Curated category
Former empires
- Akkadian EmpireNaram-Sin, king of Agade, declared himself a living god while still breathing, the first ruler in Sumerian culture to claim that for himself.
- Carolingian EmpireThe Carolingian Empire began with a scene that had not occurred for centuries: on Christmas Day in the year 800, Pope Leo III placed a crown on the head of…
- Sasanian EmpireThe Sasanian Empire declared itself, in its own words, the "Empire of the Iranians." That title first appeared in the trilingual Great Inscription of Shapur…
- HittitesThe Hittites built one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in West Asia, yet for centuries the only place anyone could read their name was the…
- Achaemenid EmpireThe Achaemenid Empire, at its peak, covered roughly 5.5 million square kilometers, making it the largest empire of its time.
- Austrian EmpireThe Austrian Empire began with a stroke of the pen in 1804, when Holy Roman Emperor Francis II declared himself Emperor of Austria, creating an entirely new…
- Dzungar KhanateThe Dzungar Khanate was the last nomadic empire of Oirat Mongol origin, and at its height it stretched from southern Siberia in the north to Tibet in the…
- HunsThe Huns arrived at the Volga River by 370 CE and within decades had shaken the foundations of the Roman world. They were a nomadic people from Central Asia…
- Crown of AragonThe Crown of Aragon began with a monk who never wanted to be a king. Ramiro II, raised in the Monastery of Saint Pons de Thomières as a Benedictine, was the…
- Maurya EmpireThe Maurya Empire rose from the plains of Magadha around 320 BCE, and within a generation it had become the largest political entity the Indian subcontinent…
- Kingdom of FranceThe Kingdom of France began not with a crown placed on a French king's head, but with a treaty signed in 843 that divided a dying empire.
- Tang dynastyOn the 18th of June in the year 618, word reached Li Yuan that Emperor Yang of Sui had been murdered by a general named Yuwen Huaji.
- Ancient CarthageAncient Carthage was once the richest city in the western Mediterranean, a Phoenician-descended power that controlled the coasts of North Africa, Iberia, and…
- Qin dynastyThe Qin dynasty ruled China for only 14 years, from 221 to 206 BC, yet the political system it built outlasted it by more than two thousand years.
- Spanish EmpireThe Spanish Empire existed for nearly five centuries, from 1492 to 1976, stretching across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
- Mongol EmpireThe Mongol Empire became the largest contiguous empire in history. At its height it stretched from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe, reaching north into…
- Austria-HungaryAustria-Hungary was, for roughly half a century, the second-largest country in Europe by area, surpassed only by Russia.
- German EmpireOn the 18th of January 1871, while German armies still besieged Paris, William I of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of…
- First Bulgarian EmpireThe First Bulgarian Empire was born from a humiliation so complete that the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes the Confessor could barely write it down.
- Empire of NicaeaIn 1204, Byzantine emperor Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlos fled Constantinople after crusaders invaded the city. Soon after, Theodore I Laskaris, the…
- Habsburg monarchyThe Habsburg monarchy began with a single castle in present-day Switzerland, built by a man named Radbot of Klettgau in the late 10th century.
- First French EmpireThe First French Empire was proclaimed on the 18th of May 1804, when the French Senate granted Napoleon Bonaparte the title Emperor of the French.
- Latin EmpireThe Latin Empire began with a coronation inside the Hagia Sophia on the 16th of May 1204. Baldwin IX of Flanders, a Crusader from western Europe, sat where…
- Byzantine EmpireThe Byzantine Empire never called itself Byzantine. Its citizens used the term Roman Empire and called themselves Romans, in Greek Romaioi.
- Nazi GermanyNazi Germany lasted just twelve years, from 1933 to 1945, yet in that span it launched the deadliest war in human history and carried out the systematic…
- Gallic EmpireIn 260, a Roman general named Postumus besieged his own emperor's son inside the city of Colonia Agrippina, had the boy and his guardian put to death, and…
- Soviet empireThe Soviet empire was never called an empire by the people who ran it. Soviet leaders declared their system anti-imperialist, a people's democracy, a beacon…
- ManchukuoManchukuo lasted just thirteen years, from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945, yet it carried the grand title of empire and the trappings of a brand new…
- Holy Roman EmpireThe Holy Roman Empire was, in the words of the philosopher Voltaire, "in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." That sardonic line has clung to it for…
- Ancient RomeAncient Rome began as a cluster of graves and a timber wall. The first burials in the necropolis on the Esquiline Hill appear around 800 BC.
- British EmpireThe British Empire was once described as "the empire on which the sun never sets", because the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.
- Italian EmpireThe Italian Empire, known in Italian as the Impero coloniale italiano, spanned nearly eight decades, from 1882 to 1960. At its height, between 1936 and 1941…
- Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was one of the most expansive and enduring political structures the ancient world produced, stretching from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked…
- Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire began as a single beylik, a small principality founded around 1299 in northwestern Anatolia by a Turkoman tribal leader named Osman I.
- German colonial empireThe German colonial empire entered history not with a plan, but with a reversal. Otto von Bismarck, the man who built unified Germany, spent decades telling…