(15) EAST INDIA COMPANY 

It’s strange to think that most of the heavy lifting of the British Empire in India was done not by the British Crown or government, but by a company – indeed, to the extent that the British Empire in India was effectively that company. But what a company!

That is of course the East India Company – the British East India Company that is, not the Dutch East India Company or one of the other prolific East India Companies established in Europe (Danish, Portuguese, Genoese, French, Swedish and Austrian).

At its peak, the British East India Company was the largest company in the world and accounted for half the trade in the world.

So yes, you might say, that’s big – reflecting that they started with a Crown charter giving them a monopoly on English trade east of Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan – but it was just a company doing company things like trade, wasn’t it?

Well, for the East India Company, company things included having its own armed forces, including its own navy – the Bombay Marine – and three ‘presidency’ armies – the Bengal Army, the Madras Army and the Bombay Army – “totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time”.

They also included that the company “eventually came to rule large areas of present day Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions”, either directly or indirectly through “princely states tied to it by treaty”.

That was particularly so after the Battle of Plassey – the Anglicized form of Palashi or Polashi – when the Company, under the leadership of the famous Robert Clive or “Clive of India”, won against the Nawab of Bengal and the Nawab’s French allies in 1757.

However that all fell apart literally a century later, with the Indian or Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-1858, named for the sepoys that were the mainstay of the East India Company’s power – “locally raised, mostly Muslim, western trained and equipped soldiers that changed warfare in present day South Asia…a few thousand company sepoys, time and again, took on vastly superior Mughal forces numerically and came out victorious”.

Following this rebellion, the British Crown effectively took over the East India Company in India (by the Government of India Act 1858) – “assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies” – although the company survived as a financial shadow of its former self until it was formally dissolved (by the East India Stock Redemption Act 1874).

The Company also had its hand in Asia beyond the Indian subcontinent, not least competing with the Dutch for spice from Indonesia – and trading opium to China, prompting the Opium Wars.

“Wait – it’s all companies?”

“Always has been.”

As I said, it is strange to think of a company as the vanguard of British imperialism in India, but it might be observed how often that was the case in Western imperialism – and indeed, some might observe even more so for Western neo-imperialism. United Fruit and banana republics, anyone?

But yes – it was deeply ingrained in the DNA of European or Western imperialism that much of it was effectively private entrepreneurial rather than public governmental. That is, it was done by private individuals – including literal privateers or pirates – and corporations or organizations, albeit typically under government charters.

Map of the Teutonic Order around 1300 by Marco Zanoli for Wikipedia “Military order (religious society)” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

(14) TEUTONIC KNIGHTS 

It’s time to splash out with some wilder entries, as I usually do in my special mentions – although this entry is not as wild as you might think.

Yes – it’s pretty wild to think of a religious order, even one founded as a military society during the Crusades, as an empire. The Teutonic Knights or Teutonic Order was founded as the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem.

But perhaps not that wild – after all, the Crusaders and their states or military orders served as precursors of European imperialism, as for example with the Reconquista leading directly into the Spanish Conquest of the Americas.

And the Teutonic Knights were arguably the most imperial of military orders, even carving out their own state – the State of the Teutonic Order – in the Baltic during the Northern Crusades. Although let’s not get too much in the past tense as the Teutonic Order still exists, albeit purely religious since 1810 after the military order was disbanded by Napoleon.

Also, I’m on a roll with German imperialism – I’ve managed to include all three German empires (from First to Third Reich) in my special mentions, so this is a bonus round for the imperialism of this definitively German military order, reflected in its very name. That’s pretty much it for German imperialism, except for a few weird African or American colonial ventures by German states prior to modern Germany (Brandenburg-Prussia, Augsburg, and so on).

Anyway, “after Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East”, the Order moved to Transylvania, where it got the taste for blood as an empire (heh) – attempting to build their own state before the Pope and the King of Hungary intervened to boot them out.

If at first you don’t succeed – try, try again. Which the Order did in Prussia as well as the present-day Baltic states, creating the aforementioned State of the Teutonic Order during the Northern Crusades (merging with the Livonian Brothers of the Sword)

From there, the Teutonic Knights “initiated numerous campaigns against its Christian neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic…and they also became a naval power in the Baltic Sea” but waned in power after being decisively defeated by a Polish-Lithuanian army at the Battle of Grunwald.

Map of the Timurid Empire in 1400, Demis Map Server (from reference The Jalayirids: Dynastic State Formation in the Mongol Middle East Map 3, Wikipedia “Timurid Empire” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(13) TURKIC – TIMURID EMPIRE

Yeah, you know those horse blitzkriegs or nomadic empires by mounted nomadic pastoralist tribes from the Eurasian steppes – “those psychos on horseback” – that keep popping up in my top ten history lists?

