Historical Empires

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An Empire is a large political entity where one group of people gains the political, economic and military muscle to unify a bunch of other groups of people under it's banner and either lords over them or integrates them into a cohesive whole. Empire is dirived from the Latin word Imperium which means Authority and more specifically the authority to command numerous roman legions.

Notable Real Life Empires

• The Neo Assyrian Empire 911 BC–612 BC(an Empire which had in its foundation in a belief that if their army ever lost a battle the world would end, unsurprisingly it lasted until slightly after they lost their first major battle)
• The Achaemenid or first Persian Empire 550–330 BC
• The Roman Empire 27 BC – 476 AD Western, 330 – 1204 Eastern: the one largely blamed for inspiring Europe to pursue empire building. Their Senate lasted longer by turning into a religious order of Christianity but keeping their robes largely the same and still being based in Rome, but their guards instead of being the predecessors of knights are Swiss with automatic weapons, also Swiss.
• The Chinese Empire: Easily a dozen different empires the oldest going back to 2100 BC.
• The Portuguese Empire: 1139-1975: the Western kingdom turned empire that hired Columbus, becoming the first global empire in the world. Notable for the founding of Nagasaki, moving their capital and court to Brazil to escape Napoleon, and coming back from the brink of dissolution three times. Also, their nicknames, Portugal Overseas: Ultramar Português or the Império Ultramarino Português has something to do with some smurfs made by a British company of Grimdark.
• Spanish empire 1402-1975 but it's height was 1516-1700 when there were ruled by the Hapsburgs and were pulling millions or maybe billions of Aztec gold and silver from the new world.
  • Treaty of Tordesillas June 7 1494. When talking about the Spanish and Portuguese empires the treaty of Tordesillas is worth a mention. Created by Pope Alexander VI the treaty split the new world between the Spanish and the Portugese, with the Spaish get the new world West of the line, and the Portugese everything to the East. Which is why Portuguese settled Brazil while most of the rest of south American speak Spanish and got to Japan because that was East of the line.
• The Mongolian Empire 1206–1368 AD: the Khan family made such an impression on the peoples they conquered that many of them now use the term Khan as a word for ruler. This impression was largely carried out through using much more force than necessary except with medieval technology.
• The Aztec Empire 1428–1521
• The Inca Empire 1438–1533
• The Ottoman Empire 1299–1923
• The Empire of Japan 1868–1947: 538 onwards, they've had an Emperor the whole time, but didn't actually make significant conquests of any sort or at all until 1894, and even from then through 1947 it is still debated whether the Emperor or the military was running things/and or in conflict with each other, with notable incidents such as the military attacking the Imperial Palace after Emperor Hirohito made a public broadcast, his first broadcast, asking the Japanese people to surrender to the United States. The Imperial family were traditionally revered as gods.
• The Mughal Empire 1526–1857, though technically it spent it's last century as a British Vassal.
• The Tsardom of Russia 1547–1721 (renamed to the Russian Empire by Peter the Great)
• The Russian Empire 1721-1917: Big, powerful but often backwards in technology and social development.
• The British Empire 1583-1997 (when Hong Kong was formerly turned over to China. even so they still have handful of oversees territory over which the sun has still yet to set)
• The First French Empire (Vive la Napoleon!) 1804–1815
• Second French Empire-mostly known for getting there ass kicked by Prussia thus allowing Germany to be created: 1852–1870
• Austrian Empire (including time spent as Autria-Hungary) 1804–1918
• The Holy Roman Empire 962–1806 (Some times called the first Reich, it was neither Roman, nor Holy and barely qualified as a State)
• The Eithiopian Empire 1137-1935/1941-1974: an empire of Africans, and one of the only two African nations to remain independent of the West. Also used to have Judaism as the official religion and the switched to it's own version of Chrisitianity, and it's last Emperor, Haile Selassie was revered by a religious movement as God incarnate.
• The German Empire 1871–1918 (The second Reich, put together by Otto von Bismarck's political genious it took a collection of feuding principalities and in a few decades turned them into the greatest industrial power in Europe until it was exhausted fighting pretty much every other industrial power that mattered)
• Nazi Germany 1933 - 1945 (The third and shortest Reich, seriously they thought a thousand years was likley? Every body point and laugh)

Note that when WWI started, the crowned rulers of Russia, Great Britain, Denmark, Spain, Greece, Germany, Romania, and Norway were all related by blood or law.

Notable Fictional Empires

• The First Galactic Empire (Star Wars)
• The Galactic Empire (Isaac Asimov's Foundation series)
• The Galactic Empire (Legend of the Galactic Heroes, this name is fairly common)
• The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)
• The Imperium of Man (Warhammer 40K)