Map or areas of the world that were part of the British Empire (current British Overseas Territories underlined in red with Mandates and protected states in a lighter shade) by Redstorm1368 for Wikipedia “British Empire” and licensed for use under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

(3) BRITISH EMPIRE (1707 – 1997)

Pax Britannica.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves!

To many – and certainly to modern history – THE Empire.

The largest empire of history – with a quarter of the earth’s land area, with a reach extending well beyond that to virtually every corner of the globe, including a command of the seas that effectively made them a British lake.

Essentially, the British made the world their pink bits – not a lewd innuendo (as it might be for the United States as part of its ‘soft’ influence – heh), but a reference to the tradition of mapmakers marking the British Empire in pink on maps.

Also the most populous empire of history, with a quarter of the world’s population (although not the most populous empire by relative proportion of the world’s population).

And above all the empire that more or less made the modern world – “to which we owe the development of transport and communication, the spread of science and technology, and the spread of the English language as a global lingua franca” – a global influence enduring in its American successor, not surprisingly as a former British colony and the subsequent “special relationship” between them.

“The British Empire is credited, even by its critics, for contributing to general economic development as it enforced a free-trade area over a quarter of the globe”, albeit lopsided in places – and the British as agents of industrialization and modernization. Even Karl Marx noted, with the sardonic wit that was his best stylistic feature, that the British were “conservatives at home and revolutionaries abroad”, tending to displace traditional and aristocratic elites for developing middle classes.

Politically, it was a forum for “the Enlightenment and its ideas of human rights”, the rule of law, social contract and political liberty – which of course would eventually be applied against the empire itself. That included such things as the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, or suttee in India.

The British Empire is often classified into the First and Second British Empires, although they are essentially continuous but for the loss of the American colonies in the American Revolution, which is the demarcation between them. However, it was the Second British Empire that took Britain truly to the glittering heights of world empire for which it is remembered, driven by its victory in the Napoleonic Wars, naval supremacy and the powerhouse – economic, financial and technological – of the Industrial Revolution.

By many metrics the British Empire would rank as top empire, so why only third here? Well, to be honest, I just find the top two entries more intriguing – with the top entry as more enduring and influential in its template for subsequent empires, including the British Empire. Also, as a modern empire, the wounds it inflicted are still too recent and raw.

Those wounds tend to be the focus of contemporary observers. However, such observations overlook the extent to which the British Empire was based on collaboration with their subjects, not least their uncanny ability to co-opt defeated warrior tribes – from the Scottish Highlands to the Gurkhas – for imperial service. It had to be – it is surprising just how limited British military forces were, apart of course from their prized naval supremacy, and how much of a shoestring they operated on, for a global empire.

Of course, the British were quite prepared to use brute force when they had to – “there would not have been a British Empire in the first place if its constituent peoples were free, or possessed agency in any meaningful capacity, to leave it whenever they were so inclined”. The British just preferred to use other more subtle means of influence and coercion when they could.

Of course, in their colonial wars, the British also relied on that classic art of war, picking curb stomp battles, through superiority of firepower. In the words of Hillaire Belloc – “Whatever happens, we have got – the Maxim gun, and they have not”. Or in the words of Edmund Blackadder – “back in the old days when the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns — even spears made us think twice”.

Ultimately however, such brutality, initially limited to small minorities of their subjects involved in active rebellions, “became harder to conceal and make palatable as time went on, and the British lost their grip on the levers of mass media and propaganda which played an immense role in justifying and enabling their regime to its own citizens as well as international observers”.

And so the empire declined and fell, amidst other powers that rose to challenge it, or in the case of the United States, replace it. However, there are no definitive endpoints for it – even today, Britain retains overseas territories – although many are nominated. Singapore in 1942 and Suez in 1956 are two common nominations. The independence of India and cession of Hong Kong (back) to China are others, and I’ve gone with the last here.

In the end, I tend to agree with the assessment of TV Tropes, that the British were neither the first, the worst or the most damaging of the imperialists, but merely the most successful.

DECLINE & FALL

Again – and how!

It may not have been as long as other classical declines I could name but then modern history tends to move faster. The British Empire reached its vaunted territorial height after the First World War, when it even managed to gain some more territory. In reality, the cracks were there from that war, but it took the Second World War for them to fall apart.

