In a modern context, recognized great powers first arose in Europe during the post-Napoleonic era.[1] The formalization of the division between small powers[2] and great powers came about with the signing of the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814.
The historical terms "Great Nation", a distinguished aggregate of people inhabiting a particular country or territory, and "Great Empire",[3] a considerable group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, are colloquial; their use is seen in ordinary historical conversations.[4][5][6]
France has been one of the leading powers in Europe and the world, since the breakup of the Carolingian Empire and the emergence of West Francia, its predecessor state, although its power was only truly consolidated from 1214 onwards with its victory in the Anglo-French War.[7][8] Over the 14th century, French kings would focus on bringing more of the kingdom's lands under their direct control, as France emerged as the most populous region in Europe by 1340.[9] After the discovery of the New World, France became a dominant empire possessing many colonies in various locations around the world. Still participating in his deadly Italian conflicts, Francis I of France managed to finance expeditions to find trade routes to China or Cathay through landmass already discovered by the Spanish under Giovanni da Verrazzano. Giovanni would lead the first French discovery of the "New World" just north of the Spanish invasions of Mesoamerica later as New Spain and a decade later Jacques Cartier would firmly colonize the landmass in the name of Francis I. This New World colony would become New France, the first colony of the Kingdom of France. In the 1500s, France was still the most populous country in Europe,[10] and would remain so until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. During the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, from 1643 to 1715, France was the leading European power as Europe's richest and most powerful country. The dominance of France over world affairs extended to most foreign European courts speaking French, including other great powers of the time such as England, Sweden, and Russia.[11]
From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the first French colonial empire stretched from a total area at its peak in 1680 to over 10 million km2 (3.9 million sq mi), the second largest empire in the world at the time behind only the Spanish Empire (which France would also take control of, briefly, under Napoleon). It had many possessions around the world, mainly in the Americas, Asia and Africa. France kept some of these possessions to this day, integrating them into its territory, like La Réunion. At its peak in 1750, French India had an area of 1.5 million km2 (0.58 million sq mi) and a totaled population of 30 million people, making it the most populous colony under French rule.[12][13] The Empire of the French (1804–1814), also known as the Greater French Empire or First French Empire, but more commonly known as the Napoleonic Empire, was also the dominant power of much of continental Europe, and ruled over 90 million people at its height.[14] It was the preeminent power in Europe, if not the world, as Britain was its only rival during the early 19th century, the two countries battling for supremacy over the world, with France dominating on land and Britain on the sea.[15][16]
Napoleon became Emperor of the French (French: L'Empereur des Français) on 18 May 1804 and crowned Emperor 2 December 1804, ending the period of the French Consulate, and won early military victories in the War of the Third Coalition against Austria, Prussia, Russia, Portugal, and allied nations, notably at the Battle of Austerlitz (1805) and the Battle of Friedland (1807). The Treaty of Tilsit in July 1807 ended two years of bloodshed on the European continent. Subsequent years of military victories known collectively as the Napoleonic Wars extended French influence over much of Western Europe and into Poland. At its height in 1812, the French Empire had 134 départements, ruled over 90 million subjects, maintained extensive military presence in Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Duchy of Warsaw, and could count Prussia, Russia and Austria as nominal allies.[17]
Early French victories exported many ideological features of the French Revolution throughout Europe. Napoleon gained support by appealing to some common concerns of the people. In France, these included fear by some of a restoration of the ancien régime, a dislike of the Bourbons and the emigrant nobility who had escaped the country, a suspicion of foreign kings who had tried to reverse the Revolution – and a wish by Jacobins to extend France's revolutionary ideals.
The feudal system was abolished, aristocratic privileges were eliminated in all places except Poland, and the introduction of the Napoleonic Code throughout the continent increased legal equality, established jury systems, and legalized divorce. Napoleon placed relatives on the thrones of several European countries and granted many titles, most of which expired with the fall of the Empire. Napoleon wished to make an alliance with South India Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan and provide them French-trained army during the Anglo-Mysore Wars, with the continuous aim of having an eventual open way to attack the British in India.[18][19]
Historians have estimated the death toll from the Napoleonic Wars to be around 5 million people, or 15% of the French Empire's subjects.[20] After Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, the continental powers joined Russia, Britain, Portugal and the rebels in Spain. The War of the Sixth Coalition, a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain and a number of German States finally defeated France and drove Napoleon Bonaparte into exile on Elba. When Napoleon returned, with their armies reorganized, the coalition invaded France again, forcing Napoleon to abdicate and thus leading to the restoration of Bourbon rule.
