List of Largest Empires - Debates Regarding Definition of Imperial Domains

Debates Regarding Definition of Imperial Domains

Compilations of history's largest empires (in both geographical size and population) often vary due to differing definitions of imperial borders throughout history and across distinct historical traditions. Imperial domains have been variously defined in terms of direct administrative rule from a common ruling authority, military presence, colonization and settlement, collection of tribute, economic dependence, or even incorporation into a common trading or ideological network. Many imperial domains have therefore enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy, self-rule, or even outright independence (though sometimes with a dependent or protectorate relationship to a stronger power). Some regions claimed by an imperial authority have been large, yet arid and very sparsely populated lands without much administrative control whatsoever. Therefore, empires can vary in size according to these designations, often quite significantly.

For example in India, which experienced varying levels of European contact and imperial forays since Vasco da Gama's expeditions in 1497-1498, French, Dutch, Portuguese and especially British authorities claimed authority over increasing portions of the Indian Subcontinent. This process culminated in the period of the British Raj (and its smaller French and Portuguese counterparts) after 1857. Nevertheless, even then approximately half of Indian territory consisted of Princely States under de facto and de jure rule of local rajas and maharajas. While the Indian princes often sought protection and mediation from the European maritime powers, they minted their own coins, issued their own edicts, and otherwise ruled of their own accord; furthermore, the Indian independence Act, which ended the British presence by 1948, did not apply to the Princely States, which required separate negotiations with the new Indian nation as independent states in themselves. Thus, although many European maps showed nearly the whole of India as a predominantly British colony in the late 19th century, close to 50% was functionally independent.

Another issue is that many of history's empires have ruled over vast and mostly uninhabited territorial expanses, sparsely populated by largely autonomous tribes, and with little in the way of direct administration or settlement by an imperial power. For example, various Mongol khanates from the 13th century established dominion over arid steppes in Central Asia and Siberia that were difficult to control from a central authority, as was the case with the expansionist Tsardom of Russia empires from the 17th century, which established control in the same regions. In both cases, administrative structures and settlements were gradually introduced into the regions—with Russian settlers, for example, initiating forts and frontier cities in the 19th century in particular—and so the size of each empire in any given decade would depend on how strict one's criteria are in regard to the presence of true settlement and administration. Likewise, in more recent history, almost half the land expanse that is often regarded as part of the British Empire consisted of essentially barren and uninhabitable terrain in Canada and the interior of Australia, which was often difficult to even map, let alone settle and administer. Even today, the population of those regions (particularly in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories of Canada) consists largely of sparse settlements of self-governing indigenous peoples, with little in the way of submission to a central ruling authority.

During the Muslim conquests of the 7th and early 8th centuries, Rashidun armies established the Caliphate, or Islamic Empire, one of the largest empires ever. The 7th century saw the introduction of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, where The Prophet Muhammad established a new unified political polity in the Arabian Peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Arab power well beyond the Arabian peninsula in the form of a vast Muslim Arab Empire with an area of influence that stretched from northwest India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees. However, internal feuding among ruling figures in the empire led it to fragment into several states under separate administrations, such as the Umayyads (whose rule continued in Spain after it collapsed elsewhere), Abbasids, Ayyubids, Mamluks and many others. These were in addition to a variety of other Muslim states in Sudan, Indonesia and elsewhere that later arose outside of the main Islamic Empires, through trade and other contacts. Thus, the size of these empires vary depending on how "membership" in the empire is defined—as being under a single administration, accepting a particular ruler or following the dictates of the Caliph (which technically, Sunni Muslims in general were expected to do).

Similarly, the Mongol Empire lost its unity upon the death of the Great Khan Möngke during fighting in China in 1259, with the Golden Horde's Berke Khan and the Ilkhanate's Hulagu Khan even taking up arms against each other and supporting rival factions for selection of the Great Khan. However, upon the death of Berke—a Muslim—the religious impetus for conflict among the khanates subsided, with the Mongols again supposedly loyal to the new Great Khan Kublai before fragmenting yet again later. If the khanates are considered to have been a unified Mongol Empire under Kublai—stretching from Korea and China in the east through Siberia and Central Asia and into Persia and Eastern Europe in the west—it would easily be the world's largest in terms of both land area and population (as a percentage of the world total). A related question arises with the granting of dominion and commonwealth statuses among former imperial domains, in which the domains acquire a high degree of self-rule, equivalent to independence in some estimations. For example, the Australian colonies, which federated in 1901, attained dominion status in 1907, which may or may not have indicated a departure from the British Empire, depending on interpretation of the status.

Finally, many of history's empires have had unusual arrangements among multiple powers, such as joint rule by several authorities, layers of rule (with different powers assuming different levels of administrative authority), territorial division with blurred boundaries or other forms of empire without a single obvious central authority. For example, the Manchus, who established the Qing Dynasty in 17th-century China, also conquered nomadic lands to the north, including Mongolia. The Manchus increasingly merged with the Chinese population over the centuries, so that the administration took on both Manchu and Chinese features with no clear division among them. The Mongol chieftains of Outer Mongolia in particular, pledged loyalty to the Manchus but retained substantial autonomy, and when the Qing Dynasty collapsed in the early 20th century, the status of Outer Mongolia relative to the new Chinese state became unclear. Lastly, there is the opposite case of a nation being nominally independent but under de facto control of another power. Britain had a very complicated arrangement with Egypt and Sudan. Egyptian forces battled the British in the Alexandria Expedition in 1807, but in the wake of this, British officials exerted varying degrees of sway in Egypt especially by the late 19th century, with the French also assuming a role in the Suez Canal territory. Sudan, in turn, was technically a colony of the Egyptians, but the British exerted de facto sway on Sudan indirectly via Egypt. Thus, accounts vary on the imperial status (or lack thereof) of both Egypt and Sudan. In the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, many nations took on a Communist character and attached themselves to the global Communist center of the Soviet Union. Mongolia, North Korea, and China following Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, all took guidance from the Soviet Union especially in the years just after their Communist transformations. The Soviet Union also exercised varying control over Eastern Europe via the Warsaw Pact even though the Pact countries were formally independent, while Communist nations in Africa and Latin America also sought Soviet guidance. Therefore, the lists of largest empires below represent merely a sample of possible rankings depending on the specific criteria used to define an empire.