World map by the Equal Earth projection, which preserves relative size everywhere with a low level of shape distortion except for very near to the poles (public domain image)

(5) WORLD EMPIRE

An empire that shaped the world by how large, populous, rich, powerful, or influential it was.

A world empire is not necessarily a global empire – that is, an empire that is global by geographic extent. Few empires are truly global. Of my top ten empires, only two were global – the Spanish Empire, and even more so, the British Empire. For both, it was famously said that the sun never set on them, reflecting their geographic extent – albeit the British Empire borrowed the same phrase from the Spanish Empire, which in turn adapted similar phrases in usage from the Persian and Roman Empires.

You really only have global empires from the European maritime empires and those argued to be their successors – and not even all of them. Yes, I’d rank the French colonial empire as a global empire, but not the Belgian, Italian or German empires – although I’d give a pass (barely) to the Dutch empire as global due to the extent of its maritime trade, if not its actual colonial possessions.

Yes, I’d argue that a world empire has to be large, if not necessarily global in extent. By that criteria alone, three of my top ten empires rank among the ten largest empires in history and hence might be ranked as world empires – the Mongol Empire, the Chinese Qing Empire, and the Arab caliphates, with the Mongol Empire and Arab caliphates also having an impressive geographic range coming reasonably close to global extent.

But yes, I’d argue that the other criteria might count for as much or more.

Indeed, a competing measure of the largest empires by history is not by their area but by estimated percentage of contemporary world population. By that criteria, the Qing Empire ranks as the largest empire in history with 37% of the world population in 1800 AD, the Mongol Empire as fourth largest with 31% in 1290 AD, and the Roman Empire as the fifth largest with 30% in 150 AD. Outside the top ten largest empires by proportion of world population, which are mostly Chinese ones, other empires rank impressively – the British Empire with 23% in 1938 AD, the Maurya Empire with 19% in 250 BC, the Macedonian Empire with 15% in 323 BC, the Umayyad Caliphate with 13% in 750 AD, and the Persian Achaemenid Empire with 12% in 450 BC.

One might expect similar percentages of the contemporary world economy, particularly as the size of pre-industrial economies was largely a function of population.

So yes, I’d argue that all my top ten empires were world empires by one measure or another – by size or geographic extent, by population or by economy, and by power or influence,

And yes, that’s including the Macedonian and Maurya empires. Setting aside their proportions of global population or economy which would alone arguably qualify them as world empires, there’s also their enduring influence of Hellenic culture and Buddhism respectively.