Given my interest in military history, it’s not surprising that I’ve also always found empires a fascinating subject of history, again from the fortunate perspective of being well removed from the sharp end of them. Empires are typically creatures of military conquest or power, and rise and fall by war.

Indeed, the two books that define my historical (and political) worldview are Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (yes – I know I’ve shortened the title for the latter) – so it’s not surprising that their subject matter, war and empires, also define my primary interests in history.

Not all empires are equal, however. Not even the same empire, as like the proverbial river of Heraclitus, you cannot step into the same empire twice.

Of course, that is perhaps implicit in their rise and fall, particularly when the fall of one empire is at the hands of the rise of another – such as when you have a tale of two empires, in a strikingly memorable phrase (for the 1945 Soviet offensive against Japan in Manchuria), one “at the absolute top of its game” and the other “dying and insane”.

So these are my Top 10 Empires of History. These are not ranked by how large, populous, rich, powerful or influential they are, but by my historical interest in them – although this tends to overlap with the former criteria. For example, of the ten largest historical empires by area at their greatest extent, all but two of them pop up in my Top 10 (with the other two in my special mentions).

Just some further notes, as with my Top 10 Wars, I have some ratings within each entry:

 

DECLINE & FALL

 

I have to admit that my particular interest in empires is not so much in their robust rise, but in their decline and fall. But again, not all empires are equal in their decline and fall. Some empires seem to collapse almost overnight, but others hold the line over incredible areas or incredible periods of time (or both), even rebounding or bouncing back. My interest is in the latter, so just how impressive or tenacious was each empire’s decline and fall?

 

THE EMPIRE NEVER FELL

 

On the other hand, rating the empires by their temporal span, particularly for that arguably never fell, or still haunt the world as ghosts or shadows.

 

METEORIC RISE

 

At the other end to the fall of empires is obviously their rise. Just as empires are not equal in their decline and fall, they are not equal in their rise. As its title indicates, this ranking rates empires by the meteoric nature of their rise, with the most meteoric being those empires that essentially rise to the full extent of their imperial power or close to it through a single founder or conqueror, as occurs uncannily often. It’s more nuanced than the “great man” theory of history but the rise of an empire often seems to hinge on the charismatic leadership, military skill, boldness, or good fortune of its founder. That often doesn’t bode well for the longevity of the empire after that – as often as not, that empire crumbles, falls apart, or fragments upon the death of its founder. Perhaps not surprisingly, the empires that have the more tenacious decline and fall of interest to me – or duration in general – tend to be those with a slow rise to power over generations or even centuries.

 

THE SUN NEVER SETS

 

Rating the wars by their geographic scale as world empire. It was famously said of one empire as descriptive of its extent that the sun never set on it. Actually it was said of at least one other empire before that, with precursors even before that, but never mind that now.

 

EVIL EMPIRE

 

Yes, yes – they’re all evil. But just how evil?

But seriously, no empire rises to or maintains its power by being nice. They do it by crushing their opponents or rebellious subjects – “they make a desolation and call it peace”. Hence rating how brutally or ruthlessly they did so – just how evil was each empire?

But also seriously, history usually does not repay moral judgements, particularly contemporary moral judgements. Almost every empire proclaims itself to be spreading civilisation or bringing some benefit to its subjects – and all but the most destructive have at least some merit in those claims. Empires were often the only means for any political unity above the tribal level, or indeed peace from inter-tribal warfare, although of course both were typically achieved by an imperial “tribe” or nation subjugating others, usually with great death or destruction, even if it subsequently absorbed or adopted the latter as citizens or soldiers of empire.

Also, prior to modern concepts of ethnic national self-determination, I tend to regard all polities as imperial in nature, at least in so far as they comprised any more than one ethnic group, and generally even in the case of more homogenous or tribal polities over their own members, in the absence of any concept of participatory representation.