A mufti sprinkling a cannon with rosewater – engraving by Hieronymus Löschenkohl, 1788 (public domain image)

(7) GUNPOWDER EMPIRE

A term that isn’t as broad as you might think – not any empire with firearms, but instead a term used for three specific empires by two specific historians, notably William McNeill in his 1993 book The Age of Gunpowder Empires.

“Gunpowder empires, or Islamic gunpowder empires, is a term coined by the American historians Marshall G.S Hodgson and William H. McNeill to describe three early modern Muslim empires: the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire, and the Mughal Empire, which flourished between the mid-16^th and early 18^th centuries.”

As I said, you’d think it might be a term to connote any empire with firearms, of which the most famous are the European colonial empires from the early modern period. Indeed, the European colonial empires might well be called machine gun empires, at least from the nineteenth century onwards.

That is the point John Ellis makes in his book A Social History of the Machine Gun – caustically observing that while European states were reluctant to deploy machine guns against each other as predictably causing mass mechanized slaughter until the First World War, they were far less reluctant to deploy them in their colonial wars.

As Hillaire Belloc observed in a satirical verse:

“Whatever happens, we have got

The Maxim gun, and they have not”

In McNeill’s usage, “the gunpowder empires conquered vast amounts of territory with the use and deployment of newly invented firearms, especially cannon and small arms; together they stretched from Southeast Europe and North Africa in the west to Bengal and Arakan in the east”.

The contrast between his gunpowder empires and European use of gunpowder is that no single European state was able to centralize or dominate power through gunpowder – “As a result, the three empires were among the most stable of the early modern period, leading to commercial expansion, cultural patronage, and the consolidation of political and legal institutions.”.

However, “more recently, the Hodgson–McNeill gunpowder empire hypothesis has been called into disfavour as a neither adequate [n]or accurate explanation, although the term remains in use”,

One of my favorite uses of the term was by Harry Turtledove for the title of his book Gunpowder Empire, an alternative history if the Roman Empire had survived to the use of gunpowder. The classical Roman Empire, that is, as the Roman Empire did actually survive to the use of gunpowder as the Eastern Roman Empire – albeit as a very vestigial empire essentially reduced to its imperial capital Constantinople, which famously fell to one of the gunpowder empires, the Ottoman Empire, using cannons to break the city walls. Ironically, the designer of the largest cannon – and one of the largest cannons ever built – was a Hungarian who originally offered his services to the Romans. So the title of Turtledove’s book seems something of a misnomer.

Hapi, god of the flooding of the Nile (public domain image)

(6) HYDRAULIC EMPIRE

The memorable phrase coined by German-American historian Karl Wittfogel to characterize “Oriental despotism” as essentially different from the polities of the Western world – although his hydraulic empires “were neither all located in the Orient nor characteristic of all Oriental societies”

Its fundamental feature is a social and governmental structure that maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water – typically flood control and irrigation – and hence tending towards “despotism” in the form of highly centralized and hierarchal state power as well as specialized bureaucracy.

“According to Wittfogel, most of the first civilizations in history, such as Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru, are believed to have been hydraulic empires. Most hydraulic empires existed in arid or desert regions, but imperial China also had some such characteristics, due to the exacting needs of rice cultivation. The Maurya Empire in India was classified by Wittfogel as a grandiose Hydraulic Economy”.

And so on. “The typical hydraulic empire government, in Wittfogel’s thesis, is extremely centralized, with no trace of an independent aristocracy – in contrast to the decentralized feudalism of medieval Europe”. Hence Oriental despotism – his most famous claim is “that climate in the Orient led to despotic rule”.

How well his thesis holds up is another matter. It has its critics, with a common criticism essentially posing the chicken or egg question, but with respect to which came first out of centralized state power or hydraulic control.

However, it is a phrase that sticks in one’s mind after reading it, prompting other thoughts and theories. Electric empire, anyone? I have a pet theory that plumbing is the basic indicia of civilization – at least up until electricity arguably replacing it as the indicia of modern civilization, or refrigeration and ice as the quixotic protagonist of The Mosquito Coast claimed.

