The Biggest Empires in World History

[Music] throughout the history of the world our lands have had many rulers from ancient tribes to counts dukes kings and most of all emperors many have been the empires which have existed some were even only empires in name as their territorial size did not really seem that of an empire but many others were tremendously large so in this video i'm going to talk about the top 10 largest empires in history in 10th place portugal portugal's empire like a few on this list was a colonial one meaning the european power traveled through sea exploring new lands and claiming them in its name exploiting the resources of those territories and their usage to dominate sea routes and trade this contrasts with other empires which seeked to extend their territorial rule in lands adjacent to theirs as was the case with the roman empire for instance however especially due to this nature it was the first global empire in history and one of the longest lived ever it began with the conquest of silta in the year 1415 and technically ended only in 1999 as portugal handed over macau to china almost 600 years over which they dared out into the vast and at a time mostly unexplored oceans reaching lands and sea routes never seen before by europeans and paving the way for other european powers colonial empires the empire's birth had two origins the continuing of the reconquista idea leading portuguese kings to venture into north africa fighting against the moors and a heavy investment that the portuguese kings and princes had in maritime technology there were initial african coastline excursions preparing the settling of those territories by making them accessible after crossing the cape of good hope in today's south africa they reached the indian ocean india itself indonesia china and japan through these explorations the portuguese established trade with local rulers and enforced their power through the construction and maintenance of fortresses slash trading posts called fedorish essentially they didn't really get to a kingdom and say okay now we rule this land they simply established a presence in the territory only in africa and then in america did they establish colonies in the most common sense of the word a great deal of the portuguese empire's land was in brazil which soon achieved its independence as an empire in its own right becoming even larger than all the remaining portuguese territories at the time more lands were lost to the dutch at the time of the iberian union as they were at war with the temporary rulers of portugal the spanish the rest remained until the end of the 20th century as they finally gained their due independence after democracy was implemented in portugal next at number nine we move all the way to asia to the yuan dynasty the yuan came to be as a consequence of the mongol empire's collapse something i'll mention further when we get to the mongol empire on this list although the mongols had ruled territories including northern china for decades it was not until 1271 that the kublai khan officially proclaimed the dynasty in the traditional chinese-style ruling until 1368. his realm was by this point isolated from the other mongol kanats and controlled most of modern day china surrounding areas including modern mongolia in addition to emperor of china kublai khan also claimed the title of great khan and therefore the u1 was also sometimes referred to as the empire of the great khan essentially this was the portion of the mongol empire in actual mongolia and china as the empire collapsed it became an empire of its own until it began its period of decay from what i understood internal struggles of power and poor administration led to the weakening of their power outlaws gained strength and yuan's armies dwindled eventually they lost all power and were succeeded by the ming dynasty in china the pagamo drupa in tibet and only a few distant relatives maintained some power in mongolia itself back to the west in the middle east north africa and europe the umayyad from 661 to 750 at its greatest extent the umayyad empire occupied pretty much all of the middle east stretching into the caucasus persia all of north africa and almost all of the iberian peninsula from what i could find its origin has to do with the muslim prophet muhammad and the expansion of islam in its early days the first umayyad leader was utman muhammad's secretary and third successor the truth is it didn't fall upon the umayyad dynasty to conquer all of its lands as they inherited many of them from the rashidun empire the first of the four major empires established after the death of muhammad the rashidun already held most of the middle east persia and egypt which they had conquered by their own merit but also due to a good seizing of opportunity as there were big conflicts between the byzantine empire and persia the arabs were able to take advantage of that and assert themselves as the main power of the region the umayyads then inherited these lands and expanded them further conquering the maghreb and the iberian peninsula if the rashidun had the advantage of being the main force representing islamic faith amongst arabs the umayyad had an equally big advantage islam was beginning to spread to non-arab populations of their empire which they could then mobilize for their conquests in fact it is said that the conquest of the iberian peninsula was mainly accomplished by berber forces who had converted to islam under umayyad rule essentially they were a large empire because they inherited from the rashidun and both the rashidun and the umayyad were able to hold such a large empire and expanded due to the emergence and expansion of the muslim faith which they embodied their demise came after a defeat against the byzantines in constantinople stopping their expansion into the balkans failed reforms attempting to equalize the people led to internal rivalries and the reconquista beginning in portugal spain also contributed to their doom after many iberian defeats the umayyads faced an internal revolt led by the abbasid family which then took power and control of their lands however the arab empire was not fully destroyed and they now called it the abbasid empire still ranking seventh in the world's largest empires although it's somewhat unfair for it to take two places given that it's technically the same empire just with different ruling dynasties the umayyad are said to have used a plain white standard while the opposite used a plain black one being an empire from 750-1258 at this