Still, the British can claim that they staked and gave up their empire on their finest hour – an apocalyptic struggle against the most destructive and predatory empires in history – with some fairness on one hand, but excluding such things as the Bengal Famine on the other. Ironically, it gained its true territorial height in the Second World War, with the occupation of former Italian or French colonies and other territory, but which soon evaporated.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE NEVER FELL

On the other hand, the British Empire never fell – as Britain still retains overseas territories. That and we still live in the world they made, literally speaking their language.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

The British Empire was THE empire on which the sun never sets. Still is, in fact, technically through its overseas territories. Looking at you, Pitcairn Islands.

METEORIC RISE

No – indeed, one of three empires in my top ten with the most gradual or incremental slow rises to power, albeit some of those increments were dramatic or even meteoric.

Of course, the long game here was the great game (heh – esoteric reference to the Great Game between Russia and Britain competing for empire in Asia) – ultimately ending with the largest empire in history.

I’d rank it as a slower rise to power than the Ottoman Empire but exceeded by one other empire in my top ten for least meteoric rise to power.

England lagged well behind Portugal, Spain, and France with relatively little by way of colonial empire for about two centuries until the late 16^th century. It then began and built a relatively modest colonial empire for yet another century through the 17^th century, albeit far-flung and lucrative in trade.

It was in the 18^th century, after about three centuries of relatively little or modest empire that the British Empire dramatically took off – rising to become the world’s dominant colonial power, predominantly by victories in war against its main imperial rival of France.

In the later part of the century, it had a dramatic reversal of empire with its loss in the American War of Independence, but more than made up for it with an equally dramatic revival of empire with its victory in the Napoleonic Wars at the start of the nineteenth century.

And of course, it was the century from 1815 to 1914, often dubbed the British Century or Pax Britannica, that saw the British Empire rise to the world’s largest empire. “During Britain’s imperial century between 1815 and 1914, around 10 million sq mi (26 million km²) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire” – an addition representing over 70% of the peak area in territory of the British Empire. While not its rise, that would have to count as meteoric, particularly as the large part of that – about 8 million sq mi – was in the last thirty or forty years or so during the so-called Scramble for Africa.

EVIL EMPIRE

And how!

The British often like to imagine themselves as ‘nice’ and their empire as the ‘nice’ one, as if they just went around the world playing cricket and sipping tea. In the words of TV Tropes, “home of men in red coats and pith helmets, being served lots and lots of tea by the locals…the great white Hunter, the adventure archaeologist”.

Or in the (ironic) words of D.H. Lawrence, “the English are so nice”.

Spoiler alert – although like all empires, the legacy of the British Empire is more complex than a mere matter of vindication or vilification, they were not and their Empire was not…nice. You don’t win and run global empires by being nice. And indeed there is a whole publishing industry, traditional and online, devoted to the British Empire as evil empire, including one hilariously over the top book “The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World”.

It has some fairness to it – one could easily compile a Top 10 (or Top 101) list for the British Empire as evil empire. Perhaps the most insidious evil of the British Empire was its indifference to famine, which some historians equate to holocausts, particularly in Ireland and India – those punching bags of the British Empire, from which one could well compile that Top 10 British Evil Empire list all of themselves.

And this time, it’s personal. Yes, I married the evil empire, when I was colonized by my British ex-wife – which lent itself to my theory of the British Empire as a relentless creeping doom, starting with just helping the British with their luggage when they arrived, but ending with your complete submission, as they expect everything else from you as well.

“And what’s more, they’re very nice about being nice

about your being nice as well!

If you’re not nice they soon make you feel it”.

Alexander the Great’s route and empire at its largest extent in 323 BC – map by Generic Mapping Tools for Wikipedia “Macedonia (ancient kingdom” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

(4) MACEDONIAN EMPIRE (336 – 30 BC)

“There are no more worlds to conquer”.

The Macedonian empire may have been essentially the empire of one man, but that man was Alexander the Great and his empire changed the world.

“Alexander the Great was the king of Macedon during the 4th century B.C. who saw the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia and decided they would make a really b!tchin’ backyard.”