Or I remember my father opining that the car economy – that cars and ancillary industries or services were the fundamental core of modern industrial economy – gave way to the computer economy, which is not too much different from the various phases proposed for the Industrial Revolution.

The Wikipedia article for hydraulic empire – admittedly my primary reference point which I’ve quoted here as I did not happen across the term directly from Wittfogel’s book – notes the parallel concept of river valley civilizations and the similarly parallel Marxist concept of Asian mode of production.

In his book Against the Grain (which I have read), James C Scott goes even further as he strikingly argues that despotism was ingrained in all states from their very foundations in grain agriculture as an instrument and means of state control, depending on various degrees of forced labor or extraction.

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.

What else to illustrate this than Desolation, the fifth and final of the series of paintings The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole from 1833 to 1836 (public domain image)?

(4) VESTIGIAL EMPIRE

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust”

For me, vestigial empires inhabit that poetic realm somewhere between that handful of dust in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and the desolate statue of Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem – with Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach thrown in for good measure, that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.

As I stated in the introduction to my Top 10 Empires, my particular interest in empires is not so much in their robust rise, but in their decline and fall. However, 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 as a resurgent empire.

It’s those empires that are tenacious in their decline and fall that give rise to those weakened or weakening versions of empire dubbed as vestigial empires – empires that still cling on or remain, but as patchwork pieces or shadows of their former selves, their influence declining and territory shrinking, occasionally down to just the imperial capital itself or close enough to it.

Indeed, an empire may be so vestigial in its decline and fall that it is difficult to identify its final fall.

They tend to leave behind monumental architecture or statuary as their most definitive feature but also a common tongue or lingua franca as well as still-working infrastructure or even institutions, the latter often mired with a decadent or residual elite.

There are many examples in history, but perhaps the archetypal one remains the Roman Empire, including its vestigial eastern half, known to history as the Byzantine Empire, which became a vestigial empire in its own right – one of those examples that essentially declined down to the imperial capital itself.

The vestiges of empire often outlast the empire itself – as with the Roman Catholic Church inheriting the capitol and pontifex as well as many of the trappings and much of the mystique of the western Roman Empire.

Second taking of Chusan, China, 1 October 1841, during the First Opium War, painted by Edward H. Cree (public domain image)

(2) MARITIME EMPIRE

“A state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea or seaborne empire”, sometimes known by the fancy term of thalassocracy, with the European empires of modern history as maritime empires par excellence, the British Empire most of all.

Pro tip for European empires in modern history – you can have a maritime empire, or you can strive for continental domination, but you can’t do both. Just ask Spain, France and Germany.

The obvious counterpart of the territorial empire annexed or conquered on land contiguous with the imperial nation, the maritime empire conquers its subject territory or projects its imperial reach by naval power and transport, typically focused on trade routes and strategic ports.

Maritime empires are something of the exception to the rule – the rule that is, that most empires are territorial, sometimes known by the fancy term of tellurocracy. However, I’d say most empires have at least some maritime element, even those that are otherwise predominantly or mostly territorial – extending to some element of naval power and maritime trade or conquering some island territory along their coastlines. Even early Mesopotamian and Egyptian empires relied on river transport, although I’d say that’s pushing the definition of maritime empire too far.

Some empires are more maritime than others – with the empires in top rank of maritime empires as those in which their territory is entirely or almost entirely not contiguous with the imperial nation and typically at some oceanic distance. As I said, the modern European colonial empires are the archetypal examples of maritime empires, hence the British and Spanish empires are the archetypal maritime empires among my top ten empires.