time their territory had been somewhat reduced and the border which used to be at the north of the iberian peninsula was now in tunisia the expansion had been pushed back but here's the thing there were still mores in the iberian peninsula and in fact the umayyad still ruled them because of internal struggles the abacids were forced to hand over the local rule of the southern iberian peninsula umayyads and in fact this repeated itself in almost all regions so their grip on power weakened year by year morocco went to the idi seeds egypt to the fatimids and persia to the safarids and their political power was limited more and more until they held a simply ceremonial religious function in most of the lands only retaining control of the mesopotamia area they abandoned mesopotamia after the mongols invaded and sacked baghdad fleeing to kaido and settling there at this point their rule was severely if not almost totally limited and the dynasties they delegated portions of the empire to took full control as their own independent states next are the french we have to divide the french empire into two the first one mostly focused on continental europe with napoleon's conquest of most of the continent this was from 1804 to 1815 through its conquests france directly ruled ore through client states spain france itself with a large territorial expansion reaching into belgium rhineland and the netherlands most of western germany poland and italy and then we have france's actual colonial empire france ruled a gigantic portion of current day canada and the united states the united states they lost with napoleon's decision to sell louisiana abandoning a strong colonial policy to focus on its european conquests the laws of canada had to do with the defeat against the british in a war however their colonial empire wasn't fully lost and in this map in the darker blue we can see the colonial possessions they remained having or expanded into after 1830 a lot of northwest africa french guiana parts of the middle east madagascar and french indochina there's not much to talk about in this one other than describe what it was a colonial empire that they expanded into as other european nations did and a continental empire they conquered with napoleon the european one was lost with napoleon's defeat and the colonial was lost first with the american losses i just mentioned and then the rest after the end of world war ii and the beginning of africa's decolonization process i could mention how each of the territories was acquired and lost but i think that's too in-depth for a video like this if you want detailed videos for some of these empires let me know in the comments below entering the top 5 we have the spanish empire this one follows the french trend of having both a european continental dimension and a colonial one continentally they held a great deal of land due to dynastic unions and inheritance more than conquest through the spanish branch of the habsburg dynasty because of these dynastic reasons they ruled sardinia sicily naples milan and the netherlands territories they lost up to 1714 through their colonial empire they also ruled part of the caribbean with special attention to cuba and puerto rico which they lost along with the philippines to the united states after being defeated in a war against them their american possessions were unbelievably vast occupying essentially all of southern america with the exception of brazil and the guianas all of central america all of mexico and stretching immensely into the united states these lands in america they lost during the hispanic american wars of independence from 1808 to 1833. they temporarily ruled louisiana but this just had to do with some family business strategy of napoleon for a period of time spain's empire grew even larger during the times of the iberian union when due to the lack of an heir the spanish king inherited the portuguese crown and empire becoming between 1580 and 1640 arguably one of the or the most powerful emperor in the world at the time then like all other empires especially colonial ones they lost their power and influence as time went by the last remnants of the empire were the african possessions limited because due to the treaty of tortazillas signed in the early days of european colonialism when portugal and spain were the initial and only explorers of the new world they divided potential discoveries and spain got most of america while portugal got africa but even these small spanish african lands were lost in the decolonization of africa occupying much of the territory of modern china although they also counted with many vassal states the qing empire the qing dynasty was the last imperial dynasty of china it was established in 1636 and ruled china from 1644 to 1912. it was preceded by the mings and succeeded by the republic of china the empire lasted for almost three centuries and formed the territorial base for modern china being founded by the manchu one of china's five peoples they established a manchu state their power began to grow in manchuria and soon after they were able to attack the ming dynasty who ruled china at the time defeating their army occupying several border towns and then full on invading the rest after establishing control of ming's territories they expanded them further the qing dynasty occupied all of modern china tibet taiwan and counted with several tributary states such as nepal burma siam laos tonking in today's vietnam and korea but their rule eventually came to an end after more than a century of issues with the west through colonization the seeding of cities for trade and wars which they lost the qing dynasty collapsed in the early 1900s internal issues also played a major role in their downfall one of which being population growth which led to food shortages and regular famine with a collapse a 2 000 year period of imperial china came to an end and china became a republic the russian empire opens up the top three it was essentially just a rebranding of the zardom of russia from 1721 to 1917. the zordom itself had existed since 1547 and before that the grand duchy of moscow since 1283. it's important to mention these three phases because it was throughout them that russia's territory continued to grow as first the duchy then desartem and finally the empire expanded their rule into increasingly further away lands from the core territory of moscow the reason why they expanded so much and got so huge is that the land was very little occupied in the past nations could just claim large