Q of the Week - Greatest Empire?

[Aart Brouwer]

Whereas Britain has never been successfully invaded?

Oh dear, someone's been skipping lots of classes.. 

[nikharwood]

How many people today speak Latin as a first language?

Wrong question: what about how many people today speak a first language that is a derivative of Latin?

[Kebabman]

Wasn't China conquered by the Mongols?  Whereas Britain has never been successfully invaded?

Britain has been successfully invaded by numerous countries.Its currently a vassal state of the Yank empire (if you see Luke Skywalker,tell him we could do with a hand).

[lentulus]

So the greatness of an Empire is measured in its longevity rather than its achievements?

What does one usually list for imperial achievements?  Great engineering works (flood control in the Chinese case)? Check.  Widespread dissemination of culture over a large area (Chinese writing)?  Check.  Providing a peace and a legal environment for trade?  Check.  If I knew a significant amount of Chinese history I could probably cite a lt more examples.

It didn't accomplish much in Europe, so we tend to disregard it.   The European empires of the 18th Century were able to impose their will on it, but I expect the Vandals and Visigoths felt pretty good about themselves too.  But while the Roman Empire went down and stayed down, the Chinese keep standing back up.

So what did the British Empire accomplish?  Certainly here in Canada the First Nations and Quebecois would sooner it had never turned up.  India is a unified democracy, but how much is that really to Britain's credit, and how much to the Indian's?  Lots of people speak English, but then a lot of them (our friends in the states for example)  ditched the British part at the first opportunity.

[Leon]

Wasn't China conquered by the Mongols?  Whereas Britain has never been successfully invaded?

I should probably have clarified this so that I didn't look like a dumbass...

I meant within the period we're calling the 'British Empire', which is the last what, 400 years?  Meaning that as a power, it's never been beaten on home ground, whereas a large chunk of China was controlled by the Mongols at one point?

[lentulus]

I meant within the period we're calling the 'British Empire', which is the last what, 400 years?  Meaning that as a power, it's never been beaten on home ground, whereas a large chunk of China was controlled by the Mongols at one point?

Followed by the Mongols becoming the next imperial dynasty; invaders of China have tended to be assimilated.  It's been argued that, were in not for the P&O line, the British would have been assimilated in India in much the same way.

[Leon]

Followed by the Mongols becoming the next imperial dynasty; invaders of China have tended to be assimilated.  It's been argued that, were in not for the P&O line, the British would have been assimilated in India in much the same way.

Weren't the upper classes of both the Indians/Brits firmly against any mixing between the troops and the Indian people?  Although, I suppose, given enough time, they wouldn't have been able to stop it anyway.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Sort of ....

IanS

[17-21l]

The British Empire - although not long lived it created the modern world, inventions, Political policies, freedom of speech.

[jchaos79]

achaemenid persian!

what a luxury!!

But the barbarian Alexander "the destroyer" end it up by force.

[Patrick R]

I vote for Rome.  It left a lasting impact and for centuries people yearned a return to this "Golden Age"

The Empire's legacy survived for more than 1500 years in the Byzantine empire, and after it fell, everybody styled themselves after Caesar, with Czars and Kaisers ...

[lentulus]

Weren't the upper classes of both the Indians/Brits firmly against any mixing...

I believe their wives were, more to the point.

[Sandinista]

The Chinese gets my vote, though from a european point of view you can't argue with Napoleon's, a lot of modern europe stems from then politically

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

I think we're seeing the British Empire from too close a distance to put it into perspective.  We'd need to be at least another hundred years down the track to come to a comparative quasi-objective view.

As far as the Romans were concerned their empire lasted until 1453AD (though largely titular after the Fourth Crusade) and left lots of countries jurisprudence, language base, script as well as lots of ideas that began to resurface in Western Europe with the Renaissance.

China as an Empire has to be considered extremely successful as it has managed to transform virtually all of its territorial expanse into a single modern nation state.

Regards

Edward

[Leon]

That's interesting, I didn't know the Roman's were still around in the 15th C.

I think China's acheivements within it's own boundary are good, but it's never really attempted anything on a global scale has it?