He has also exploited widespread anti-Western and "anti-imperial" sentiment, making much of the West's apparent determination to oust him.
Although the policy was both unproductive and discriminatory, it was made more attractive by blending imperial and nationalistic sentiments that proclaimed "population capacities" of 100 to 500 million in Australia's "vast empty spaces".
The search, motivated by Franklin's widow and by a powerful mixture of Victorian sentiment and imperial rhetoric, became a national project.
This worst-case scenario is central to "Dangerous Allies", a controversial new book on the consequences of Australia's sentiment for imperial allegiance first as a subject of the British Empire and then as a strategic dependant of the US.
Truer to the imperial edifice was the sentiment of one of its towering figures, Lord Curzon (viceroy of India, foreign secretary), who thought of race consciousness as a lower-class attribute.
The Emperor Kōmei agreed with such sentiments, and breaking with centuries of imperial tradition began to take an active role in matters of state: as opportunities arose, he fulminated against the treaties and attempted to interfere in the shogunal succession.
But Putin's claim to be the defender of Russian interests throughout the former Soviet space has played well at home, whipping up patriotic sentiments for recovering the nation's imperial clout.
Suetonius once commented that Rome was unworthy of its status as an imperial capital, yet Augustus and Agrippa set out to dismantle this sentiment by transforming the appearance of Rome upon the classical Greek model.
After Chang'an and Luoyang had been recaptured by the imperial forces in 758, Wang was saved from disgrace because of the loyal sentiments expressed in a poem he had composed while a prisoner of the rebels and because of the intercession of his brother Wang Jin, an imperial high official.
