Global empire

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A global empire involves the extension of a state's sovereignty over territories all around the world. For example, because of the Spanish Empire's territories around the globe, it was often said in the 16th century that "the sun never sets on the Spanish Empire." This phrase was later applied to the Russian Empire and British Empire.

1 Early empires
2 European contenders
3 List of global empires
4 See also

[edit] Early empires

Earlier empires were largely confined to the African and/or Eurasian continents, or to the American continents. Nations such as ancient Egypt, the Aztec Empire, the Roman Empire, the Inca Empire, and China could in one sense be considered early superpowers, but not global empires as herein defined.

Some of these early empires which spread across different continents include:

The Persian Empire under the Achaemenids is considered by many to be the first early superpower^[who?], which once controlled all of Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, the Caucasus, and parts of India, Central Asia, and Greece.
The short-lived Macedonian Empire under Alexander the Great became one after replacing Persian power.
The Maurya Empire controlled much of the Indian subcontinent and parts of Central Asia
The Chinese Empire at times controlled parts of Korea, Tibet, Mongolia, Central Asia and Vietnam
The Sassanid Persian Empire who took power after overthrowing the Parthians, ruled all of Persia, reaching up to Egypt, India, Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and Africa.
The Roman Empire covered most of Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor, the Levant, and parts of Mesopotamia.
The Hunnic Empire
The Islamic Empire under the Umayyad Caliphate was the largest empire in its time, stretching from Persia, Central Asia, and parts of India and Xinjiang in the east, up to Spain, Portugal and Morocco in the west.
The Chola Empire based in South India and extended into North India and much of Southeast Asia.
The Seljuk Empire
The Mongol Empire stretched across Asia to Central Europe. It was the largest contiguous and second largest empire in world history, five times greater than the Macedonian Empire, much larger than the Persian Empire and Roman Empire, and twice as large as the Islamic Empire.
The Timurid Empire under Timur included the whole of Central Asia, Iran and modern Afghanistan, as well as large parts of Mesopotamia and Caucasus.
The Mughal Empire - the Timurids of India - ruled most of the Indian subcontinent and parts of what is now Afghanistan for several centuries until the British conquest of India.
The Ottoman Empire controlled Asia Minor, Thrace, the Balkans, parts of Eastern Europe, Middle East, North Africa and stretched to the Yemen and Caspian Sea in Asia in its zenith.

Only after the circumnavigation of the globe by Ferdinand Magellan's expedition (1519-1522) could states begin to truly achieve a global presence.

[edit] European contenders

The first global empires were a product of the European Age of Exploration that began with a race of exploration between the then most advanced maritime powers, Portugal and Spain, in the 15th century. The initial impulse behind these dispersed maritime empires and those that followed was trade, driven by the new ideas and the capitalism that grew out of the European Renaissance. Agreements were also done to divide the world up between them in 1479, 1493, and 1494.

Portugal began establishing the first global trade network and empire under the leadership of Henry the Navigator. Portugal would eventually establish colonial domains from Brazil, in South America, to several colonies in Africa (namely Portuguese Guinea, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola and Mozambique), in Portuguese India (most importantly Bombay and Goa), in China (Macau), and Oceania (most importantly Timor, namely East Timor), amongst many other smaller or short-lived possessions (see Evolution of the Portuguese Empire).

During its Siglo de Oro, the Spanish Empire had possession of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Italy, parts of Germany, parts of France, and many colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. With the conquest of inland Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines in the 16th century, Spain established overseas dominions on a scale and world distribution that had never been approached by its predecessors (the Mongol Empire had been larger but was restricted to Eurasia). Possessions in Europe, Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, the Americas, the Pacific Ocean, and the Far East qualified the Spanish Empire as attaining a global presence in this sense.

From 1580 to 1640 the Portuguese Empire and the Spanish Empire were conjoined in a personal union of its Habsburg monarchs, during the period of the Iberian Union, though the empires continued to be administered separately.

Subsequent global empires included the French, Dutch, and British empires. The latter, consolidated during the period of British maritime hegemony in the 19th century, became the largest empire in history by virtue of the improved transportation technologies of the time. At its height, the British Empire covered a quarter of the Earth's land area and comprised a quarter of its population. By the 1860s, the Russian Empire — continued as the Soviet Union — became the largest contiguous state in the world, and the latter's main successor, Russia, continues to be so to this day. Despite having "lost" its Soviet periphery, Russia has 12 time zones, stretching slightly over half the world's longitude.

Anachronous map of the Portuguese Empire	Anachronous map of the overseas Spanish Empire in red, and the Spanish Habsburg realms in Europe (1516-1714) in orange	Map of the joint Spanish (red) and Portuguese (blue) Empires during the Iberian Union	Dutch colonies in the world at different times in history
Anachronous map of the British Empire	Anachronous map of the French Empire	Anachronous map of the German Empire	A map of the Russian Empire