England and United Kingdom (1588–)
At the end of the 16th century, having secured its position as a strong naval power, England and the Dutch Empire began to challenge the Portuguese Empire's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages—the English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions: the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other.[21] Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system[22] and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange invaded and ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Dutch Republic and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and trade with the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability.[22]
1754 map, British Empire in Red
During the 17th and 18th centuries, British colonies were created along the east coast of North America. The southern colonies had a plantation economy, made possible by enslavement of Africans, which produced tobacco and cotton. This cotton was especially important in the development of British textile towns and the rise of the world's first Industrial Revolution in Britain by the end of this period. The northern colonies provided timber, ships, furs, and whale oil for lamps; allowing work to be done at times of the day without natural light.[23][24] All of these colonies served as important captive markets for British finished goods and trade goods including British textiles, Indian tea, West Indian coffee, and other items.[25]
The British Empire participated in the Seven Years' War officially from 1756, a war described by some historians as the world's first World War.[26] The British had hoped winning the war against its colonial rival France would improve the defensibility of its important American colonies, where tensions from settlers eager to move west of the Appalachian Mountains had been a substantive issue.[27] The new British-Prussian alliance was successful in forcing France to cede Canada to Britain, and Louisiana to Spain, thus ostensibly securing British North America from external threats as intended. The war also allowed Britain to capture the proto-industrialisedBengal from the French-allied Mughal Empire, then Britain's largest competitor (and by far the world's single largest producer) in the textile trade, it was also able to flip Hyderabad from the Mughals to its cause, and capture the bulk of French territorial possessions in India, effectively shutting them out of the sub-continent.[28][29] Importantly, the war also saw Britain becoming the dominant global naval power.[30]
Regardless of its successes in the Seven Years' War, the British government was left close to bankruptcy, and in response it raised taxes considerably in order to pay its debts.[31] Britain was also faced with the delicate task of pacifying its new French-Canadian subjects, as well as the many American Indian tribes who had supported France, without provoking a new war with France. In 1763, Pontiac's War broke out as a group of Indian tribes in the Great Lakes region and the Northwest (the modern American Midwest) were unhappy with the loss of congenial and friendly relations with the French and complained about being cheated by the new British monopoly on trade.[32] Moreover, the Indians feared that British rule would lead to white settlers displacing them from their land, whereas it was known that the French had only come as fur traders, and indeed this had been the original source of animosity on the part of British settlers with France and part of the reason the war had started in the first place.[32] Pontiac's War was going very badly for the British and it was only with their victory at the Battle of Bushy Run that a complete collapse of British power in the Great Lakes region was avoided.[33]
A portion of eastern North America; the 1763 "proclamation line" is the border between the red and the pink areas.
In response, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbade white settlement beyond the crest of the Appalachians, with the hope of appeasing the Indians and preventing further insurrection, but this led to considerable outrage in the Thirteen Colonies, whose inhabitants were eager to acquire native lands. The Quebec Act of 1774, similarly intended to win over the loyalty of French Canadians, also spurred resentment among American colonists.[34] As such, dissatisfaction with the Royal Proclamation and "Taxation Without Representation" are said to have led to the Thirteen Colonies declaring their independence and starting the American War of Independence (1775–1783).[31][35]
This war was comprehensively supported by Britain's competitors, France and Spain, and Britain lost the war. Britain and the new United States of America were able to retain the pre-existing trade arrangements from before independence, minimizing long-term harm to British trading interests. After the war of independence, the American trade deficit with Britain was approximately 5:1 causing a shortage of gold for a number of years.[36] However, the British Empire would shift its focus from North America to India, expanding from its new base in Bengal and signalling the beginning of the second phase of the British Empire.
