eli5, what’s hegemony? And How does it differ from other forms of rule?
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Hegemony isn’t so much a system of rule, but the domination of one power over others without directly controlling other states.
To understand why nations simply didn’t conquer others, consider the difficulty in integrating a newly conquered land into your own domain. You need to directly control, through a workable system of government, a land and culture that may be completely different to you, with a population unwilling to be ruled by you.
Or you could show who is boss, be the biggest, best or baddest dude around, and everyone looks up to you. You can still often get what you want just by being the #1 dude.
In Classical Greek times, this power balance was the objective of the conflicts between the city-states of Sparta and Athens. To put this simply, their goal was never to conquer and rule all Greek lands. It was more like who has the most “friends” – and by “friends”, I mean city-states who they probably pummeled and now they’re best buddies because they don’t want to be pummeled again. So, conflicts would usually be between “Sparta & Friends” and “Athens & Friends”, and the winners would take the others’ friends and they would join Team Athens or Team Sparta.
In modern times, the term could be used to describe the relationship between the US and its allies. The USA doesn’t control NATO, for example, but as the single biggest military, it pretty much does – to put things very simply.
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