Alexander’s empire was essentially the former Achaemenid Persian Empire, but also with the Macedonian hegemony of Greece – which he had led as a coalition of Greeks in his conquest of the Persian Empire (except the Spartans, because screw them – THIS ISN’T SPARTA!). Of course that was because it involved one of the finest fighting forces in history, honed (like his kingdom and its predominance in Greece) by his father Philip before him, the Macedonian phalanx, and led by Alexander as one of the finest military leaders of history, undefeated, usually against heavy numerical odds. That’s right – I’m an Alexander the Great and Battle of Gaugamela fan.

Alexander was nothing but audacious, as befitting a god among men – as he literally saw himself or came to do so. The feats of his life and conquests became legend. And genuinely funny, worthy of television deadpan snark at times – where is the Alexander sitcom series?! They could even call it Who’s The Greatest? That would be a hoot – as opposed to the unfunny snorefest that was Oliver Stone’s 2004 film.

Unable to untie the legendary insoluble Gordian knot of which it was prophesied that whomever untied it would conquer Asia? No problem – just cut it with your sword and go on to conquer Asia.

Faced with threat of the Persian navy which can strike at Greece behind your lines? No problem – just conquer the coastline of the Persian empire. Where’s your navy now, Persia?

The Persian emperor offers to surrender half his empire to you and your wimpy general Parmenion says you should accept? Sneer at him “I would too, if I were you”, then proceed to demonstrate you’re Alexander the Great by conquering the other half as well, while showing the Persian emperor he can run but he can’t hide.

Although my favorite story remains Alexander’s famous meeting with Diogenes – known to history as the Cynic philosopher but to contemporaries as that weird homeless naked guy sleeping in a barrel, although the only man to beat Alexander in an agora slanging match. (No one could beat Alexander in a ‘ýo mama’ slanging contest because his mother was the insanely hot Olympias, member of an orgiastic snake-worshipping cult of Dionysus – Alexander was something of a Dionysian himself). But I digress.

His empire may technically have only lasted as long as his reign, thirteen years from his succession to the throne of Macedonia in 336 BC to his death from fever in 323 BC at only 32 years of age. However, I’m reckoning it by the duration of the dynasties of his generals who succeeded him with their rival claims and Hellenistic kingdoms, until the last of them – Cleopatra, heir to the dynasty founded by Ptolemy in Egypt – fell to the Romans.

The “Vergina Sun” (as named after archaeological excavations around the town of Vergina in northern Greece) – tentatively interpreted as historical Macedonian royal symbol

DECLINE & FALL

Yes and no.

Yes – Alexander’s empire fell apart upon his death. It was hardly the only empire to fragment among the successors of its original conqueror, and three of those fragments, roughly corresponding to a third of Alexander’s conquests or the former Persian empire each, were powerful states in themselves – Egypt under the Ptolemaic dynasty of Ptolemy, Anatolia and the Levant under the Antigonid dynasty of Antigonus, and Mesopotamia and Persia under the Seleucid dynasty of Seleucus.

The Ptolemaic dynasty was mostly content to keep to Egypt, but they all took shots at each other – with the Antigonus and the Seleucids taking their best shots at reclaiming all the empire, the latter at their height coming close to Alexander’s empire.

These states and other successors warred endlessly among themselves in the Macedonian Succession Wars or Wars of the Diadochi, depleting themselves until the Romans – also fans of Alexander – swallowed them up, with the legion displacing the phalanx as the finest fighting force of the classical world. Of course, that’s a massive over-simplification of what is often regarded as the “single most complex and tangled succession crisis in history”.

THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE NEVER FELL

Apart from the Hellenistic kingdoms and legacy he bequeathed the world, all the way to India, Alexander’s empire also persisted in the twenty cities or so he founded that bore his name, the most famous and enduring of which remains Alexandra in Egypt. Well, not quite the most enduring – that will always be the Alexandria he founded in our hearts. Next year in Alexandria, as we say.

METEORIC RISE

The archetypal meteoric rise – as well as the most meteoric rise among my top ten empires.

It eclipsed even the meteoric rise of the Persian Empire, as Alexander the Great conquered that empire – at its expanded or full extent beyond that founded by Cyrus the Great – and in almost half the time of Cyrus founding it, thirteen years from 336 BC to 323 BC.