Some empires are curious hybrids of territorial and maritime empires, such as my top empire, the Roman empire – despite our usual perceptions of it as the former with its famed legions and roads (as well as its contiguous appearance on a map), the Mediterranean was the lifeblood of its internal lines of communication. It almost literally had to slap its navy together in the First Punic War against the maritime empire of Carthage – and even then, designed it with the boarding ramp known as the corvus to transform sea battle into a form of land battle. However, that navy was instrumental in its conquest in the Mediterranean, even if it lacked the prestige of the legions or was deemed “un-Roman”. And of course, it relied on naval power and transport for its conquests and territory beyond continental Europe in Africa, Asia, and Britain.

You could argue that there’s an enduring opposition between maritime empires or sea power and territorial empires or land power in modern history, best symbolized by the opposition of the Anglophone naval powers to continental Eurasian powers.

I also have a pet theory that states whose primary military instrument is naval power, particularly those in islands or continents similarly protected by sea, lend themselves less to authoritarian despotism, particularly as they rely less on standing armies or mobilization on a large scale. Also, that their empires are more strategically selective or limited, at least initially, as they tend to be tied to coastal areas, ports, or naval bases – although sooner or later the temptation to conquer territory inland looms large.

The Greeks, particularly the Athenians, and the Phoenicians are the archetypal maritime empires of classical history, while the Italian city-states, notably the Genoese and Venetians, were the archetypal maritime empires of medieval and early modern history. For that matter, maritime empires are a recurring feature among city states, possibly because at sea they can punch above their weight on land.

And arguably the American empire is the archetypal maritime empire of contemporary history, despite its continental base. As its architect (and prophet) of sea power, Alfred Thayer Mahan, famed for his book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, would have asserted, given his belief that national greatness was inextricably associated with the sea.

Then there are the more exotic maritime empires or thalassocracies beyond Europe – Srivijaya based in Sumatra and similar states in modern Indonesia, the Chola dynasty in southern India, Brunei, and so on.

Territorial empire rizz – the Qianlong Emperor in ceremonial armor on horseback, painted by Giuseppe Castiglione in 1739 (public domain image)

(1) TERRITORIAL EMPIRE

The most fundamental type of empire, as well as the primary one – both primary as in predominant in number but also as in first in time, with the very first imperial states in Mesopotamia being purely territorial empires.

Aren’t all empires territorial? That is, don’t all empires rule over territory or distinct land areas and populations outside its original border?

In short, yes. I’d say almost all empires have at least some territorial elements, with very few examples otherwise. However, some empires are more territorial than others, when territorial empires are defined as annexing or conquering contiguous or neighboring territory by land as opposed to sea.

Of my top ten empires, one is distinctively territorial – the Maurya empire. Four more might be added as overwhelmingly or predominantly territorial empires, in which naval power played little part. Probably the next most obvious is the Mongol empire, excluding its unsuccessful attempts by it for maritime conquest of Japan and Java – which perhaps illustrates just how territorial it was. The same might be said for the Qing empire, apart from its marginal annexation of Taiwan. Yes, it had a navy, which even became the largest in east Asia, but it sucked. Then there’s the Macedonian empire, except for the maritime transport for his army to cross the strait to Asia in the first place to start the conquests for which it is better known. If I’m counting the Macedonian empire as territorial, much the same goes for the Persian empire, although it relied much more on naval power in its imperial attempts on or relations with the Greeks.

Otherwise, the balance of my top ten empires is essentially more mixed in nature. Yes, even my top empire, the Roman Empire, as much as we usually visualize it as a territorial empire for its famed legions and roads or its contiguous appearance on a map. The Romans didn’t call the Mediterranean the Mare Nostrum for nothing, you know…

Modern reconstruction of a Roman legion’s eagle or aquila standard, photographed by Matthias Kabel in Wikipedia “Aquila” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

TOP 10 TYPES OF EMPIRE

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.

Hence, I’ve ranked my Top 10 Empires of history, but similarly to my Top 10 Wars, it doesn’t end there. No, indeed, just as I had my Top 10 Types of War, I also have my Top 10 Types of Empire, albeit the latter is not as distinctive or varied as the former in history. While empires do have broad types, or perhaps more precisely features, empires tend to be general practitioners rather than specialists and often are of overlapping types.