List of largest empires Totally Explained

Everything about List Of Largest Empires totally explained

This article provides a list of the largest empires in world history.

Definition

An empire is a state that extends dominion over areas and populations distinct culturally and ethnically from the culture/ethnicity at the center of power. Often, there's an emperor at the head of an empire. An empire isn't necessarily a unity, though.

Difficulties in measuring and comparing empires

Empires are all individual in character, having been formed in widely different times under widely different political structures. In fact, the term Empire as stated above doesn't imply any particular form of government. Whether a nation is or was called an empire is also not relevant to whether it's considered an empire for the purposes of this article.
The calculation of the land area of a particular empire is controversial. In particular, there's the question of whether a particular empire can be considered to have laid claim to an area that's sparsely populated, or not populated at all. In general, this list errs on the side of including any land area that was explored and explicitly claimed, even if the areas were very sparsely populated or unpopulated. For example, a large portion of Northern Siberia isn't included in the size of the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire's northern border was somewhat ill-defined, but in most places it was simply the natural border between the steppe and the taiga. Occupied areas north of this are included in the area of the empire, but at the time the majority of the taiga and tundra were unexplored and uninhabited. This area was only very sparsely populated by the Russian Empire, but it had been explicitly claimed by the Russian Empire by the 1600s, and its extent had been entirely explored by the late 1800s. Similarly, the northernmost Canadian islands such as Ellesmere Island were explored and claimed by the British Empire by the mid 1800s (virtually the entire mainland was at least sparsely populated well before that). No claims on mainland Antarctica are included in the area of any of the empires.
Due to the historical trend of increasing population and GDP, the list of largest empires in these categories is highly dependent on which relatively recent political entities are defined as empires. The measures of population and GDP as a percentage of the world total take into account this historical growth, although decent GDP data is only available for the last few centuries, accurate only for the last decades.

Largest empires by landmass

Ancient empires

Achaemenid Persian Empire - 7.5 million km² (under Darius the Great)
Han Chinese Empire - 6 million km²
Roman Empire - 5.9 million km² (under Emperor Trajan)
Macedonian Empire - 5.4 million km² (under Alexander the Great)
Maurya Magadha Empire - 5 million km² (under Ashoka the Great)
Hunnic Empire - 4 million km² (under Attila the Hun in 441)
Seleucid Empire - 3.9 million km²
Gupta Magadha Empire - 3.5 million km² (under Chandragupta II in 400)
Sassanid Persian Empire - 3.5 million km²
Aksumite/Ethiopian Empire - 1.25 million km²
Spanish Empire - 19 million km² (under Charles III) (under Kublai Khan in 1268)
Russian Empire - 24.8 million km² (under Alexander II in 1866) - including Alaska (under Emperor Qianlong)
French Empire - 12.5 million km² (1898-1934)
Rashidun Arab caliphate - 9 million km² (under Caliph Uthman Ibn Affan r. 644-656)
Empire of Brazil - 8.1 million km² (under Darius the Great)
Japanese Empire - 7.4 million km² (under Rajendra Chola I)
Denmark-Norway - 2.6 million km²
Belgian Empire - 2.5 million km²
Neo-Assyrian Empire - 1.4 million km²
Akkadian Empire - 650,000 km²
Hittite Empire - 610,000 km²
Durrani Empire - 600,000 km²
Neo-Babylonian Empire - 500,000 km²
Korean Empire - 220,186 km²
Serbian Empire - 200,000 km²

Contiguous empires

Mongol Empire - 33.2 million km² (under Khublai Khan in 1268)

Russian Empire - 24.8 million km² (under Alexander II in 1866) - including Alaska

Neo-Babylonian Empire - 500,000 km²

Vijayanagara Empire - 360,000 km²

Korean Empire - 220,186 km²

Serbian Empire - 200,000 km²

Maritime empires

British Empire - 36.6 million km² (under King George V in 1922)

Spanish Empire - 19 million km² (under King Charles III)

Qing Empire - 432 million (in 1912)

Russian Empire - 176.4 million (in 1913)

Ming Empire - 160 million (in 1600)

Dutch Empire had 80 million people living within its boundaries in 1940.