Sadly, it’s also the archetypal example of an empire that, after its meteoric rise under its founder, falls apart in as meteoric fashion after the death of that founder – such that Alexander was arguably less foundational than Cyrus.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

Alexander’s empire may not have been global, but it was an empire of the known world in Greek eyes. And it can rightly be regarded as one of history’s world empires, a turning point in European and Asian history that spread Greek culture – Hellenization – in its wake.

EVIL EMPIRE

Alexander could be a little, ah, bipolar but his empire tended to avoid the evil tag – except among the Persians – as he tended to be magnanimous in victory and seek to reconcile his conquests rather than simply subdue or destroy them, the key word being tended as he was also prone to bouts of (alcoholic) brutal violence

The kingdoms of his successors…not so much. The Seleucids in particular achieved enduring infamy with the successful Jewish revolt of the Maccabees against them. After all, you need a certain evil chic to go down in the Bible as the abomination of desolation – looking at you, Antiochus IV Epiphanes…

The Spanish Empire at its greatest extent in 1790 (albeit with claims exceeding its control) by Nagihuin for Wikipedia “Spanish Empire” and licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

(5) SPANISH EMPIRE (1492 – 1976)

The first global empire and the original “empire on which the sun never sets”.

The Pope literally divided the world up between them and the Portuguese in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, although only after Portugal nudged the line further west to party it up in Brazil. Other European nations disagreed with the papal division of the world.

The Spanish Empire owed its global extent to its ‘discovery’ and conquest of the Americas from 1492 – a perfect storm of history as the Spanish royal sponsorship of Columbus coincided with the template for conquest from the Reconquista retaking the last Islamic stronghold in Spain.

Alexander the Great was reputed to have lamented that there were no new worlds to conquer (likely apocryphal) – the Spanish discovered one and conquered it. And whatever else one may think of the conquistadors, they exceeded Alexander and anyone else for a feat unparalleled in military history – remarkable in just how few Spanish forces conquered such large areas and populous empires numbering in the millions, crowned by their conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires.

From there, they were the first to circumnavigate the world with Magellan’s expedition in 1522, although Magellan himself died en route from a nasty overdose of native spears and swords in the Philippines. So of course the Spanish claimed and conquered the Philippines as well, along with other Pacific Ocean islands.

However, they did claim more than they actually controlled in some places such as North America. Much of the modern United States was originally part of the Spanish Empire as attested by place names, but their claims extended well beyond that along the north-west Pacific coastline to Canada and Alaska, where they were ultimately contested by the British and Russians. Even so, the Spanish Empire still ranks as the fifth largest empire by area in history.

The Spanish Empire seemed to rise from one glittering height to another – with a lot of all that glitter indeed as gold and silver from the Americas, propelling it to the first world maritime superpower, and after the naval defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto, arguably the greatest power of the world.

Of course, it was all downhill from there. Part of that was a result of pursuing dynastic Habsburg claims in Europe – it’s odd to think of the Netherlands and parts of Italy as former Spanish territory. Pro tip – you can have a maritime empire, or you can try to dominate Europe, but you can’t do both.

Still, Spain retained its empire, despite being eclipsed by other European powers, until the nineteenth century when it began to decline in spectacular fashion as a casualty of one war after another.

DECLINE & FALL

And how!

You could argue that Spain parallels the Romans in their tenacious decline and fall. Despite what might be called its crises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – and despite its waning power, at sea against England or Britain, and on land against France – it retained its empire until the nineteenth century.

However, the bell then tolled for the Spanish Empire, with the American Revolution (which it supported) and the French Revolution (particularly in the person of Napoleon). The Spanish Empire faced its own American revolution, losing the crown jewel of its empire with most of Spanish America winning independence.

Still, Spain was left a modest mid-tier empire as a nice beachside retirement nest egg, particularly in Cuba and the Philippines – arguably its parallel to the Byzantine continuation of the Roman Empire but skipping past a couple of centuries to that smaller rump Byzantine empire. It even briefly regained the Dominican Republic, as its parallel to the reconquests of Justinian or Basil.

And then it fell foul of the American Revolution again, this time in the form of the United States all grown up as the rising world power at the dawn of the twentieth century. The United States was looking around at empires and decided to take Spain’s for a test drive in the Spanish-American War.