The Russian Empire formed from what was Tsardom of Russia under Peter the Great. Emperor Peter I (1682–1725) fought numerous wars and expanded an already vast empire into a major European power. In 1703, he moved the capital from Moscow to the new model city of Saint Petersburg, which was largely built according to Western design. This would be the turning point of a series of major reforms he would gradually enact in Russia, aiming to transform the country into a westernized, major player on the world stage.[37] He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political mores with a modern, scientific, Western-oriented, and rationalist system. His victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War in 1721 saw Russia being recognized as a great power, dominating the Baltic region.
Empress Catherine the Great (1762–1796) presided over a golden age; she expanded the state by conquest, colonization, and diplomacy, while continuing Peter I's policy of modernization along Western European lines. Emperor Alexander I (1801–1825) played a major role in defeating Napoleon's ambitions to control Europe, as well as constituting the Holy Alliance of conservative monarchies. Russia further expanded to the west, south and east, becoming one of the most powerful European empires of the time. Its victories in the Russo-Turkish Wars were checked by defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856), which led to a period of reform and intensified expansion in Central Asia.[38] Following these conquests, Russia's territories spanned across Eurasia, with its western borders ending in eastern Poland, and its eastern borders ending in Alaska. By the end of the 19th century, the area of the empire was about 22,800,000 square kilometers (8,800,000 sq mi), or almost 1⁄6 of the Earth's landmass; its only rival in size at the time was the British Empire. The majority of the population lived in European Russia. More than 100 different ethnic groups lived in the Russian Empire, with ethnic Russians composing about 45% of the population.[39]Emperor Alexander II (1855–1881) initiated numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861.
The empire was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. The Ottoman Empire was the only Islamic power to seriously challenge the rising power of Western Europe between the 15th and 19th centuries. With Constantinople (later Istanbul) as its capital, the Empire was in some respects an Islamic successor of earlier Mediterranean empires—the Roman and Byzantine empires.
The effective military and bureaucratic structures of the previous century also came under strain during a protracted period of misrule by weak Sultans. But in spite of these difficulties, the Empire remained a major expansionist power until the Battle of Vienna in 1683, which marked the end of Ottoman expansion into Europe.[42]
Ottoman military reform efforts begin with Selim III (1789–1807) who made the first major attempts to modernize the army along European lines. These efforts, however, were hampered by reactionary movements, partly from the religious leadership, but primarily from the Janissary corps, who had become anarchic and ineffectual. Jealous of their privileges and firmly opposed to change, they revolted and deposed him. Selim's efforts cost him his throne and his life, but were resolved in spectacular and bloody fashion by his successor, the dynamic Mahmud II, who massacred the Janissary corps in 1826. Even then, it was too late: much of the decline took place in the 19th century under pressure from Russia and various other powers, beginning with the Greek War of Independence, and culminating in 1875 in the Great Eastern Crisis: by 1882, the Empire had lost effective control of Egypt, Tunisia, and more. The Balkans were lost by 1913, leading to a coup d'état, and the Empire disintegrated after the First World War, leaving Turkey as its successor state.[43]
The Portuguese Empire[44] was the first empire with land on all continents, as well as the earliest and longest-lived of the Western Europeancolonial empires, lasting from 1415 to 1999. Portugal's small size and population restricted the empire, in the 16th century and beyond, to a collection of small but well defended outposts along the African coasts, the main exceptions being Angola, Mozambique and Brazil. For most of the 16th century, the Portuguese Indian Armadas, then one of the strongest navies in shipbuilding and naval artillery, dominated most of the Atlantic Ocean south of the Canary Islands, the Indian Ocean, and the western Pacific Ocean. The height of the empire was reached in the 16th century; but the indifference of the Habsburg kings, and the competition with new colonial empires like the British, French and Dutch started its long and gradual decline. After the 18th century, Portugal focused on the colonization of Brazil as well as its African possessions. However, following the Liberal Revolution of 1820, Brazil soon declared independence and the Portuguese Empire lost its most prized possession.[45]
Spain (1469–1815)
The areas pertaining to the Spanish Empire at various times over a period exceeding 400 yearsThe territories that came under the Spanish monarch during the Iberian Union
After the crowns of Castile and Aragon united in 1469, modern Spain began to emerge as a great power. Besides conquering the Emirate of Granada and completing the Reconquista, in the 16th century, Spain (with Portugal) was in the vanguard of European global exploration and colonial expansion and the opening of trade routes across the oceans, with trade flourishing across the Atlantic Ocean between Spain and the Americas and across the Pacific Ocean between the Asia–Pacific and Mexico via the Philippines. Conquistadors toppled the Aztec, Inca, and Maya civilizations, and laid claim to vast stretches of land in North and South America. For a long time, the Spanish Empire dominated the oceans with its navy and ruled the European battlefield with its infantry, the famous tercios. Spain enjoyed a cultural golden age in the 16th and 17th centuries as Europe's foremost power, with the largest economy of all nations during at least half of the 16th century.[46]
From the middle of the 16th century, silver and gold from the American mines increasingly financed the military capability of Habsburg Spain, then the foremost global power, in its long series of European and North African wars. Until the loss of its American colonies in the 19th century, Spain maintained one of the largest empires in the world, even though it suffered fluctuating military and economic fortunes from the 1640s. Confronted by the new experiences, difficulties and suffering created by empire-building, Spanish thinkers formulated some of the first modern thoughts on natural law, sovereignty, international law, war, and economics – they even questioned the legitimacy of imperialism – in related schools of thought referred to collectively as the School of Salamanca.
