Not dominating, one of the major players on the world stage militarily, like the United Kingdom and Russia. It does not dominate anywhere technologically, not in space technology as of the 2010s, and being 70 trillion USD in debt does not allow for any “Economic dominance”. What culture is that? The English language? The Beatles? Wrong country again.

What absolute delusion. It is the British that have maintained their network of military bases around the globe for centuries, with the US only acquiring many during the mid 20th Century. Of course, it is the British Empire that was “most dominant”, in that all nations, including America, have been irreversibly and completely influencing by its culture, from language, legal code, sports, literature, music and much, much more.

If military presence was seen as territorial gains, then the British Empire would be the largest that ever existed.

“Oh yeah, even Britain has never wielded such military and economical power as the United States”

Perhaps you should read a history book, that might be the problem here. It would go a long way to curing your delusions about the United States. It doesn’t have an empire.

All I can say on the matter is that according to the raw facts the British Empire is regarded as the biggest and most influential Empire of all time. We were so big after all we needed a whole continent to ship our thieves and prisoners to so Australia certainly did belong to the most powerful empire in history.

Every Empire in history was created through thieving, criminal acts and war. The mongols were probably the most barbaric empire the world has ever known and yet they didnt come close to the british empire. We did what every large empire did in the past we just did it better and reaped more reward.

There are people on here talking about influence and things. More parts of the world still speak english although i agree its not the most spoken language it is however the internationally agreed standard. We introduced the industrial revolution to the world. We invented more history changing items than any other country and we did it while we walked around the world planting flags and claiming countries.

I am proud to be british, proud to fly the flag and proud to support our empire. I dont care what other countries have cllaimed to do or have claimed to own all the stats state, with the exception of total population of the world conqured, that the british empire was the largest, most powerful empire on which the sun never set.

The exception, if you are wondering, is on the wiki page for empires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires where the % of world population we are about 4th in that list however no empire has ruled over more people than the britiish empire 458 million of them to quote wiki again.

To close i will simply say Rule Britiannia…….shame we had to give it all back

The British Empire was no-where near the largest, and it did not rule a quarter of the world, not even close in terms of land or population- unbelievable that this doltish myth still gets so much attention. This statement has always depended on specious and ludicrous exaggerations by Pom historians who even today continue with their overstatements.

For example British Empire boosters constantly trot out claims that large-landmass countries like Afghanistan, Tibet, Persia, Egypt and Sudan were within the British Empire. No, they absolutely were not. The Poms for example TRIED to conquer Afghanistan several times in the 1800′s and annex it to the British raj in India but got taken to the cleaners, in fact the Afghans defeated the British so severely and completely in the First Anglo-Afghan War- around 1840- that the British lost AN ENTIRE ARMY of close to 20,000 depending on specific estimates. Only the British army surgeon Brydon rode back through the Afghan siege. The British tried again around 1880 but were routed at Maiwand. Afghanistan was not a part of the British Empire, at all.

Tibet and Persia also, were not part of the British Empire, ever. Yes, Henry McMahon was heavily involved in Tibet and yes, there were oil interests and other reasons for installations in Persia, but they were never British colonies.

Nor were Egypt and Sudan. Egypt also rubbished a British invasion around 1804 or so- the Alexandra expedition, and whilst Egypt wasn’t in right good shape in the late 1800′s, it was nobody’s colony. British affairs with Egypt even after 1881 were run from the foreign bureau not the colonial bureau, and as far as spheres of influence, Egypt was more in a kind of power-balancing situation. The French also held massive sway over Egypt, for example it was a Frenchman who built the Suez Canal and it was French officials who kept closest watch over it, plus other European powers maintained their own spheres.

By the same weak arguments the French could say that Egypt was their colony, which happily they don’t perhaps because they’re not as insecure as the Brits are about this. I don’t know what it is, perhaps the Poms can’t deal with how insignificant their has-been world power has become, so embellish their empire to try to compensate? They probably didn’t reach 1/8 of the world’s surface, maybe about 1/10th or so if being generous. Egypt for its part was nobody’s colony, nor was Sudan for similar reasons. The British tried to establish themselves in Iraq after WWI but got kicked out, on part due to the ongoing bungling of the situation by Churchill, an oft-repeated theme.

