Premodern empires lacked the will to transform nature that defining modern sovereignty

Evidence

It is no longer accurate in this context to employ the term domination, for it underrepresents the force of modern Europe’s structure of thought and its performativity. Domination is merely control and influence exercised over someone or something else, a characteristic that may be attributed to all complex societies and empires of the past, since the dawn of “civilizational” time. The term, I think, might be adequate to describe the way empires ruled over subjects, especially the conquered; and it is certainly too strong to describe premodern domination over nature in the material, physical sense. However much the environment and ecology were exploited, and to a limited extent they undoubtedly were, the conception and understanding embedded in domination did not extend to a consciousness of control-for-the-sake-of-transformation to one’s will, if not one’s pleasure. Nor did premodern domination over conquered subjects involve conscious or even semiconscious designs that began with the assumption that they were an extension of a controllable and—as Scheler put it—manipulable nature and thus subject to domination that integrates the power to transform. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 192

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘domination’ (mere control, shared with all past empires) from the distinctively modern project of will-to-transformation that goes beyond it.
• QUESTION: Hallaq says premodern empires didn’t treat subjects as ‘manipulable nature.’ Is that historically defensible given Roman-era chattel slavery or Spanish encomienda? Worth chasing the counter-examples.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 192
• XREF: connects to: Christianity alone among the monotheisms sought premature reconciliation of civilization with nature