Constant contention with rival powers caused territorial, commercial, and religious conflict that contributed to the slow decline of Spanish power from the early 17th century, aggravated by both the General Crisis sweeping through Europe, but the collapse of the Habsburg Netherlands and ensuring Eighty Years' War, which would cripple Spain for decades. In the Mediterranean, Spain warred constantly with the Ottoman Empire; on the European continent, France eventually replaced Spain as the leading military power. Overseas, Spain was initially rivaled by Portugal, and later by the English and Dutch. In addition, English-, French-, and Dutch-sponsored privateering and piracy, overextension of Spanish military commitments in its territories, increasing government corruption, and economic stagnation caused by military expenditures ultimately contributed to the empire's weakening.[47]
After a century of decline from once being Europe's most powerful country, Spain entered the War of the Spanish Succession, with its population divided between the pro-Bourbon and pro-Habsburg factions, as Europe was to decide on the country's fate. Spain's European empire was finally undone by the Peace of Utrecht (1713), which stripped Spain of its remaining territories in Italy and the Low Countries. Spain's fortunes improved thereafter, but it remained a second-rate power in European politics. However, Spain maintained and enlarged its vast overseas empire until the 19th century, when the shock of the Peninsular War sparked declarations of independence in Quito (1809), Venezuela and Paraguay (1811) and successive revolutions that split away its territories on the mainland (the Spanish Main) of the Americas. By then, although it would remain a strong country, Spain was not to be a great power again.
The union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, formed in 1385, emerged as a major power in Central and Eastern Europe following its victory at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410.[48][49][50] Poland–Lithuania covered a large territory in Central and Eastern Europe, making it the largest state in Europe at the time.[50] Through its territorial possessions and vassal principalities and protectorates, its influence extended from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, reaching Livonia (present-day Estonia and Latvia) in the north,[51] and Moldavia and Crimea in the south and southeast.[52][53] In the 15th century the ruling Jagiellonian dynasty managed to place its members on the thrones of the neighbouring kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, becoming one of the most powerful houses in Europe.[54]
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of the largest, most powerful and most populous[55] countries in 16th, 17th, and 18th century Europe. In fact, Poland was a major power that imposed its will on weaker neighbors. Its political structure was formed in 1569 by the Union of Lublin, which transformed the previous Polish–Lithuanian union into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and lasted in this form until the adoption of the Constitution of May 3, 1791. In the 16th century, the area of the Rzeczpospolita reached almost 1 million km2, with a population of 11 million. At that time, it was the third largest country in Europe, and the largest country of Western Christian Europe.[56] Poland was a political, military and economic power. It was a country of religious freedom, confirmed by the Warsaw Confederation, one of the first European acts of its kind, which encouraged an influx of immigrants, including Armenian, Czech,[57]Dutch, French, Greek, Jewish, and Scottish.
