Talk:List of largest empires

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Empires with sourced areas but without dates

I figured I'd make a section for empires where sources have been found for the maximum extent but with no year specified (meaning they can't be included in the list). My hope is that this will be helpful when people try to locate sources. Feel free to add entries of your own to the list below. TompaDompa (talk) 23:38, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

• Ashanti Empire: 100,000 square miles^[1] – since added using this source which provides the corresponding figure of 250,000 km² and the year 1820.^[2] TompaDompa (talk) 21:05, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
• Balhae: 438,000 km^2[3]
• Đại Cồ Việt: 110,000 km^2[4]
• Durrani Empire: 780,000 square miles/2,000,000 km^2[5]
• Dzungar Khanate: 3,600,000 km^2[3] – since added using this source which provides the same figure and the year 1650.^[6] TompaDompa (talk) 03:03, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
• Kanem Empire: 300,000 square miles^[7]
• Nguyễn dynasty: 370,000 km^2[8]
• Southern Qi: 2,147,000 km^2[3]
• Phoenicia: 250,000 square miles^[9]
• Vijayanagara Empire: 360,000 km^2[10]
• Wari Empire: 320,000 km^2[11]
• Wuhuan: 400,000 km^2[3]
• Xianbei state: 4,500,000 km^2[3] – since added using this source which provides the same figure and the year 200.^[6] TompaDompa (talk) 03:03, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

I think we can add those empires in the list, I would only noted in the time cell "unknown". Janos Neman (talk) 12:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

This article is about largest empires, as such they might not have been at the time they existed. Slatersteven (talk)

References

1. Obeng, J. Pashington (1996). Asante Catholicism: Religious and Cultural Reproduction Among the Akan of Ghana. BRILL. p. 20. ISBN 978-90-04-10631-4. An empire of a hundred thousand square miles, occupied by about three million people from different ethnic groups, made it imperative for the Asante to evolve sophisticated statal and parastatal institutions [...]
2. Iliffe, John (1995-08-25). Africans: The History of a Continent. Cambridge University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-521-48422-0. At its peak around 1820 the empire embraced over 250,000 square kilometres [...]
3. Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio; Rogers, J. Daniel; Wilcox, Steven P.; Alterman, Jai (2008). "Computing the Steppes: Data Analysis for Agent-Based Modeling of Polities in Inner Asia" (PDF). Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Political Scientific Association. pp. 8–9. Retrieved 2020-07-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
4. Wade, Geoff (2014-10-17). Asian Expansions: The Historical Experiences of Polity Expansion in Asia. Routledge. p. 144. ISBN 978-1-135-04353-7. [T]he state of Đại Cồ Việt was established in the tenth century [...] The maximum extent of the territory at that time was around 110,000 square kilometres.
5. Bosin, Yury V. (2009), "Durrani Empire, Popular Protests, 1747–1823" (PDF), The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, p. 1029, doi:10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0481, ISBN 978-1-4051-9807-3, retrieved 2020-07-14
6. Bang, Peter Fibiger; Bayly, C. A.; Scheidel, Walter (2020-12-02). The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume One: The Imperial Experience. Oxford University Press. pp. 92–94. ISBN 978-0-19-977311-4.
7. Shillington, Kevin (2013-07-04). Encyclopedia of African History 3-Volume Set. Routledge. p. 733. ISBN 978-1-135-45670-2. The limits of the empire correspond approximately with the boundaries of the Chad Basin, an area of more than 300,000 square miles.
8. Wade, Geoff (2014-10-17). Asian Expansions: The Historical Experiences of Polity Expansion in Asia. Routledge. p. 144. ISBN 978-1-135-04353-7. [W]hen Nguyễn Vietnam surrendered to France in the late nineteenth century the territory it claimed to control had more than tripled to over 370,000 square kilometres
9. Hart, Hornell (1948). "The Logistic Growth of Political Areas". Social Forces. 26 (4): 402. doi:10.2307/2571873. ISSN 0037-7732. In the Mediterranean area the earliest historic governments which extended their territory by major use of fleets were the Greek and the Phoenecian, reaching areas of approximately 250,000 square miles each
10. Morrison, Kathleen D.; Sinopoli, Carla M. (1992). "Economic Diversity and Integration in a Pre-Colonial Indian Empire". World Archaeology. 23 (3): 336. ISSN 0043-8243. At its maximal extent the Vijayanagara empire encompassed some 360,000 square kilometers
11. Alcock, Susan E.; D'Altroy, Terence N.; Morrison, Kathleen D.; Sinopoli, Carla M. (2001-08-09). Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History. Cambridge University Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-521-77020-0. The total spatial extent of the empire, not including the north coast, I estimate to have been some 320,000 square kilometers.

Inclusion request

Why the Serbian Empire was not included in this list? It had area of 250.000km2 and was historical successor of Bulgarian Empire. There is wikipedia page about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Empire 2A06:63C5:8B07:7B00:884B:D19A:20D:2F5C (talk) 21:47, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

No one has said it is one of history's largest empires. Slatersteven (talk) 10:46, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think there's any specific reason, most likely just nobody had found sources for its maximum expansion and year so far 2803:1800:1100:5E4:1:2:F92F:617F (talk) 06:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Xiongnu Empire

It is a bit confusing that the Xiongnu empire is listed at 9m km2 in 176 BC as the largest in history to date, but then in the table of largest at that time, the Han dynasty is still listed as the largest, with the Xiongnu empire appearing not until 150 BC at only ~5m km2 Samsledje (talk) 15:02, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

The latter table gives snapshot estimates at 50-year intervals at that point in time, following the cited source. The source makes an exception for the Macedonian Empire, so it gets an in-between entry at 323 BCE. The source also makes an exception for Assyria in 660 BCE, but that happens to fall between entries where Assyria is at the top regardless, so it doesn't show in our table apart from the maximum area estimate being higher than it otherwise would have been. TompaDompa (talk) 17:19, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Potential Unit Error

The table under Empires at their greatest extent uses "Million km^2" as the unit for land area. The cited source by Rein Taagepera ("Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia") uses Mm^2 (Megameters squared). These are not equivalent units, and it does not appear that unit was converted correctly. 2600:8804:6F00:3D50:D19E:BB2F:53DF:629A (talk) 17:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

It's correct the way it is: 1 million km² is the same thing as 1 Mm². A square with side length 1,000 km = 1 Mm has an area of 1 million square kilometers, and equivalently an area of 1 square megameter. TompaDompa (talk) 19:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Mental glitch. 2600:8804:6F00:3D50:D19E:BB2F:53DF:629A (talk) 01:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)