A large number of them were Turkic, as one of the more prevalent ethnicities of Eurasian mounted nomadic pastoralist tribes – particularly after the so-called Turkic expansion throughout Eurasia from the 5th century AD onwards.

They are distinct from the Mongolic peoples but the Turkic expansion overlapped with the Mongol Empire as the latter enlisted Turkic peoples and confusingly gave rise to various Turko-Mongol “traditions” or ethnocultural syntheses. And to confuse things further, the Turkic expansion extended to the Middle East – giving rise to Turko-Persian tradition – and more famously, Anatolia, as the origin of the Turks who formed the Ottoman Empire and present nation of Turkey.

There’s enough Turkic empires for their own top ten, originating with the first definitive Turkic empire in the 6th century – the Göktürk Khaganate, variously titled the First Turkic Khaganate, the First Turkic Empire, or Turkic Khaganate, which also “became the first Central Asian transcontinental empire from Manchuria to the Black Sea”.

Indeed, Turkish nationalists have compiled their own top ten of Turkic empires, or rather, a top sixteen – the 16 Great Turkic Empires, albeit counting some disputed as Turkic, going back to the Xongniu or Huns.

However, one empire that is not disputed as Turkic – or rather, Turko-Mongol – is the Timurid Empire, founded by Timur or Tamerlane, “the last of the major nomadic conquerors of the Eurasian Steppe” and in doing so, mauled other states of such formidable reputation as the Golden Horde, Mamluk Sultanate, the Ottomans, and Delhi Sultanate. Or as I like to call him, the Timurnator. He was even eyeing off Ming China before his death

“The Timurid conquests and invasions started in the late 14th century with Timur’s control over the Chagatai Khanate” – one of the successor states of the Mongol Empire which I otherwise would have seen as the runt of the litter – and ended at the start of the 15th century with the death of Timur. Due to the sheer scale of Timur’s wars, and due to the fact that he was generally undefeated in battle, he has been regarded as one of the most successful military commanders of all time. These wars resulted in Timur’s supremacy over Central Asia, Persia, the Caucasus, the Levant, and parts of South Asia and eastern Europe, and they also resulted in the formation of the short-lived Timurid Empire”.

While his empire persisted for a century after his death, it slowly fragmented but one of his successors, his great-great-grandson Babur, conquered India to forge a whole new empire that was arguably the most powerful imperial state in the subcontinent prior to the British – the Mughal Empire, which survived even in decline to the nineteenth century.

Map of the Carolingian Empire in 814 AD – Wikipedia “Holy Roman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

(12) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

The thousand year Reich, subsequently styled as the First Reich – which means I’ve featured all three Reichs in my special mentions.

It was, as Voltaire famously quipped, neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.

The Holy Roman Empire had some substance to it, but also embodied an idea – or worse, a snub by Pope Leo III to the eastern Roman Empire and its empress Irene by crowning Charlemagne as Roman emperor, in Rome no less, in what must surely rank as a medieval meme.

Of course, underlying that idea was the enduring influence or template of the western Roman Empire, a legacy which many in the European kingdoms or nations subsequent to it sought to revive, even at the expense of the eastern Roman Empire.

That idea had some force to it under Charlemagne, who had achieved the largest unified polity in western Europe since the Roman Empire – although his empire should more accurately be styled as the Frankish Empire- but it soon fell apart after it was divided between his sons.

From that division, Germany emerged as a separate realm from the Frankish Empire, largely from the eastern Frankish empire, and it was from Germany that the Holy Roman Empire truly arose. Historians tend to distinguish the Frankish Empire from the Holy Roman Empire proper, with Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962, even if that cuts down that thousand year Reich (from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800) to a mere 844 years.

Again, the idea had some force to it under Otto and his successors, even if it oscillated between that idea as reflected in its title as Roman Empire and the reality as reflected in its title as Empire or Kingdom of the Germans. It was still a snub to the eastern Roman empire, who were deeply insulted by the Pope crowning Roman Emperors – although in fairness, “the Pope was the only one of these people who actually lived in Rome itself” so “it could be argued he was the most entitled to decide who was Emperor of the Romans”.

The actual term Holy Roman Empire began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich or Frederick Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later, and under him, the idea had some teeth to it (as well as transforming him into a legendary figure) and continued to do so until his grandson Friedrich II, who attempted to run an Italian-German empire from Sicily.