The Union possessed features unique among contemporary states. This political system unusual for its time stemmed from the ascendance of the szlachta noble class over other social classes and over the political system of monarchy. In time, the szlachta accumulated enough privileges (such as those established by the Nihil novi Act of 1505) that no monarch could hope to break the szlachta's grip on power. The Commonwealth's political system does not readily fit into a simple category; it may best be described as a melange of:
confederation and federation, with regard to the broad autonomy of its regions. It is, however, difficult to decisively call the Commonwealth either confederation or federation, as it had some qualities of both of them;
oligarchy, as only the szlachta—around 15% of the population—had political rights;
democracy, since all the szlachta were equal in rights and privileges, and the Sejm could veto the king on important matters, including legislation (the adoption of new laws), foreign affairs, declaration of war, and taxation (changes of existing taxes or the levying of new ones). Also, the 9% of Commonwealth population who enjoyed those political rights (the szlachta)[58] was a substantially larger percentage than in majority European countries;[59] note that in 1789 in France only about 1% of the population had the right to vote, and in 1867 in the United Kingdom, only about 3%.[58][59]
elective monarchy, since the monarch, elected by the szlachta, was Head of State;
Following the Union of Lublin, at various times, through personal unions and vassalages, Poland's sphere of influence reached Sweden and Finland in Northern Europe, the Danube in Southeastern Europe,[60][61] and the Caribbean and West Africa. In a rather unique feat, Poland became a territorially extensive state largely not through war conquests, but rather through peaceful incorporation of territories, with the Polish-Lithuanian union formed voluntarily, and Prussia, Caffa in Crimea and Livonia voluntarily recognizing Polish sovereignty in 1454,[62] 1462 and 1561, respectively, viewing Poland as a defender against either oppressive regimes, such as the Teutonic Order, or potential invaders such as Turkey and Russia.
Originally the Later Jin dynasty, the dynasty changed its official name to "Great Qing", meaning "clear" or "pellucid", in 1636. In 1644, Beijing was sacked by a coalition of rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, a minor Ming official who later proclaimed the Shun dynasty. The last Ming emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor, committed suicide when the city fell, marking the official end of the Ming dynasty. Qing forces then allied with Ming general Wu Sangui and seized control of Beijing to expel Shun forces from the city.[70]
Examples of the high quality porcelain that was mass-produced during the High Qing era
The Qing dynasty reached its height in the ages of the Kangxi Emperor, Yongzheng Emperor and the Qianlong Emperor. The Ten Great Campaigns and in addition, the conquest of the western territories of the Mongols, Tibetans, and Muslims under the rule of the Qing were another factor of prosperity. The skillful rule of the era's emperors allowed for this success: rule through chiefdoms, in territories like Taiwan, allowed for the conquered peoples to retain their culture and be ruled by their own people while the Qing Empire still possessed the ultimate control over its vast territory. These ruling tactics created little need or reason for rebellion of the conquered.[71] Another aspect of Manchu rule under the Qing Empire, was rule within modern-day China. The Mongols' attempt to rule may have failed because they attempted to rule from the outside. The High Qing emperors ruled from within, enabling them to obtain and retain stable, efficient control of the state.
A new generation of emperors combined the strengths of their culture in addition to a level of sinicization of the conquered cultures, in order to combine assimilation and the retaining of their own cultural identity. This was initiated with the Kangxi Emperor who was in power at the initiation of the High Qing. As an emperor he elevated the status of the Qing Empire through his passion for education in combination with his military expertise, and his restructuring of the bureaucracy into that of a cosmopolitan one. His son and successor, the Yongzheng Emperor ruled differently through more harsh and brutal tactics, but possessed an efficient and unprecedented level of commitment to the betterment of the empire.[72] The last successful emperor of the High Qing was the Qianlong Emperor who, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, was a well-rounded ruler who created the peak of the High Qing Empire. The unique and unprecedented ruling techniques of these three emperors, and the emphasis on multiculturalism[73] fostered the productivity and success that lasted through the High Qing era.
A heavy revival of the arts was another characteristic of the High Qing Empire. Through commercialization, items such as porcelain were mass-produced and used in trade. Literature was emphasized as Imperial libraries were erected, and literacy rates of men and women both rose within the elite class. The significance of education and art in this era is that it created an economic stimulation that would last for a period of over fifty years.[74] After the Qianlong Emperor's death, the dynasty faced changes in the world system, foreign instrusion, internal revolts, population growth, economic disruption, official corruption, and the reluctance of Confucian elites to change their mindsets. With peace and prosperity, the population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, soon leading to a fiscal crisis.
