concept developed by the Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci , who understood cultural hegemony as the domination, in terms of imposition, of the system of values, beliefs and ideologies of one social class over others, fundamentally of the bourgeoisie About the working class. This class, moreover, generally exercises control over institutions and forms of production.
World hegemony
As world hegemony, the domain of the world by a nation or a group of nations is called. World hegemony addresses political, ideological, religious, economic, cultural and military factors. The Roman Empire was based primarily on its military might; the Spanish empire, on the other hand, sought the implantation of the Christian religion; the British empire proposed dominion in commercial terms; while the USSR in the twentieth century sought the spread of communism. Currently, the United States and the most powerful countries in economic and military terms of the European bloc they exert a marked influence on politics and the world economy, besides participating, directly or indirectly, in armed conflicts around the world.
