Empires, more than nation-states, are the principal actors in the history of world events. Much of what we call history consists of the deeds of the 50 to 70 empires that once ruled multiple peoples across large chunks of the globe. Yet, as time has passed, the life span of empires has tended to decline.
Compared with their ancient and early modern predecessors, the empires of the last century were remarkably short lived. This phenomenon of reduced imperial life expectancy has profound implications for our own time. Officially, there are no empires now, only plus nation-states. Yet the ghosts of empires past continue to stalk the Earth. Regional conflicts from Central Africa to the Middle East, and from Central America to the Far East, are easily -- and often glibly -- explained in terms of earlier imperial sins: an arbitrary border here, a strategy of divide-and-rule there.
Moreover, many of today's most important states are still recognizably the progeny of empires. Look at the Russian Federation, where less than 80 percent of the population is Russian, or Britain, which is, for all intents and purposes, an English empire. Modern-day Italy and Germany are the products not of nationalism but of Piedmontese and Prussian expansion. Imperial inheritance is even more apparent outside of Europe.
India is the heir of the Mughal Empire and, even more manifestly, the British Raj. China is the direct descendant of the Middle Kingdom. In the Americas, the imperial legacy is apparent from Canada in the north to Argentina in the south. Regional conflicts from Central Africa to the Middle East, and from Central America to the Far East, are easily — and often glibly — explained in terms of earlier imperial sins: an arbitrary border here, a strategy of divide-and-rule there. Even those institutions that were supposed to reorder the world after have a distinctly imperial bent.
For what else are the five permanent members of the U. Security Council if not a cozy club of past empires? We tend to assume that the life cycle of empires, great powers, and civilizations has a predictable regularity to it. Yet the most striking thing about past empires is the extraordinary variability in the chronological as well as geographic expanse of their dominion. Especially striking is the fact that the most modern empires have a far shorter life span than their ancient and early modern predecessors.
Take the Roman case. The Roman Empire in the West can be dated from 27 B. It ended when Constantinople was established as a rival capital with the death of the Emperor Theodosius in , making a total of years.
The Roman Empire in the East can be dated from then until, at the latest, the sack of Byzantium by the Ottoman Turks in , a total of 1, years. The Holy Roman Empire — the successor to the Western empire — lasted from , when Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Romans, until Napoleon ended it in The "average" Roman empire therefore lasted years. Such calculations, though crude, allow us to compare the life spans of different empires.
The three Roman empires were uncharacteristically long lived. By comparison, the average Near Eastern empire including the Assyrian, Abassid, and Ottoman lasted a little more than years; the average Egyptian and East European empires around years; the average Chinese empire subdividing by the principal dynasties ruled for more than three centuries.
The various Indian, Persian, and West European empires generally survived for between and years. After the sack of Constantinople, the longest-lived empire was clearly the Ottoman at years. The East European empires of the Habsburgs and the Romanovs each existed for more than three centuries. The Mughals ruled a substantial part of what is now India for years. Of an almost identical duration was the reign of the Safavids in Persia.
It is trickier to give precise dates to the maritime empires of the West European states, because these had multiple points of origin and duration. But the British, Dutch, French, and Spanish empires can all be said to have endured for roughly years. The life span of the Portuguese empire was closer to The empires created in the 20th century, by contrast, were comparatively short.
Technically, the Third Reich lasted 12 years; as an empire in the true sense of the word, exerting power over foreign peoples, it lasted barely half that time. Only Benito Mussolini was a less effective imperialist than Hitler. Why did the new empires of the 20th century prove so ephemeral? The answer lies partly in the unprecedented degrees of centralized power, economic control, and social homogeneity to which they aspired. The new empires that arose in the wake of the First World War were not content with the successful but haphazard administrative arrangements that had characterized the old empires, including the messy mixtures of imperial and local law and the delegation of powers and status to certain indigenous groups.
They inherited from the 19th-century nation-builders an insatiable appetite for uniformity; these were more like "empire states" than traditional empires. The new empires repudiated traditional religious and legal constraints on the use of force. They insisted on the creation of new hierarchies in place of existing social structures.
Is it reasonable to compare the British and Achaemenid empires with this metric? Or are we comparing apples to oranges? Related: Why did Rome fall? That's without getting into the pros and cons of the other ways to measure size: largest land mass; largest contiguous land mass; largest army; largest gross domestic product; and so on.
Instead, we should use a metric to measure long-term influence and stability, said Martin Bommas, an Egyptologist and director of the Macquarie University History Museum in Sydney, Australia, because it's one thing to embark on warring campaigns to amass land, but it takes a different set of logistical skills and infrastructure to keep and administer those territories. That prosperity can then be exploited so that resources and wealth can be sent back to the motherland, Bommas said.
Skip to main content. Single Accounts Corporate Solutions Universities. Follow Statista. Description This chart shows the estimated peak land area of the largest empires in history. Download Chart. You will find more infographics at Statista. Opinions plan compulsory education about colonialism and slavery the Netherlands People's opinion on their country hypothetically still having an empire in Level of pride relating to former empires in select countries in People's opinion on the current state of their country's former colonies in Number of African countries under European control based on current borders.
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