AN EMPIROLOGICAL LOOK INTO THE HISTORY OF EMPIRES

The definition of an empire is: when a single entity has supreme rule and power over a vast area of territory, which consists of peoples of different ethnicity and nationality. This list is based on the influence, longevity and power of the various empires, and, as you will see, it contains at least one or two entries that may strike some as controversial. My one requirement for this list is that the empire must have been ruled – for at least a majority of the time – by an emperor or king. This excludes modern so-called empires such as the United States and Soviet Union. The entries here are listed roughly by influence and size.

The first global empires really were products of the European Age of Exploration that began with a race of exploration between the then most advanced maritime powers, Portugal and Spain, in the 15th century. The initial impulse behind these maritime empires and those that followed was trade, driven by the new ideas and the capitalism that grew out of the European Renaissance. Agreements were also reached to divide the world up between them in 1479, 1493, and 1494.

Portugal began establishing the first global trade network and empire under the leadership of Henry the Navigator. Portugal would eventually establish colonial domains from Brazil, in South America, to several colonies in Africa (namely Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese Cape Verde, Portuguese São Tomé and Príncipe, Portuguese Angola and Portuguese Mozambique), in Portuguese India (most importantly Bombay and Goa), in China (Macau), and Oceania (most importantly Timor, namely Portuguese Timor), amongst many other smaller or short-lived possessions.

The Spanish Empire was Europe’s greatest military power from 1503 to 1642 and the worlds from 1580 to 1642. It employed or produced the great explorers and navigators of their age – first to navigate the globe and opened all the major trade routes of its time. The Spanish can take credit for the first global currency spreading from the Americas including the British colonies in the North, Asia and Europe. During its peak, the Spanish Empire had possession of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Italy, parts of Germany, parts of France, and many colonies in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. With the conquest of inland Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines in the 16th century, Spain established overseas dominions on a scale and world distribution that had never been approached by its predecessors (the Mongol Empire had been larger but was restricted to Eurasia). Possessions in Europe, Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, the Americas, the Pacific Ocean, and the Far East qualified the Spanish Empire as attaining a global presence in this sense.

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Spanish Empire at its greatest extent.

#10 OF 10 ON 1 TO 10 SCALE OF GREATEST EMPIRES

10 – Ottoman Empire

At the height of its power (16th–17th century), the Ottoman Empire spanned three continents, controlling much of Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. It contained 29 provinces and numerous vassal states, some of which were later absorbed into the empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. The empire was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. With Constantinople as its capital city, and vast control of lands around the eastern Mediterranean during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (ruled 1520 to 1566), the Ottoman Empire was, in many respects, an Islamic successor to the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

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Ottoman Empire at its largest extent.

9 – Umayyad Caliphate

The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the four Islamic caliphates (systems of governance), established after the death of Mohammed. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the city of Mecca, Damascus was the capital of their Caliphate. Eventually, it would cover more than five million square miles, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen, and the fifth largest contiguous empire ever to exist. The Umayyads established the largest Arab-Muslim state in history. From the time of Mohammed until 1924, successive and contemporary caliphates were held by various dynasties – the last being the Ottoman Empire (above).

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The expansion of the Caliphate.

Red = Expansion under Muhammad, 622-632

Orange = Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphate, 632-661

Yeller = Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661-750

8 – Persian Empire or Achaemenid Empire

Babylonian, Akkadians, Assyrians, Sumerians, Hitites, Bactrians, Scythians, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Egyptians, Ethiopians… Before the Romans, there were the Persians. They basically unified the whole of Central Asia which consisted of a lot of different cultures, kingdoms, empires and tribes. It was the largest empire in ancient history. At the height of its power, the empire encompassed approximately 8 million km2. The empire was forged by Cyrus the Great, and spanned three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe.

During the Muslim conquests of the 7th and early 8th centuries, Rashidun armies established the Caliphate, or Islamic Empire, one of the largest empires ever. The 7th century saw the introduction of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, where Muhammad established a new unified political polity in the Arabian Peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Arab power well beyond the Arabian peninsula in the form of a vast Muslim Arab Empire with an area of influence that stretched from northwest India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees. However, internal feuding among ruling figures in the empire led it to fragment into several states under separate administrations, such as the Umayyads (whose rule continued in Spain after it collapsed elsewhere), Abbasids, Ayyubids, Mamluks and many others. These were in addition to a variety of other Muslim states in Sudan, Indonesia and elsewhere that later arose outside of the main Islamic Empires, through trade and other contacts. Thus, the size of these empires vary depending on how “membership” in the empire is defined—as being under a single administration, accepting a particular ruler or following the dictates of the Caliph (which technically, Sunni Muslims in general were expected to do).

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(Achaemenid Empire, Persian Empire) in 480 BC at its greatest extent.

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Persian Empire (536-336 BC.) under Darius the Great

7 – Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire, was the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on the capital of Constantinople, and ruled by emperors in direct succession to the ancient Roman emperors. It was called the Roman Empire, and also Romania. During its existence, of over a thousand years, the Empire remained one of the most powerful economic, cultural and military forces in Europe, despite setbacks and territorial losses, especially during the Roman–Persian and Byzantine–Arab Wars. The Empire received a mortal blow in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade, when it was dissolved and divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople and re-establishment of the Empire in 1261, under the Palaiologan emperors, successive civil wars in the fourteenth century further sapped the Empire’s strength.

