What were the biggest empires in world history? How long did they last? How much land was under their control?
Now, answer each of those questions and present the results on a single infographic....
That was one of the challenges the Michigan Geographic Alliance has taken on and in 2010, they produced a remarkable visualization to present the ebb and flow of empires over the millenias of human history. Here's the result of their work as featured at Visual Capitalist:
The Michigan Geographic Alliance has a Google Drive site where you can get a PDF versions of the World Geohistogram along with educational material to support lesson plans associated with it.
The visualization contains some surprising insights. For example, many will think of the Roman Empire as having been one of the largest in world history, which is true, but it didn't cover as much territory as Alexander the Great's short-lived Greek empire that preceded it.
The largest empires were those of European nations in the period from 1492 to the 1960s, but this is misleading because they were not under a single power. The British Empire was the world's largest ever, which at its peak, controlled about a quarter of the world's landmass, but it didn't control the 8.5% of the world's land that was controlled by France. Nor did it control territories under the sway of the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians, Germans, Russians, etc.
Meanwhile, the smallest and shortest-lived featured empire belong to the Hittites during the Bronze Age nearly two and a half-centuries ago, which aside from its interactions with other empires, has become overshadowed by them and their successors since its collapse.
Another Visualization
UsefulCharts' Matt Baker also built a chart tracking the rise and fall of empires through history, which is similar but different in significant ways. In the following video, he talks through what his version of much of the same information conveys.
Baker's presentation is more of a "subway map" style of presentation, which focuses on connecting events in time. While the Michigan Geographic Alliance's version shares that characteristic, it also provides visual cues to convey the scale of the empires it features, which we think gives it an edge in communicating vital information about the relative size of the empires it tracks through history.
Reference
Jeff Desjardins. The World’s Biggest Empires of History, on One Epic Visual Timeline. Visual Capitalist. [Online article]. 16 November 2025.
Colin Marshall. A Visual Timeline of World History: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civilizations Over 5,000 Years. OpenCulture. [Online article]. 18 December 2025.
Labels: data visualization
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