Rise and Fall of Empires

A unified Egypt under god-kings organised the Nile valley into the first great territorial state, its power made visible in stone.

The tomb of Khufu, the largest pyramid ever built, displayed the astonishing organisational reach of the early Egyptian state.

Sargon united the cities of Mesopotamia into the Akkadian Empire, remembered as history's first multi-ethnic empire builder.

The Babylonian king united Mesopotamia and issued one of the earliest written law codes, binding a diverse empire under a single justice.

Carved on a stone stele, its 282 laws of contract, family, and punishment are a founding document of written statecraft.

From Anatolia the Hittites mastered iron and chariots, rivalled Egypt, and signed one of the first recorded peace treaties.

With a professional army and mass deportations, Assyria built the largest empire yet seen, ruling from Egypt to the Persian Gulf.

Babylon rose again under Nebuchadnezzar, famed for its walls, ziggurats, and the astronomy that would inform the Greeks.

Cyrus founded the Persian Empire and ruled its many peoples with unusual tolerance, a model of imperial governance for centuries.

The largest empire the world had yet seen linked three continents by royal roads, satraps, and a postal relay from India to Greece.

Darius organised Persia into provinces with a common coinage and administration, and built Persepolis as its ceremonial heart.

The Greek city-states repelled two Persian invasions, a clash that shaped classical Greece and Europe's self-image for millennia.

In a decade Alexander conquered from Greece to India, toppling Persia and spreading Hellenistic culture across the ancient world.

Chandragupta Maurya unified most of the Indian subcontinent into its first great empire, governed by a sophisticated bureaucracy.

After a bloody conquest, the Mauryan emperor renounced violence, embraced Buddhism, and spread it through edicts across his realm.

The first emperor of a unified China standardised script, weights, and roads, and left the terracotta army to guard his tomb.

The Han ruled China for four centuries, built the Silk Road trade, and founded a civil service that would outlast every dynasty.

Rome's first emperor ended a century of civil war and founded the imperial system, opening two centuries of Roman peace.

At its height Rome ruled the entire Mediterranean and much of Europe, uniting them by law, roads, citizenship, and a common currency.

Rome's vast amphitheatre, seating fifty thousand, embodied imperial engineering and the spectacle that bound the city to its rulers.

Constantine legalised Christianity and founded Constantinople, shifting Rome's centre east and shaping the empire's next thousand years.

India's 'golden age' saw advances in mathematics — including the concept of zero — astronomy, art, and Sanskrit literature.

The Roman Empire's eastern half endured for over a thousand years from Constantinople, guarding classical learning and Orthodox Christianity.

The deposition of the last western emperor marked the end of Roman rule in the west and the dawn of medieval Europe.

The Byzantine emperor reconquered much of the west, built the Hagia Sophia, and codified Roman law for all later Europe.

Tang China was the era's most cosmopolitan power, its capital the world's largest city and its poetry and porcelain unmatched.

Within a century of Muhammad, Arab armies built an empire from Spain to Central Asia, spreading Islam and a new civilisation.

Crowned emperor in 800, Charlemagne united much of western Europe and revived learning, founding the idea of a Christian empire.

From Baghdad the Abbasids presided over a golden age of science, translation, and trade linking the Mediterranean to China.

Song China pioneered paper money, printing, gunpowder, and the compass — an economic and technological peak of the medieval world.

A patchwork of German and Italian lands claiming Rome's mantle, it would loosely bind central Europe for over eight centuries.

Uniting the Mongol tribes, Genghis launched conquests that would create the largest contiguous land empire in history.

At its height the Mongol realm stretched from Korea to Hungary, securing the Silk Road and linking Asia and Europe as never before.

Rising in Anatolia, the Ottomans would rule the Balkans, the Near East, and North Africa for six centuries from Constantinople.

The Ming rebuilt the Great Wall, sent vast treasure fleets across the Indian Ocean, and ruled a populous, prosperous China.

From the island city of Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs dominated central Mexico through tribute, trade, and a rich ritual civilisation.

The largest empire of the pre-Columbian Americas bound the Andes together with roads, terraced farms, and a planned economy — without writing or the wheel.

Ottoman cannon breached the walls of Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire and closing the thousand-year Roman story.

Columbus's landfall opened the conquest of the Americas, and New World silver made Spain the first empire on which the sun never set.

Tiny Spanish forces, aided by local allies and by disease, toppled the Aztec and Inca empires within a generation.

Babur's descendants ruled most of India in wealth and splendour, leaving monuments like the Taj Mahal at their cultural height.

The greatest Mughal emperor expanded the realm, reformed its administration, and sought tolerance among its Hindu and Muslim subjects.

China's last imperial dynasty doubled the empire's size and population before colliding with an industrialising West.

Through sea power, trade, and industry, Britain built the largest empire in history, ruling a quarter of the world by 1900.

Napoleon conquered most of Europe and spread the reforms of the Revolution, his legal code outliving the empire he built.

After the 1857 rebellion, the Crown took direct rule of India, the 'jewel' of an empire that reshaped a subcontinent.

European powers carved up almost the entire continent at the Berlin Conference, drawing borders that still shape Africa today.

The First World War destroyed the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and German empires at a stroke, remaking the world map.

The Russian Empire was reborn as a communist superstate spanning Eurasia — the last great multi-national empire of the century.

The independence and partition of India triggered the great wave of decolonisation that would dismantle Europe's overseas empires.

Seventeen African nations won independence in a single year, all but ending formal European empire on the continent.

The dissolution of the USSR into fifteen states ended the last of the great territorial empires and the Cold War with it.