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Byzantine Empire and Sassanian Empire

6 – Han Dynasty

During the Chinese period of warring states, the whole of China was embroiled in a civil war as the different kingdoms within it battled it out with each other in the quest for supremacy. In the end, the Qin State won, and gobbled up the whole of China, with 40 million people under it’s control. The Qin Dynasty didn’t last long, and soon it went to the Han, which eventually controlled China for close to 400 years. The period of the Han Dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history in terms of scientific achievement, technological advance, economic, cultural and political stability. Even to this day, most Chinese people refer to themselves as the Han people. Today, the “Han people” is considered the largest single ethnic group in the world.

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The Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) expanded the boundaries of China and further extended the Great Wall along its northern frontier for protection against the formidable Xiongnu.

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Geographical extension of the Han Dynasty as well as surrounding ethnic groups and tribes in the year 200 BC.

5 – British Empire

At it’s greatest extent, the British empire was known as the largest empire in history, as it covered more than 13,000,000 square miles, which is approximately a quarter of the Earth’s total land area, and controlled more than 500 million people – again a quarter of the world’s population. As a result, the legacy it imprinted on these conquered lands is tremendous in terms of political reform, cultural exchanges and way of life. The English language, which it spread, is the second most-widely spoken language in the world today, and many linguistics agree that English is the defacto standard language of the world. The British empire is definitely one of the most influential empires ever to have existed in human history.

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The British Umpire at his greatest extent.

4 – Holy Roman Empire

During the middle ages, they were considered the “superpower” of their time. At it’s height, the Holy Roman Empire consisted of eastern France, all of Germany, northern Italy and parts of western Poland. Despite being relatively small in terms of Empires, its influence on the history of central Europe is still felt today. Incredibly the Empire lasted from the early middle ages ages to the 19th century. The Empire was formally dissolved on 6 August 1806 when the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II (later Francis I of Austria), abdicated following a military defeat by the French under Napoleon. Upon its collapse, the following nations emerged: Switzerland, Holland, the Austrian Empire, Belgium, the Prussian Empire, Principality of Liechtenstein, Confederation of the Rhine and the first French Empire.

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Holy Roman Empire in 1250

3 – The Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union. It was the second largest contiguous empire in world history, surpassed only by the Mongol Empire, and the third largest empire behind the British Empire and the Mongol Empire. At one point in 1866, it stretched from eastern Europe, across Asia, and into North America.

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Russian Umpire at his greatest extent with Seattle Mariner’s Manager Lou Piniella.

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2 – Mongol Empire

It all started when Temujin (who was later known as Genghis Khan), vowed in his youth to bring the world to his feet. He almost did. His first act was unifying the scattered Mongolian tribes. Then he set his sight on China, and the rest is history. From Vietnam to Hungary, the Mongol Empire is the largest contiguous empire in the history of mankind. Unfortunately for them, their empire was too big to be controlled, and there was no unity among the different cultures. The Mongols were fearless and ruthless fighters, but had little experience in administration. The image of the mongols as a brutal and savage people is renowned through history.

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The Mongol Empire lost its unity upon the death of the Great Khan Möngke during fighting in China in 1259, with the Golden Horde’s Berke Khan and the Ilkhanate’s Hulagu Khan even taking up arms against each other and supporting rival factions for selection of the Great Khan. However, upon the death of Berke—a Muslim—the religious impetus for conflict among the khanates subsided, with the Mongols again supposedly loyal to the new Great Khan Kublai before fragmenting yet again later. If the khanates are considered to have been a unified Mongol Empire under Kublai—stretching from Korea and China in the east through Siberia and Central Asia and into Persia and Eastern Europe in the west—it would easily be the world’s largest in terms of both land area and population (as a percentage of the world total).

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The Mongol Empire at its peak

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Genghis Khan Empire

1 – Roman Empire

At first they were ruled by divine kings, then they became a republic (perhaps their greatest period) before finally becoming an empire. How a group of farmers, who started off fending wolves to protect their livestock, eventually became the greatest empire in all history is the stuff of legends. Coupled with an excellent military and administrative system, the Roman Empire, or rather ancient Rome, is also one of the longest-lasting. Counting from its founding to the fall of the Byzantine empire, ancient Rome lasted for a whopping 2,214 years!
Ancient Rome contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology, religion and language in the Western world. In fact many historians consider the Roman Empire to be a perfect empire – influential, fair, long-lasting, big, well defended and economically advanced. The influence of the Roman Empire is felt to this day, if for no other reason than the influence on the Catholic Church, which took much of its administrative nous and pageantry from it.

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The Roman Empire at its peak in 117 AD

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ALEXANDER’S EMPIRE

Brief look into the empire of Alexander the great “King of Kings” (Shahanshah). In 336 BC Darius III takes over. In 334 Alexander the Great of Macedonia invades Central Asia. Darius loses three battles with Alexander and is finally defeated in 331. He is murdered in 330 B.C. The great Persian Empire is no more. The Persian Empire began with conquest and ended with defeat, but it will always be remembered as a powerful force that swept through the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

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Alexander’s Empire

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Alexander’s name een Hierogleeephix

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Alexander’s conquests proliferated even after his death into modern day America and beyond.

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The Han Solo Dynasty circa 1980