Help with capitalizing proper nouns: Is it Empire/empire, Imperialism/imperialism??

Question

Should the words "empire" and "imperial" and "imperialism" begin with a capital??

Answer 1

Are they the names of something?  The Empire State Building would be capitalized because that is the name of that building.  The king's empire would not be capitalized.

Imperialism is not the name of a thing, so it isn't capitalized unless it is the first word in a sentence.

Answer 2

You would only capitalize them if you are citing a specific, named empire (or whatever):

For instance, see the following.

We are studying the Roman Empire.

I may not be an emperor, but my home is still my personal empire.

Citizens in other countries sometimes accuse the U.S. and U.K. of imperialism.