Spain lost the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States, as well as Cuba to quasi-independence (effectively as an American colony). Reading the writing on the wall with respect to retaining any Pacific territory, Spain sold its other Pacific island territories to that other rising power of the twentieth century, Germany.

That left Spain with just the bottom-tier empire of its African territories – small outposts in Africa like Fernando Poo in Equatorial Guinea, although it did also expand into the territory known as Spanish Sahara. Pro tip – if your empire consists of places like Fernando Poo and anywhere with the Sahara in it, it’s time to get out of the empire game.

And so Spain did, albeit like Portugal only in the 1970s

THE SPANISH EMPIRE NEVER FELL

On the other hand, Spain technically retains some overseas possessions – the Canary Islands as well as some tiny islands and weird enclave cities in Morocco

But more so, the endurance of Spanish language and place names in the Americas demonstrates that, at least in some cultural sense, the Spanish Empire never fell.

METEORIC RISE

If I rank the Arab caliphates and their conquests as one of most meteoric rises in history, then I’d have to rank the Spanish Empire as a similarly meteoric rise – although unlike the Arab caliphates, the Spanish Empire continued to expand steadily, and sometimes dramatically, for over two centuries after its meteoric rise.

That is because the core of the Spanish Empire was founded with the conquest of the Aztec Empire by Cortes from 1519 to 1521, and the conquest of the Inca Empire from 1532 to 1572. However, most of the heavy lifting of the latter was done under Francisco Pizarro in the first few years after his capture of the Inca Emperor Atahualpa near the outset of the conquest – or at least prior to his death in 1541. In any event, the forty years of the conquest of the Inca Empire also saw the Spanish Empire consolidate the substantial part of its full extent in South and Central America, as well as in the Philippines – and it would remain much the same for about two centuries after that, when it dramatically expanded its territory or at least its claims in North America.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

The Spanish Empire was the original empire to make this claim – and mean it literally, although the claim was more memorably (and definitively) made by the British Empire. In influence, it was also a true world empire, reshaping Latin America in its own image.

EVIL EMPIRE

And how!

The Spanish Empire would be one of the leading contenders people would advance for an entry if one were to compile a Top 10 Evil Empires, primarily due to its apocalyptic destruction of the Americas – although in fairness that was mostly down to one horseman of the apocalypse, pestilence. The death toll is usually tallied in the tens of millions – with many native tribes and their cultures wiped out.

Even setting aside death from disease, the Spanish conquest of the Americas involved atrocity, brutality and cruelty by any standard, including contemporary opinion at the time.

However, many point to what is often called the Spanish Black Legend – a tendency to demonize or vilify the Spanish Empire, as well as Spain (and Catholicism) more generally in history – with at least some fairness to it. After all, it was Spanish advocates such as Friar Bartolomé de las Casas who documented so many of the evils of its empire for history – and Spain was the first in recorded history to pass laws for the protection of indigenous peoples, although the Crown often found it difficult to enforce those laws on its distant and unruly colonists.

And one can’t help but observe the far more substantial mix of indigenous population and culture in the Americas south of the Rio Grande as opposed to north of it – although again in fairness North America had more sparse populations and had higher European immigration.

Achaemenid Empire (at its greatest extent under Darius the Great 522-486 BC) by Cattette for Wikipedia “Achaemenid Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

(6) PERSIA – ACHAEMENID EMPIRE (550 – 330 BC)

“The empire that kicked off all the other empires” – the largest empire in history up until that point and first of the world empires, in impact rather than literal global extent. Best known in Western history as the liberators of the Jewish exiles in Babylon and recurring antagonists of the Greeks, not surprisingly reflecting the two predominant sources of Western culture as Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman.

The Persians originally started off as nomadic vassals of the preceding Median Empire, the extent and nature of which is disputed but apparently laid much of the groundwork for the latter Persian Empire in forming a powerful Iranian state. Cyrus the Great then founded the first Persian or Achaemenid Empire, by rebelling against and supplanting the Medes before then conquering the Neo-Babylonian Empire in Mesopotamia and kingdom of Lydia in Anatolia.

Ultimately the borders of the Persian Empire extended from central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east, to the Nile, Black Sea and Balkans in the west – although famously the Greek city states successfully resisted it in the Greek-Persian Wars. It was so big it had four capitals – Babylon, Ecbatana, Susa and Persepolis.

