Eh. The Mongols were pretty good as long as you weren't their enemy. Bloodshed between conquered parties was not allowed, you were allowed to worship any damn god you feel like and they didn't tax an arm and a leg. Life would go on much as it had before the Mongols came. They didn't really oppress you and they didn't allow anyone else to oppress you either. Even if you were the enemy, the Khans usually made a point of offering surrender twice before taking a city. Fight them though and a quick death is something you should pray for. They were known for making an example of their enemy.
They still have an Emperor. In fact, they are the only country with a reigning Emperor in modern day.
It depends how you define the spread of an empire. I could argue that an empire is just as much a psychological entity, as it is physical in terms of its extent. Consider the British Empire, which most people would consider has gone to dust for fifty years. Yet they spread the use of the English language over the entire world; they spread the use of English institutions such as parliaments and the English legal system. I could argue that the present-day empire of the United States would never have spread so far--or comparitively so fast--if English had not been essentially a world language by 1945, when the British Empire started falling apart.
Hapsburg: The Habsburgs were pissing themselves in fear when the Ottoman Empire was at its zenith, and knocking on its doorstep after taking most of Hungary.. Hell, all the European nations were, especially when one of their crusades against the Turks was resoundingly crushed, as well as a naval fleet that the mightiest Christian nations put together under the command of Andrea Dorea. Up until the end of the 16th century, the Turks continually laid the smack down on inferior Christian nations. Only after the Counter-Reformation, when the Christians fought against each other and upgraded their mode of warfare, did they start to have victories over the Turks. Before that, many Christian nations were vassals, or paying tributes to keep the Turks off their soil. The Venetians lost naval dominance to the Ottomans, and had to hand over Crete and Cyprus. The only thing which prevented the Ottomans from marching into Central Europe was Vienna. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Not too bad for Muslim savages. That's not including the Arab Empire, and the Persian Empire.
Without any question the British Empire. Ruling 1/4 of the world. The Sun Never Sets, etc. I am staggered that nobody proposed this yet. In terms of population mumbers - at the time; land area; resources; military power; political influence. No comparison.
The Ottomans were slapped over the fingers at Malta 1565 by the knights of St. John of the hospital - the turks ran home crying for mommy ...... The british Empire was spread out all over the world and the sun never set "just like in the former spanish empire " but the mongols ruled over a higher percentage of the worlds population ....... The most landarea ruled by B.E. was some 37 mill square km. The most landarea ruled by mongols was some 35 mill square km. (according to wikipedia) B.E. had a field day with rifles and machineguns against natives ... The mongols did it the hard way, with just about the same weapons as the opponents ........
We didn't lose it. We gave it away. Yet, despite our comparatively small population we remain the fourth largest economy on the planet. How many others Empires ended up with their core intact and strong? [Please ignore the fact that currently we have a smiling dick head as a leader.]
yup just as i thought Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! fucking working class stiffs bartering and trading rule brittania
Re: British Empire: Well, that is perfectly true. But it is true of the Mongol Empire as well. If "powerful" implies a system with the power to sustain itself, you have to put the Roman Empire in a class of its own. It brought a degree of organised violence and suppression that the world had not witnessed before. Neither Alexander (before) nor the Mongols (afterwards) introduced a self-sustaining system which fed on its own strengths; merely they exhibited superior force of arms. It may be that because the Roman Empire grew so much more slowly that it evolved by degree the necessary apparatus for long-term survival.
Ophiolite: LOL. Big difference... Britain realized that you were too weak to sustain many of their colonies. They were far more trouble than they were worth, so you were forced to 'give them' away (except the United States). Instead of losing their colonies to enemy empires, they lost them to independence. River Ape: It wasn't a powerful empire to begin with if it slips through your fingers in one generation (eg. Mongol Empire). Powerful Empires held onto their land, assimiliating the current inhabitants, and permanently settling their own citizens on conquered territory. In otherwords, the Roman, Habsburg, Russian, French, British, Persian and Ottoman Empires would be the very definition of powerful empires.
One might consider the present US dominance as a continuation of the British Empire. Surely if you were looking back at this period from a distance of a thousand years or so one might say something like: The Anglo Empire relocated its leadership to Washington at about the middle of the twentieth century and its dominance continued and, in fact, increased through......
Britain was the empire upon which the sun never set because god wouldn't trust the wankers in the dark... But its all in good fun.
mountainhare, wouldn't you define the adaptation of the English language by millions and millions of people world wide as assimiliation?
Who wasn't? Poland, The Reich, hell, even Spain was all "ah shit, bitch!" Which was defended by....Austrians (and Poles and Hungarians).
It seems like there are several dimensions of an empire that must be measured and balanced in order to measure its "power." How much populated land mass did it cover? The USSR and its satellites or modern China probably have that one. I don't count Britain because so much of Canada and Australia were (and still are) really unpopulated. Still, they had India which is huge. How far in linear distance did it spread? The British have that one with no competition. "The sun never set" on their empire, indeed. What percentage of the Earth's population did they encompass? Modern China, once again, with about 20 %. Modern India a close second. How diverse were their subject peoples? A bit difficult to define but surely the Brits nailed it. Mesolithic Australians, Canadians, Africans, plus the ancient civilizations of India and the Middle East. How much influence did it have? The British outdid the Romans, Greeks, etc. But I believe we American "imperialists," as our Soviet enemies used to call us, thereby qualifying us as an "empire," have outdone them all. How many people in the world were not touched by Mickey Mouse, Elvis Presley, Sly Stallone? So how about a tie-breaker? How long did it last? Ahem. Folks, it's China. About five thousand years as a continuous nation. If you take the integral of their influence, land mass, and population over time, they've got us all beat by an order of magnitude. And if you don't think China should be called an empire, you'd better not say that to a Chinese. They were ruled by emperors until a hundred years ago. That's an eye blink to them. By the way: The Turks/Ottomans are Mongols. They were one of the many waves of "Mongol hordes" that spread out across Eurasia over the last couple of millennia. They probably qualify as the slowest-spreading horde, however. They were Mongols when they started out but they kept marrying locals and having mixed-blood children everywhere they went. As they moved eastward they became Uzbek, Kazakh, Moghul, Kyrghyz, etc. By the time they reached Turkey they had picked up the Islamic religion and were about as much Arabic and Indo-Iranian as Mongolian. The Turkic languages are in the same family as Mongolian.
The Romans, Han China, and Tang China. The British empire didn't last too long, and comparatively similar to the Mongol empire in terms of space-time. If America can continue its prestige for another two centuries, I would rank it up with those three.
I'd say America. Sure, there's no "Emperor", but we have politicians that are worse. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I say the United States because we have soldiers all over the world in almost every country and hey, we basically run the whole planet too. Many countries adopt our ways and we also forces others to be so as well. The biggest thing though, is that we invented the nuke which has the ability to end all life here on earth. I don't care who you are, but that's power (And yes, I know other countries have nukes, but I had to place a limit somewhere). And no, this isn't nationalism speaking either as I don't like most of the above, but since you're talking about "power", there it is. - N
