Hapsburg: Exactly! That's why I think that the Ottoman Empire would have to be one of the most powerful empires in history. All of Europe was fearful of Ottoman expansion from the 13th to 16th century. john smith: Absorbing other nationalities. 'Forcing' them to follow your country's laws and edicts. 'Forcing them' to obey your government. Forcing them to adapt to your culture. I don't see Australians, Canadians or Americans as 'assimiliated'. I see them as people who 'diverged' from the British, and retained some of their culture.
And as Fragglerock mentioned, I would have said China is the most powerful empire in history for all the reasons he mentioned, but I can't say that now. Perhaps in a decade or two, they can be. The reason being is that they've basically always been the "sleeping dragon". To be the most powerful, at least in my book, there has to have been some kind of major exapansion which the Chinese just haven't yet done. They've always basically kept to themselves. Now that they're vying to be the top superpower, if they do some sort of major land grab in the future, they will have fulfilled all the requirements on my personal list. - N
I thought the Queen of England had 1/8th of the total world under her control? Regardless I'd say the 'Europeans". They conquered everything except Japan, central China/Mongolia and Russia of course.
We were taught 1/4. In 1909 the British Empire encompassed 20% of the land area of the Earth and 23% of its population. So 1/5th the land area, and just an insignificant tad under 1/4 of the population. Source:http://www.friesian.com/british.htm
Interesting read at towards the middle where is labled "History" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria Really didn't know much about Celtic history, unless Scotts and Irish are considered true Celt's. Didn't know that Austria And Southern Germany were conquered so many different times. I was aware of the Roman's believing the Germanic people were Monkey Savages when conquering Germania. A question to anyone who can consider themselves a self taught historian on the Indo-European History and Culture. Did the people of Germania take to Catholacism well after fighting somewhat gallantly against the Roman EmpirePlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I ask becasue i do know that germans have been Lutheran for quite sometime...
Of course the Scots and Irish are Celts. They are the bulk of the modern Celtic people. Gaelic is one of the Celtic languages. The other surviving Celtic peoples are the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. Those three are the remnants of the true Britons, the Celtic people who were run out of their own country by the Angles, Saxons, and other Germanic invaders after the fall of Rome. The Celts were the first Indo-European tribe to migrate to Europe. After overcoming the earlier people, whose ethnicity is lost to history, they had most of the place to themselves until the Germanic people started coming down out of Scandinavia, the Romans began expanding, and the Slavs came in from the East, all at more or less the same time. The older Celtic tribes like the Bohumil, after which Bohemia (now known as the Czech Republic) is named, faded away under the three-pronged onslaught. The Western Roman Empire fell but the Christian church did not. Christian monks continued to spread out across the known world, converting people and entire nations everywhere they went. What we now call Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy were the only two branches of the Christian church until the Reformation a thousand years later. Martin Luther, a German, was one of the first "Catholic" priests to "protest" and break away from the church. So the "Protestant" sect he founded in the German-speaking states was named after him. All of Europe, including the non-Indo-European peoples like the Basques and Huns, was converted to Catholic Christianity. Except for Russia and the northwestern fringe of the Byzantine Empire including Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia, where the Orthodox church held sway.
Vietnam, I digress, was certainly a loss. Although it's worth mentioning that politically, America atrophied to the point where everybody was sick of hearing about Vietnam, nobody wanted to continue the war, so we pulled out. Koreans were a different story. By any reasonable standards, America and South Korea "won" the Korean War, although technically we are in a cease-fire and the war is still going on. Afghanistan, although still being fought, is definitely "handled." America's special forces are the ones fighting in Afghanistan at this point, and they aren't fighting against the actual Afghan military. They are fighting insurgents who come out of the woodwork to take shots at the soldiers and get the hell out of Dodge. The Afghan military was reduced to no more than the sand that they are fighting on. Makes me wonder what the Soviet Union was doing in Afghanistan for ten years. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Iraq, Iraq, Iraq...Again, it's to America's defense that the Iraqi military (which used to be fourth largest army in the world, until they bit the wrong ass and got their asses handed to them back in '91) was wiped out within a month or so. To this day, America's forces are battling INSURGENTS, which is completely different than a regular military. I agree with many of you that America must change it's tactics if we are going to be anything than glorified target practice for the insurgents. AmishRakeFight
Amish: Correct. There is more than one way to win a war! That really depends what America was aiming for. Were they aiming to stop communism from spreading to South Korea? Or were they hoping to eliminate Communism from the Korean peninsula? In my opinion, the Korean War was a stalemate. Which really says a lot about the ineffectiveness of the U.S military. Surely they could handle some backwards Korean and Chinese soldiers no problem? Especially since America had many other allies from the U.N. Precisely. The U.S army can't even control insurgencies in countries that they claim that they occupy. Another example of how inefficient the U.S military is.
1. Lutheranism and other Protestant branches didn't even exist until over a thousand years after the end of the Western Empire (though I'd be sooner to call it a long interregnum than an "end"). 2. Depends on how you mean "Germans", or "people of Germania", since there were several peoples in Roman-era Germania: Saxons, Angles, Teutons, Alemmani, Franks...the Franks were probably some of the first Germanic tribes to convert. The Lombards and them had a big feud over who would control Italy, and thus the Papacy, essentially. In the long run, the Franks, under Pepin and Charlemagne, won out. Charlemagne was crowned Emperor Charles I by the Pope in 800. Prior to, and during, his reign as Emperor, when he was just King of the Franks, he conquered the Lombards, making himself King of that tribe as well. He invaded Saxony and the land beyond the Rhine, all the way up to the Elbe River...and converted the remaining nonchristian tribes...so, by Charles' death in 814, a lot of the Germanic people had converted to Catholic Christianity, and by 918, all of them had. Henry of Saxony became King of the Germans (Ol' Chuck's empire had been split amongst his grandsons in 843 and reorganized again in 870, and East Franconia was one of the three kingdoms)... ...and thus was the road to the Ottonian empire, and one of the most prestigious, strongest, yet most shattered monarchies in the history of Europe: the Holy Roman Empire.
Too general; you could just as well say "Humans". Or "Africans", since we're all supposed to originate from some southern African tribe...
Should outer space be included. Does the moon equal land mass? I rekon outer space should be included as well. The something like the potential of an empire should be looked at.