Nazi German Empire - 75.4 million (in 1938)

Umayyad Arab Empire - 62 million (in the 7th century)

Han Empire - 60 million (in 2 AD)

Roman Empire - 60 million (in 1st century AD)

Song Empire - 59 million (in 1000)

Achaemenid Persian Empire - 42 million (in the 4th century BC)

Belgian Empire - 35.3 million (before Congolese independence, 1960)

Byzantine Empire/Eastern Roman Empire - 34 million (5th-6th centuries)

Vijayanagara Empire - 25 million (in the 16th century)

Korean Empire - 17.0 million (in 1907)

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - 10.5 million (in 1619)

Percentage of world population

Qing Empire - 36.6% (381 million out of 1.041 billion in 1820) in the 2nd century BC)

Umayyad Arab Empire - 29.5% (62 million out of 210 million in 1700)

Ming Empire - 28.8% (160 million out of 556.2 million in 1600)

Song Empire - 22% (59 million out of 268 million in 1000)

French Empire - 4.9% (112.9 million out of 2.295 billion in 1938)

Nazi German Empire - 3.3% (75.4 million out of 2.295 billion in 1938)

Austro-Hungarian Empire - 2.8% (50.6 million out of 1.791 billion in 1913)

Italian Empire - 2.3% (51.9 million out of 2.295 billion in 1938)

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - 1.9% (10.5 million out of 556 million in 1907)

Portuguese Empire - 0.8% (14.7 million out of 1.791 billion in 1913)

Largest empires by economy

GDP estimates in the following list are only given for empires in modern times, from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. All dollar amounts are in 1990 USD.

GDP size

British Empire - $683.3 billion (in 1938)

Portuguese Empire - $12.6 billion (in 1913) out of $1,111 billion in 1870)

Russian Empire - 9.4% ($257.7 billion out of $2,733 billion in 1913)

Nazi German Empire - 8.3% ($375.6 billion out of $4,502 billion in 1938)

Japanese Empire - 5.8% ($260.7 billion out of $4,502 billion in 1938)

French Empire - 5.2% ($234.1 billion out of $4,502 billion in 1938)

Austro-Hungarian Empire - 3.7% ($100.5 billion out of $2,733 billion in 1913)

Italian Empire - 3.2% ($143.4 billion out of $4,502 billion in 1938)

Ottoman Empire - 1% ($26.4 billion out of $2,733 billion in 1913)

Portuguese Empire - 0.5% ($12.6 billion out of $2,733 billion in 1913)

Notes and references

Bibliography

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University of Connecticut.

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Jean-Noël Biraben (2003). "The rising numbers of humankind", Populations & Societies 394.

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Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison (2005). The Economics of World War I. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-8521 2-9.

Christopher Chase-Dunn, Alexis Álvarez, and Daniel Pasciuti (2002). Power and Size: Urbanization and Empire Formation in World-Systems Since the Bronze Age.

University of California, Riverside.

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Mark Harrison (1998). The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison.

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Angus Maddison (2006). The Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD. Oxford University Press.

Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones (1978), "Atlas of World Population History", Facts on File (p. 342-351). New York.

Sevket Pamuk (2005), "The Ottoman Empire in World War I". In Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison (2005), The Economics of World War I, p. 112-136. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-8521 2-9.

Donald Quataert (2005). The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922.

Walter Scheidel (2005). The monetary systems of the Han and Roman empires

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Carla M. Sinopoli (2003). The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in South India, C. 1350-1650.

Ralph Thomlinson (1975), Demographic Problems, Controversy Over Population Control, Second Edition.

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Royal Academy.

H. Yoon (1985). "An early Chinese idea of a dynamic environmental cycle", GeoJournal 10 (2), p. 211-212.Further Information

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