Looking around on the Mongols after Chirol’s post, and I found this from Wikipedia:
Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and founded the Mongol Empire (1206″“1368), the largest contiguous and second largest empire in world history.
Second largest? What was the largest Empire? (Extra credit: third largest?)
About Curzon
Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (1859 - 1925) entered the British House of Commons as a Conservative MP in 1886, where he served as undersecretary of India and Foreign Affairs. He was appointed Viceroy of India at the turn of the 20th century where he delineated the North West Frontier Province,
ordered a military expedition to Tibet, and unsuccessfully tried to partition the province of Bengal during his six-year tenure. Curzon served as Leader of the House of Lords in Prime Minister Lloyd George's War Cabinet and became Foreign Secretary in January 1919, where his most famous act was
the drawing of the Curzon Line between a new Polish state and Russia. His publications include
Russia in Central Asia (1889) and
Persia and the Persian Question (1892).
In real life, "Curzon" is a US citizen from the East Coast who has been a financial analyst, freelance translator, and university professor; he is currently on assignment in Tokyo.
British maritime empire has been biggest the history has so far witnessed. Was Spanish the third largest ?
Perhaps it was France.
For third, I’m going to say either Alexander or… who was the big-time Persian conqueror? Well, him. (I’m not looking at any references yet.)
1. Brittania
2. Mongols
3. Hellenic Empire under Alexander III of Macedon
Russia/USSR empire?
“british empire (victoria)”:37M sq km
“USSR”:22M sq km
british empire, 37m sq km
USSR, 27m sq km
mongol, 35m sq km
I am right.
here is the “list”:http://www.hostkingdom.net/earthrul.html
you can tweak the numbers yourself
1. victoria british, 37m
2. mongol, 33m
3. ussr, 22m
4. spanish, 19m
5. russia TODAY, 17m
alexander the great’ macedonian empire is ranked 19. 5.6M smaller than Brazil.
The Britih was the largest, but was a sea empire. The mongols was the second largest overall, but the biggest land empire ever.
I always thought it was the Spanish Empire under Carlos Quinto, the Holy Roman emperor. In terms of land actually administered, however, as opposed to claimed for the crown, the empire of “el Rey de las Espanas” was probably smaller than Alexander’s. However, the idea of Russia as an empire makes me question that. Ah, these surprise exams! In terms of human souls under their administration, I would have to lean to the Brits. But then, how does one compare the 19th century British Empire with earlier Chinese or Mongol empires? Should one discount tributory states who adherence was, at least officially, voluntary, and who were otherwise left to run their own affairs? If so, then we should discount protectorates from later empires. Damn, this is the worst spot quiz I’ve had since “Derecho Real”.
Why not just change the wikipedia entry to “mighty big empire”? Its a wiki isn’t it?
Gotta love the Mongols!
Sun Bin is correct!
1. British Empire
2. Mongol Empire
3. Soviet Empire (somewhat iffy — some say it was not an empire)
4. Spanish Empire
the USSR is about the same size as the Romanov Russian empire prior to 1917. so either way…
As lirelou implies, there is a vagueness to the term empire when you take into consideration the differing qualities of each.
Is the benchmark for the Soviet Empire, say, Russia before the reign of Peter the Great? I’d be much more impressed if it were, but if measured from the Revolution then that empire’s additions are not all that impressive. In fact, it might be better to just continue to call it the Russian Empire so that the “Soviet Empire”, in terms of expansion from it’s inception, doesn’t drop to, like, 1,000th place.
But ya gotta love the Mongols. Who knows how much further west the dreamers from Khara Khorum might have gone if Kublai hadn’t preoccupied himself with teaching his troops to swim in the Korean Straits.
What about the Ottomans?
It was bigger than the Spanish Empire (19.9 million km).
It should be:
1. British Empire
2. Mongol Empire
3. Soviet Empire (somewhat iffy””?some say it was not an empire)
4. Ottoman Empire
5. Spanish Empire
my list (link) above said Ottoman territory is 5.6M sq km.
I saw that.
Wikipedia (not the best source I know) says 19.9 million km.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_empire
What is the difference between the calculations I wonder?
Scott: It depends who you ask. Turkey believes the Ottoman Empire was “enormous,”:http://www.cominganarchy.com/2005/10/14/map-of-the-ottoman-empire/ but most non-Turkish historians disagree.
i guess there are different definitions.
e.g.
1. the biggest territory measured at a specific time
2. the sum of all countries it has occupied some point in time.
…and also if you count the saudi arabian desert in the pennisular it could be bigger, which is not included in wiki’s map.
wiki also said much of it is ‘under indirect control’, sort of like tibet to china in tang dynasty — i guess that might explain some of the difference.
however, if i look at the wiki map (which could be uploaded by a different person than the one who wrote the 19.9M), it looks much smaller than the size of USSR. and even smaller than that of Roman empire at its peak.
is there a software to calculate the areas of these maps? it should be easy to do, just count the pixels.
I agree that the size on the map is clearly smaller than the other empires.
This is clear when you compare the map to a map of any of the other empires.
I guess they are using the Turkish figures for the size estimate.
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The debate over the size of the Ottoman empire must make a distinction between real control on formal – and fake – suzereignty. At their height, the Ottomans had the entire Arab world except Morocco and parts of Arabia. But their control over Iraq was always tenous, and often contested by Persia, while everything in North Africa west of Egypt quickly slipped into the hands of local elites, and then the same happened to Egypt itself.
If the Ottomans can claim Algeria at any point in history, then the Soviet empire would have included Eastern Europe, since Moscow had much more control in Warsaw than Istanbul had in Algiers. But Istanbul claimed to be an empire; Moscow did not. But if reality is what counts, this matters.
Also I’m surprised that no one thought of the Umayyads or the Abbasids. The Umayyad’s (661-750, based in Damascus) at their peak had all of what is now the Arab world plus Spain, part of Anatolia, Iran and part of India and the Caucasus. They didn’t have much real control over these far-flung areas for long, but then again that is another issue. Smaller than Russia, but at their peak I think bigger than the Ottomans.
Hey? What about the Attila`s empire? It was very big but no one said that! Attila was the leader of magyars(hungarians) and bulgarians.He crushed the Roman Empire and for a short period of time his empire was the biggest one at that time.