That reflected the internal struggles within the Empire – with German nobles, with Italian cities or communes, and above all, with the Papacy. “The Empire and the Papacy, both competing for secular and religious power over all Christendom without the means to enforce it, essentially destroyed each other’s credibility. This was not helped by a fairly consistent policy of Emperors to neglect the basis of their power in Germany to grasp at its shadow in Italy – because in order for a German king to become Emperor, he had to go to Italy and be crowned by the pope”.

From there, the empire that had originated as a meme essentially devolved back into one – falling into irrelevancy or worse, the joke of an empire “that mostly clung to life because the ruler of Austria wanted to call himself an emperor and the rest of Europe was willing to humor him”. As Marx quipped, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

And above all, it was incredibly convoluted, both in history and structure – an emperor elected by powerful regional lords and clergy, in an empire that went from 300 to 1800 “sovereign kingdoms, duchies, free cities, and other entities”.

Hence Voltaire’s famous quip about it – and Napoleon doing away with the whole dog’s breakfast of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

The Republic of Venice with its Domini de Terraferma and Stato da Mar – its main territories in Italy and overseas by Ariel196 for Wikipedia “Venice” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

(11) VENETIAN EMPIRE 

Technically it’s the Venetian Republic – La Serenissima or the Most Serene Republic of Venice – as it was another imperial republic in the style of Rome, indeed with quite a few parallels between them.

Of course, the world had moved on from the days that an Italian city-state could dominate the peninsula and then the Mediterranean (and beyond) in the style of Rome, but Venice took a damn good swing at it, punching remarkably above its weight.

The parallels with Rome extend to a similarly legendary founding – the Republic dated its founding back to 697 AD, albeit predated by Venice itself reputed to have been settled by refugees from the Huns and Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire seeking the safety of its islands.

The Republic was founded as the Duchy of Venetia within the eastern Roman Empire’s Exarchate of Ravenna – its leader’s title of Doge originating from the Latin for dux (or duke) as an imperial provincial title. It became increasingly independent as the exarchate crumbled, until effectively achieving de facto independence because of an agreement between the Holy Roman Empire and the eastern Roman Empire.

Its independence corresponded with its rise as an imperial republic in its own right. Venice relied on the tried-and-true methods of a smaller state – particularly city and island states – to punch above its weight, namely naval power fuelled by wealth from maritime trade, as well as cunning and sharp practice in diplomacy. That wealth was also fuelled by its art, craft and manufacture – historian Geoffrey Blainey’s observation that Venice was like the Silicon Valley of its time, in things like glassmaking, has always stuck in my mind.

Indeed, while it resembled Rome’s classical (and imperial) republic, it also followed the classical Greek model of a maritime colonial empire with a focus on its naval power and trade, while in many ways pre-empting the European colonial – and neocolonial – empires of which it was a predecessor.

And like all empires, even maritime or mercantile ones, it was in the business of territorial expansion – “During its history it annexed a large part of north-east Italy, Istria, Dalmatia, the coasts of present-day Montenegro and Albania as well as numerous islands in the Adriatic and eastern Ionian seas. At the height of its expansion, between the 13th and 16th centuries, it also governed the Peloponnese, Crete and Cyprus, most of the Greek islands, as well as several cities and ports in the Mediterranean”.

Of course, its rise as imperial republic caused it to come into conflict with rival Italian city-states, notably Genoa, but also the eastern Roman empire. Venice had a weird love-hate symbiotic-parasitic relationship with the eastern Roman Empire – evolving from an imperial province and vassal in the empire’s reconquest of Italy, to ally and close associate of the empire effectively as its navy and trading house, and ultimately to rival and perfidious adversary in the Fourth Crusade.

In some ways, that symbiosis involved Venice as almost the inversion of Constantinople – the heart of a mercantile empire which waxed and rose, sucking from the blood of the latter as it waned and fell. Although ironically, Venice found its fortune to be little more symbiotic with Constantinople than it would have liked after all – as the rival declining eastern Roman empire was replaced by the new rival rising Ottoman Empire.

Even then, its remarkable to think that Venice as a city-state held its own going toe-to-toe with the Ottoman superpower for four centuries or so of Ottoman-Venetian Wars (that commenced even before the fall of Constantinople), albeit inevitably losing territory to the Ottomans.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire also indirectly prompted one of the primary factors behind the decline (and fall) of the Venetian Republic and the Mediterranean in general – the decline of Mediterranean trade relative to the Atlantic as the latter opened in the European Age of Discovery and conquest of the Americas. Even so, the Venetian Republic endured until 1797 when it finally fell to the French under Napoleon.