Even the Subcontinent wasn’t British to nearly the extent the Poms like to pretend. Only about half of what’s now India and Pakistan were British-ruled, the other half was under Indian rajas, including the wealthiest parts of India like Hydarabad. Other portions of India were under French or Portuguese rule, and NW Pakistan was under nobody’s rule!

Pom imperialists also exaggerate in North America, for example almost all of what’s now the United States was NOT PART OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE! The Midwest and Western USA, almost all of it except for the Pac NW, were never in the British Empire- they were in the French and Spanish or Russian Empires, and then annexed by the USA long after the Americans dismantled the British in the American Revolutionary war. To the extent that Canada was within the British Empire, most of it is an uninhabitable, largely unexplored ice-box anyway. But even then, a good stretch of Canada wasn’t British. Canada became independent in 1867, well before much of its landmass had been charted or administered by anybody, in fact Norway and others were embroiled in territorial disputes about Canadian claims well into the 1940′s, so these obviously weren’t British territories.

There’s a lot of dispute about this for us in Australia, but we were self-governing by 1901 and thus independent from the British Crown. The Outback, the Bush and general core of Australia basically weren’t administered by anyone then, thus it’s a stretch at best to say that was British empire territory. We were not obligated to send our soldiers to fight in World War I, but it was thanks to our corrupt, idiotic twits pretending to be leaders, Cook and Fisher and, oh yes, a certain drunken British incompetent named Winston Churchill that a generation of Australian and New Zealander youth died in the disastrous failure at Gallipoli. Ironically, it’s only the fact that we were independent in 1914 that we blame our own leaders as well as the Brits for the Dardanelles, for using us as cannon fodder in one of the most imbecilic military operations of the 20th century.

I’ve even seen some twits put up British Empire maps containing China and Thailand! CHINA WAS NEVER COLONISED! Not by any of the European powers! The Chinese did have a rough go of things after the Opium Wars, which in any case is an indictment of the Poms’ tiresome claims about theirs being the “better empire”- are we to suppose then that international drug trafficking to China, and causing mass famines to kill millions in India for the opium, are among those “British values” the Poms are always chest-beating about? And Thailand? How can any fool claim that Thailand was a British colony? There were special relations between Siam and the British at various points, but Thailand was nobody’s colony.

The largest empire based on landmass by any calculation, was the Mongol Empire under Kubilai, not under Ghengis! Too many forget that it wasn’t under Ghengis that the Mongols reached their peak, it was his successors. And it included the bulk of Eurasia, from Korea all out to Asia minor to the fringe of Austria. By some estimates it got close to or surpassed 40 million sq km. And unlike the Poms, the Mongols truly administered the territory, it wasn’t a matter of some dolt in a ship getting drunk and lost behind the helm, starting a trading post and then calling it a part of the empire, as the Brits were always fond of doing.

After this it depends on precisely how your defining the form of an empire. Many say it’s the Russians after 1950 or so who had the next biggest at least up to the spat with China, you had vast territories throughout Eurasia throughout almost all of E Europe, much of Africa and Latin America answering to the dictates of Moscow. Not as big as the Mongols but vast nonetheless. Then maybe the Spanish, I know less about them but there was apparently some marriage alliance between Spain and Portugal, so that any ships leaving from a Portuguese harbour for Brazil had allegiance to the Spanish king. Whenever precisely this was, combining the Spanish with the Portuguese lands would have been enormous, and it predated the British Empire by centuries. Yes, John Caboto under Henry VII started the first little bit of the British Empire in 1495 or so, but it wasn’t until around 1609 that anything else happened in the colonisation and not until the 1800′s and Napoloen’s fall that there was truly that much of a British Empire. The Ottoman Turks and the Abbisids with people all over swearing some allegiance to the caliphs- I guess maybe they were maybe up there too. But however you define it, there were several empires that far exceeded the British however you look at it.

