In The Spirit of the laws, Europe is a made the sub­ject of his­tory in order to exor­cise a cer­tain kind of empire, since « a great empire sup­po­ses a des­po­tic autho­rity in those in charge of the govern­ment ». The the­sis of this paper is as fol­lows : far from any radi­cal dis­qua­li­fi­ca­tion of empi­res, The Spirit of the laws dis­tin­gui­shes two forms of them : the ter­res­trial on the one hand and the mari­time on the other hand. The first one leads to afflic­tion and sla­very, while the other leads to power and liberty. Terrestrial and mari­time empi­res are the two pos­si­ble hori­zons for moder­nity. However one may ask whe­ther Europe has been diver­ted from its dream of impe­rial unity only to build again, out­side its limits, new forms of empi­res. Is it a case where the tra­di­tio­nal cri­ti­que of the Enlightenments holds ? Isn’t the pro­ject of eman­ci­pa­tion of moder­nity the ins­tru­ment of a nega­tive dia­lec­tics, car­rying forms of domi­na­tion even more insi­dious than the ones that it pur­ports to abo­lish ? Is it not the case that com­merce, which contri­bu­tes to ward off vio­lence from the European soil, exports in the rest of the world strug­gles that are inhe­rent within the empire ?