Niall Ferguson is the author of the paper.
Niall Ferguson is not a Progressive, moron.
You can tell a man who is a "progressive" or as I call them, communist by who he hops in bed with.
And you were the one who is pushing the idea that counties go into the Empire business to give enormous amounts of money away. Which is a concept that runs past moronic, took a flying leap over idiot and is currently frenching imbecilic.
The US had a very brief flirtation with Empire when we took over the independent nation of Hawaii. And we benefited financially from it. Which is why countries become empires.
We did not financially benefit from any of the other places we took from the Spanish American war. They were a net drain which is why we cut them loose in under a half a century.
We gained nothing financially from preventing Europe from dragging the world into another of their series of endless wars for 80 years. In fact we paid through the nose to rebuild the place and paid in blood and treasure to keep it peaceful. Sorry, I know you are historically illiterate but could you please show where in the entire stretch of human history any "Empire" did the same? Perhaps name one that paid rent to the countries that they were defending? Rather then demanding tribute?
Words have meanings.
Buy a dictionary.