The Persian model of governance – “a successful model of centralized, bureaucratic administration via the use of satraps; its multicultural policy; building infrastructure, such as road systems and a postal system; the use of an official language across its territories; and the development of civil services, including its possession of a large, professional army” – essentially set the template for subsequent empires, particularly in the Middle East – influencing not only the Greeks and Romans, but also the Arabs and the Abbasid Caliphate. For the latter, it “left a dream of the Middle East as a unit, and a unit where people of different faiths could live together.

Its ultimate nemesis was Alexander the Great – apparently an admirer of Cyrus the Great, but who just took the empire from Cyrus’ more pathetic descendant Darius III. Oh well – he wasn’t using it anyway. And the legacy of Cyrus suited Alexander better, including that title of the Great.

However, the first Persian or Achaemenid Empire might have been swept from history, but Persia itself continued to be a seat of empires – it revived under the Parthian and Sassanid empires, both recurring antagonists of the Romans until the Sassanids were conquered by the Arabs. Even then, Persia managed to revive itself under Islamic or Turkic dynasties.

Standard of Cyrus the Great

DECLINE & FALL

For tenacity in decline…yes and no. The Achaemenid Empire itself collapsed with indecent haste, conquered by Alexander as he pursued Darius III from one corner of the empire to the next like a Macedonian Terminator. However, the Persians proved quite adept at the long game of reviving themselves while under the nominal satrapy of their conquerors, whom they ultimately overthrew to revive their empire in even more enduring and tenacious form.

THE ACHAEMENID EMPIRE NEVER FELL

Well yes, the Achaemenid Empire fell rather dramatically to Alexander the Great, but Persia kept bouncing back, the zombie franchise of empires – as the Parthians, Sassanids, Safavids and the ironic ideological empire of the latter day Islamic Republic.

METEORIC RISE

The archetypal meteoric rise as well as the second most meteoric rise among my top ten empires, in that it rose to close to the full extent or at least the core of its imperial power through its founder Cyrus the Great – in just twenty years from 550 BC to 530 BC.

While it conquered further territory under his successors, notably Egypt under his son Cambyses II and its largest extent under Darius from 522 BC to 486 BC, the empire founded by Cyrus “was the largest empire the world have ever seen to that point” – and was substantially the same empire that endured for about two centuries after him.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

Persia was the first of a long line of what can be termed world empires, as opposed to global ones – that is, in terms of their enduring influence and impact rather than a literal geographic global extent.

Although interestingly the Persians may well have been the origin of the claim for their empire as the empire on which the sun never sets. According to Herodotus’ Histories, Xerxes made the claim before invading Greece – “We shall extend the Persian territory as far as God’s heaven reaches. The sun will then shine on no land beyond our borders.”

EVIL EMPIRE

Well, with their mutant armies and war rhinoceri…wait – that was the film 300. Outside of that film’s depictions of the Persian Empire as the Mordor of its time, which reflects Greek accounts of them as antagonists to some degree, the Persians do reasonably well in avoiding the evil empire tag – although obviously they didn’t build and maintain an empire of that size by being nice.

And they do pretty well in their Biblical portrayals, due to Cyrus’ liberation of the Jews from Babylonian exile – while Babylon is immortalized by the Bible as the symbol of evil, Cyrus is praised by it and even hailed as messiah, a term that used to be more generic for one anointed by God.

Early Islamic conquests under Muhammad, 622–632 AD (dark brown); Rashidun caliphate, 632–661 AD (light brown); Umayyad caliphate, 661–750 AD (yellow brown) – Wikipedia “Caliphate” public domain image

(7) ARAB – UMAYYAD CALIPHATE (661-750 / 756-1031)

The Arab conquests were a nigh-unstoppable historical explosion, once previously divided tribes in a historical backwater had been united under Mohammed – conquering one of history’s largest pre-modern empires (indeed the seventh or eighth largest in all history) in about a century or so, a blitzkrieg by horse, sail…and camel!

Mohammed had essentially conquered the Arabian peninsula, but his death left his successors – the three great Arab caliphates – only at the start of extending his empire to even wider conquests.

Now it might be said that I am somewhat inconsistent between empires in my entries, as I classify some, such as the Arab caliphates, as separate empires by different dynasties, while others I essentially classify as single empires despite their dynastic succession or fragmentation.

