Several

empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

s in

human history Human history, also called world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood and studied through anthropology, archaeology, genetics, and linguistics. Since the invention of writing, human history has been studied through ...

have been contenders for the largest of all time, depending on definition and mode of measurement. Possible ways of measuring size include area, population, economy, and power. Of these, area is the most commonly used because it has a fairly precise definition and can be feasibly measured with some degree of accuracy. Estonian political scientist

Rein Taagepera Rein Taagepera (born 28 February 1933) is an Estonian political scientist and former politician. Education Born in Tartu, Estonia, Taagepera fled from occupied Estonia in 1944. Taagepera graduated from high school in Marrakech, Morocco and t ...

, who published a series of academic articles about the territorial extents of historical empires between 1978 and 1997, defined an empire as "any relatively large sovereign political entity whose components are not sovereign" and its size as the area over which the empire has some undisputed military and taxation prerogatives. The list is not exhaustive owing to a lack of available data for several empires; for this reason and because of the inherent uncertainty in the estimates, no rankings are given.

Largest empires by land area

For context, the land area of the Earth, excluding the continent of

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

, is .

Empires at their greatest extent

Empire size in this list is defined as the dry land area it controlled at the time, which may differ considerably from the area it claimed. For example: in the year 1800, European powers collectively claimed approximately % of the Earth's land surface that they did not effectively control. Where estimates vary, entries are sorted by the ''lowest'' estimate. Where more than one entry has the same area, they are listed alphabetically.

Timeline of largest empires to date

The earliest empire which can with certainty be stated to have been larger than all previous empires was that of

Upper and Lower Egypt In Egyptian history, the Upper and Lower Egypt period (also known as The Two Lands) was the final stage of prehistoric Egypt and directly preceded the unification of the realm. The conception of Egypt as the Two Lands was an example of the duali ...

, which covered ten times the area of the previous largest civilisation around the year 3000 BC.

Timeline of largest empires at the time

Largest empires by share of world population

Because of the trend of increasing world population over time, absolute population figures are less relevant for comparison between different empires than their respective shares of the world population at the time. For the majority of the time since roughly 400 BC, the two most populous empires' combined share of the world population has been 30–40%. Most of the time, the most populous empire has been located in China.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Largest Empires * *

Empires An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...