tracts of land if no one challenged their claims essentially they conquered more and more lands because it was easy to do they did however have some difficult conquests such as the access to the baltic by going to war against sweden then poland lands in the south in wars against the ottomans and persians the expansion into the caucasus lands in china and the expansion into alaska which they held until its sail to the united states most of the other territories remained russian until the end of the soviet union in second place having occupied some territory which later belonged to the russians the mongol empire from 1206 to 1368 the mongol empire grew from a reasonably sized domain in mongolia to a nomadic empire which stretched from korea and south china to ukraine and the baltic shore its first and greatest ruler was genji's khan a man extremely skilled as a general for his troops however an important detail was the existence of many other strong powerful and skilled generals that led various armies or hordes so the empire could expand in various directions at the same time not depending on a single large force this might be why it expanded so quickly another reason is that a lot of the territory were vast deserts or horse friendly planes most of the mongol forces rode on a horse this landscape helped the empire in two ways one it was quick to travel across and two there weren't many people in it being sparsely populated and thus easier to conquer in very similar fashion to what we saw happen with russia genji's khan died in 1227 by which time the mongol empire ruled from the pacific ocean to the caspian sea an empire twice the size of the romans and yet it still continued to grow for a while the empire began to split due to wars over succession as the grandchildren of genji's khan disputed power as the mongol empire collapsed its territory was divided amongst many other states which inherited them some being large enough to consider themselves empires of their own in the case of the mongols it was the yuan dynasty which we've already talked about but also the golden horde the chagatai kanat and the ilkanat and finally the largest empire in the history of the world the british empire the british empire is similar to only one on this list in terms of its nature the portuguese one because it was an entirely colonial empire being an island after conquering great britain and temporarily ireland there wasn't much else to do continental expansion was never an option because water however the british were very different from the portuguese in their colonial empire not only because it was immensely larger but also because of the way it was ruled a big issue the portuguese had was lack of population to effectively colonize the lands they reached and consequently large armies to fully conquer local rulers that's why they opted by the commercial outposts in most cases but the british didn't have this issue and so while their empire originated with mere possessions and trading posts established by england it soon grew to have official dominions colonies protectorates and mandates a bureaucratic organization like almost no other by 1913 the british empire ruled 412 million people 23 of the world population at the time covering around one quarter of the world as a result its political legal linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread the phrase the empire on which the sun never sets was often used to describe the british empire as its reach around the globe meant that the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories first they consolidated their rule of north america through a series of wars against france then through the east india company they conquered bengal from the mughal empire beginning their domain of india they had a pretty big step back with the independence of the 13 colonies but it didn't slow them down elsewhere especially because after defeating napoleon in the early 1800s they consolidated their place as the world's biggest naval power and i think this was a key element in the growth and maintenance of their empire the almost unmatched power of the royal navy other important elements that allowed for the great expansion were technology as the industrial revolution began in britain the fact they had reasonable internal stability and also the administrative organization they had by organizing their territories delegating competences for instance through the east india company etc and through these factors and many others they were able to expand immensely i mean look at the map at one point or another they ruled all of this land from about one third of north america half the caribbean half the middle east this entire strip of africa from the suez to cape town india pakistan bangladesh burma a great deal of southeast asia australia and new zealand not to mention the various islands across the oceans the trade cities in china and their strategic holdings in the mediterranean gibraltar malta and cyprus and the incredible thing about the british empire is that despite it being heavily fought against by locals who were oppressed and explored by the british they managed to hold on to a great deal of it until the decolonization period of the 20th century and many of its greatest colonies like canada australia and new zealand maintain extremely close relationships with the british today some even counting the british monarch as their head of state and almost all being a part of the british commonwealth organization there are also a few examples of very large and famous empires which don't make the top 10 in terms of size but due to their enormous importance in world history could not go unmentioned among these are the empire of japan the roman empire the ottoman empire and the macedonian empire of alexander the great if you like any of these or any of the ones that i mentioned and want me to do an in-depth video about them just let me know so that was a quick overview of the world's largest empires throughout history none of them resisted until today although all of them contributed to the way our world was shaped some existed as consequence of others some paved the way so that others could be created and some even coexisted and joined and separated at certain times thanks so much for watching this video subscribe if you want and i will see you next time for more general knowledge you

Channel: General Knowledge

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Length: 20min 35sec (1235 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020