And the answer is, as usual, that I make my own rules and break them anyway – some empires have historical unity to them, if only in culture or theme, that appeals to me, while the different Arab caliphates appeal to me as distinct polities.

The Rashadun Caliphate, immediate successors to Mohammed, did most of the heavy lifting of empire as they broke out of the Arabian peninsula. Two formidable empires blocked their path, the Persian Empire and the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, but the Arabs conquered the former and routed the latter back to Anatolia.

However, it was under their successors, the Umayyad Caliphate, that Arab empire reached its greatest extent, westwards from the north African shore to Europe itself – conquering Spain (well, not quite all, in a manner similar to the famous caveat to the Roman conquest of Gaul in Asterix comics) and famously invading France before being turned back at Tours by Charles Martel. Eastwards, they also extended beyond Persia through central Asia to the fringes of India and China – the latter of which presented even the Tang Empire some difficulty resisting their advance.

The Umayyads were mostly overthrown by the third Arab caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, who then presided over what is often regarded as the Golden Age of Islam from their capital in Baghdad – but for all that became increasingly vestigial in the empire they had inherited from the Umayyads as it fragmented into separate dynasties. The Abbasids did revive their political authority somewhat in Mesopotamia and Persia – only to be crushed along with Baghdad by the Mongols, although they continued to limp along in even more vestigial form in Egypt until the Ottomans replaced them as caliphate. Ha! That’s what you get for messing with my boys, the Umayyads!

Nor were the Umayyads done with history just yet – the Umayyads managed to pull a Taiwan, with an Umayyad prince in the role of Chiang Kai-Shek, fleeing into exile across the Mediterranean to Spain and continuing the Caliphate as the Emirate of Cordoba independent from the Abbasids, even with their own rival golden age of Islam in the fabled Al Andalus of Spain.

The Umayyads endured for almost three centuries before finally falling again in 1031 – but true to karmic form, once again cursed their successors with fragmentation, as Islamic Spain broke up into minor states and principalities, weakening it to Christian reconquest.

The Umayyads actually used a plain white flag!

DECLINE AND FALL

You have to rank the Ummayads high for tenacity in their decline and fall – even in defeat by the Abbasid Revolution, they pulled a Taiwan to rule in Spain, partying it up in Ibiza like an English tourist .

THE UMAYYAD CALIPHATE NEVER FELL

Well it obviously did, although perhaps not in its enduring influence in Spain, and even more so in the dreams of caliphate by Islamic political extremists in the twenty-first century.

METEORIC RISE

The Arab caliphates and their conquests – the early Islamic conquests as they are sometimes called – were one of the most meteoric rises in history, ultimately conquering one of the world’s largest empires in a little over a century.

That conquest sees it ranked at least in seventh or eighth place for largest empires in history with about 11 million square kilometers, but I’ve seen a greater extent asserted for the height of the Umayyad Caliphate of 13-15 million square kilometers, which would potentially rank it as high as fourth place. Also, while 622-750 AD is generally given as the period of early Islamic conquests, those conquests were effectively done by 720 AD, with only minor fluctuation in the last thirty years.

Accordingly, the empire of the Arab caliphates was won in not just one but three meteoric rises. The first was by Muhammad himself, essentially uniting the area of the Arabian Peninsula or about three million square kilometers, albeit thinly populated desert, in the ten years or so from 622 AD to 632 AD. His successors, the Rashidun Caliphate, essentially doubled that by conquests from the East Roman Empire and Persian Empire in next twenty to thirty years from 632 AD.

And this entry, the Umayyad Caliphate more than doubled that again, essentially in the thirty years from 690 AD to 720 AD.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

One of the top 10 largest empires in history – although the sun literally set on them, they can be ranked among the world empires of history.

EVIL EMPIRE

To be honest, I don’t know much about the brutality of Arab conquests or repression, although there seem to be a number of revolts against them, not least the Abbasid revolution itself.

But they do have to rank highly in evil empire stakes for one thing – the Arab slave trade, which was of a scale at least equal to, if not exceeding, the more notorious Atlantic slave trade by European empires – not as intense perhaps, but of a longer duration. As in only abolished (when it was formally abolished) in the twentieth century.