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Oof, the anachronistic nature of this history is immediately relevant when the Huns are being used as a catchall term for nomadic steppe peoples in an era when
by jcranmer 3y ago
Oof, the anachronistic nature of this history is immediately relevant when the Huns are being used as a catchall term for nomadic steppe peoples in an era when this is dominated by Indo-European tribes and referred to as the Mongolians. A quick scroll confirms that there's no mention of any indigenous peoples in the Americas, period, even as they're touting the great and mighty power of the, uh, Lombards. You get other Eurocentric gems, like Charlemagne being the most powerful ruler in his time, more so than the contemporary Tang dynasty in China or the Abbasid Caliphate, which... yeah, no that ain't right. Also interesting that Napoleon at his height looks to be ⅔ the power of the British Empire at the time?
But more than poking fun at the specific issues in this attempt (and there are many to be sure), I strongly suspect that there's no way to even responsibly attempt such an endeavor. Quantitative data is simply lacking for much of history. Population demographics for well-attested areas such as the Roman Empire at its height is difficult to establish, but if you try to apply it to, say, pre-Columbian North America, the estimates vary by orders of magnitude. GDP estimates are even worse--even today, there are many countries where GDP may be over 25% off, and any number before 1500 may as well be pulled out of an ass.
The bigger question is if it's even reasonable to attempt to condense "power" into something quantitative. Economic power doesn't necessarily lend itself to diplomatic power: the US became the world's largest economic power sometime in the late 19th century, yet it remained a diplomatic lightweight pretty much until the climax of WWI.
- csomar 3y agoThis makes sense only if this measures the power of the "empire" rather than the power/GDP of the region. "China" made roughly 20-40% of the world total population [1]. If you include nearby regions not under their control, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and also include India; you are pretty much looking at the population of most of the world. This is still true even today. This region has the best geography to create massive populations. And massive amounts of people generally correlated with massive powers. The only exception to this was during the early periods of globalization that culminated in Colonialism. Empires do wither out but their populations do not mostly disappear; which gives "re-birth" to other empires. China-India were always the center of the world but the same couldn't be said for their empires. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_China
- kqr 3y agoEven the first sentence hints in that direction. "A timeline of your country’s whole history stretching back to its inception" would be fairly short for almost all countries unless the label is applied retroactively to multiple coexisting more-and-less intertwined local centres of influence. The nation-state is a very recent idea.
- 082349872349872 3y agoEven in North America, the amusement park "Six Flags over Texas"[0] points out that economic regions endure while nations[1] change. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_flags_over_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_flags_over_Texas [1] To be fair it looks like Austin has only had 5 flags flying over it, counting from the earliest Missions.