So which was the greatest empire?

[Golgamesh]

Reading the blurbs about the empires, a lot seem to have been the greatest. But which was the greatest empire in history?

IMHO it was the British Empire .. British, note, not English .. though Civ 5 just talks about "influence", not even crediting us with an empire. That's probably the American influence, 'cos they like to forget they were once part of our empire.

I remember my school atlas when a vast swathe of the world was still coloured pink (OK, that does give away my age)- all the Indian subcontinent, part of China, Australasia, half of Africa, Canada (though the US was a different colour by then) etc ...

So my vote is for the British empire. Though of course that would mean including Edinburgh and Cardiff etc and Hull would be even further down the list.

Ho hum.

[Proteus_MST]

Depends on your Criteria...
if you mean greatest land mass, then it is definitely the british empire.

If it is the longest lasting with the biggest influence on our present world then I would vote for the roman empire
(including its successor the byzantine empire [Basileia ton romaio...Kingdom of romans])
(an empire [roman+byzantine] which, altogether, lastet for lastet for > 1000 years)

[wodan11]

Hard to say. Because if we say Roman then we have to consider Greek (Macedonian) because Alexander showed the Romans that it was possible. Would the Roman Empire have existed without the Greeks? Doubtful.

[Mr Justice]

mongol empire was only marginally smaller than the british empire, 34 vs 33 (million km2). mongols did it much faster than the british as well.

Egyptian empire lasted 3000 years. pretty sure thats the longest.

The sumerians gave the world writing and intensive farming. probably the most significant contributions to the human race.

The American empire gave us Civ.

all depends on your criteria IMO.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

This is potentially a pissing contest with beginning nor end. There are numerous empires that have contributed to human society, or worked at its detriment. And history did not record all of them. We are what we are now due to all of it - not some of it.

All of human progress is the result of the efforts of those that preceded. If you need to make a yardstick, it should be based on how effective leadership has been, considering what it started with, what the competition was doing, and how the next generation of leaders inherited the territory. And even then, you're missing out on incremental improvements that are not detected with this yardstick. At any rate, it's always relative. In its day and age, discovering the wheel may very well have been a bigger step than putting a man on the moon for us.