The Brits also never reached anything close to the feats in durability or cultural impact, or institutional contributions as many other recent or ancient Empires. Heck half of the former British Empire is a still bloody mess, look at Bangladesh, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Burma for just a few examples. And anyone who thinks the Poms had a light hand in their territories should ask someone from Ireland, or India with all the famines and mass killings of Indian villages after 1857 or so, or the indigenous peoples of many continents- see diseased blankets given to the American tribals, or bounties given for how many natives were shot- for an example.

In terms of the greatest or most influential empires in history, I’d say that’s even more straightforward because then we’re talking about ancient empires, that have had a massive influence on a large collection of what are now modern countries. Then we’re talking about the Roman Empire, Alexander the Great’s Empire and the Chinese and I guess Asoka’s Maurya Empire in India though I know less about that. The Chinese Empire was huge, biggest GDP and economic productivity, lasted millennia and in a sense it’s intact today as a modern country. Alexander defined the culture of a massive region even today more or-less based on that.

And the Romans? Almost certainly the greatest empire and the most influential empire with the only possible exception being the Chinese. The Romans helped to define civilisation for the West and even much of the world outside Europe. As Gae took note, the old Roman sites of north Africa are the basis of a lot of revenue even today, the very basis of laws, infrastructure and basics of civilisation in the West were invented by the Romans and still used today. Their empire was enormous and durable despite the fact that they didn’t have modern technology at their disposal. Certainly after Caesar Augustus the Roman territories were very well administered, and even in parts of England and south Germany people still use the old Roman aqueduct network and the roads. Also even the cultures of non-Roman regions like India, Persia and China were able to flourish in part as a result of indirect Roman protection and trade.

I say this because I respect my country or sorry empire

The Roman invented the legal figures of the; Judge, barister, wrote codes and jurisprudence most of wich still in use today (The Greek used the ostracism system)
They invented the currency in terms of coin and notes, still used today. Before roman times they used to exchange good and animals or gold and other precious material in exchange for primary goods.
The first empire to build structure in cement, still used today
They named the days of the weeks , which we still use today
They named the months of the year witch we still use today
The copied the Argentarii systems from the Greeks (banks) and take it to the next level
They copied a lot from Greek art and architecture, but again took it to another level.
They introduced Christianity into Europe and invented the Church as an institution
They invented Christmas holiday. It was a pagan wine festival of November, later adapted as nativity of Jesus.
First Empire to use a passport ‘’Cives Romanus’’
The Roam destroy all the scrolls relative to the true account of Jesus life, with profound consequences
They came up first with the idea of franchising lots of shops with the same name and products have been excavated throughout the empire (Europe)
They invented glass windows and double glasses
They invented the Sauna as we know it
They created new countries like Lidia and Syria.
They expelled the Jew from their Land changing the course of their history forever
They built higher than anyone else ever did before ten storey high
With the failing to conquer Eastern Europe they condemned those countries to be a thousand year back of the west, with all the relative wars and dictatorial regimes that succeeded in the next two thousand years.
They studied Greek philosophy but unfortunately did not produce better philosophic thoughts then Greeks did, but thanks to them the world was aware of the Hellenistic literature treasures.

They did not invade India, but protected the country for hundreds of years from foreign invasion, because they could buy goods, precious metal and spices cheap without occupation of this huge continent. By protecting India from foreign attacks they indirectly changed their history. I do not know if in positive or negative.
They did business with China a and practically invented drown the silk way route (hundreds of years later claimed by Marco Polo
Today African counties like North Morocco and Tunisia get most of their money from tourists visiting Roman Ruins
Most of the European Languages comes from Latin
Most European cities were founded by the Romans
Theyr Medicine were advanced as our today
Roman appartments lloked better than today suites in any capital of the world
There were no racism in rome, it was about rich and poor, a coloured african could become emperor.
The above is roughly 10% of their achievements. So who is arguing that we are not living in a Roman World?