China, under the Qing dynasty, remained an unrecognized great power, as European powers did not, at the time, consider Asian nations to be their equals. Following the First and Second Opium Wars, where Britain and France imposed their will on the imperial dynasty, the government attempted to pursue a policy of radical reforms known as the Self-Strengthening Movement.[75] While initially successful, the First Sino-Japanese War brought an abrupt end to the relative stability the Qing had managed to maintain, and was followed quickly by the Boxer Rebellion, until the Qing finally lost control in 1912.
The Indian subcontinent was producing about 25% of the world's industrial output from 1st millennium CE up to until the 18th century.[81] The exchequer of the Emperor Aurangzeb reported an annual revenue of more than £100 million, or $450 million, making him one of the wealthiest monarchs in the world at the time.[82][83] The empire had an extensive road network, which was vital to the economic infrastructure, built by a public works department set up by the Mughals, linking towns and cities across the empire, making trade easier to conduct.[84]
The Mughals adopted and standardised the rupee (rupiya, or silver) and dam (copper) currencies introduced by Sur Emperor Sher Shah Suri during his brief rule.[85][86] The Mughals minted coins with high purity, never dropping below 96%, and without debasement until the 1720s.[87]
A major sector of the Mughal economy was agriculture.[84] A variety of crops were grown, including food crops such as wheat, rice, and barley, and non-food cash crops such as cotton, indigo and opium. By the mid-17th century, Indian cultivators begun to extensively grow imported from the Americas, maize and tobacco.[84] The Mughal administration emphasised agrarian reform, started by Sher Shah Suri, the work of which Akbar adopted and furthered with more reforms. The civil administration was organised in a hierarchical manner on the basis of merit, with promotions based on performance, exemplified by the common use of the seed drill among Indian peasants,[88] and built irrigation systems across the empire, which produced much higher crop yields and increased the net revenue base, leading to increased agricultural production.[84]
Manufacturing was also a significant contributor to the Mughal Economy. The Mughal empire produced about 25% of the world's industrial output up until the end of the 18th century.[81]Manufactured goods and cash crops from the Mughal Empire were sold throughout the world. Key industries included textiles, shipbuilding, and steel. Processed products included cotton textiles, yarns, thread, silk, jute products, metalware, and foods such as sugar, oils and butter[84] The Mughal Empire also took advantage of the demand of products from Mughal India in Europe, particularly cotton textiles, as well as goods such as spices, peppers, indigo, silks, and saltpeter (for use in munitions).[84]European fashion, for example, became increasingly dependent on Mughal Indian textiles and silks. From the late 17th century to the early 18th century, Mughal India accounted for 95% of British imports from Asia, and the Bengal Subah province alone accounted for 40% of Dutch imports from Asia.[89]
Indian cotton textiles were the most important manufactured goods in world trade in the 18th century, consumed across the world from the Americas to Japan.[90] By the early 18th century, Mughal Indian textiles were clothing people across the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East.[91]
The Dutch Empire ended up in control of various territories after the Dutch achieved independence from Spain in the late 16th century. The strength of their shipping industry and the expansion of trading routes between Europe and the Orient bolstered the strength of the overseas colonial empire which lasted from the 17th to the 20th century. The Dutch initially built up colonial possessions on the basis of indirect state capitalist corporate colonialism, as small European trading-companies often lacked the capital or the manpower for large-scale operations. The States General chartered larger organisations—the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch East India Company—in the early seventeenth century to enlarge the scale of trading operations in the West Indies and the Orient respectively. These trading operations eventually became one of the largest and most extensive maritime trading companies at the time, and once held a virtual monopoly on strategic European shipping-routes westward through the Southern Hemisphere around South America through the Strait of Magellan, and eastward around Africa, past the Cape of Good Hope.[92] The companies' domination of global commerce contributed greatly to a commercial revolution and a cultural flowering in the Netherlands of the 17th century, known as the Dutch Golden Age. During the Dutch Golden Age, Dutch trade, science and art were among the most acclaimed in Europe.[93] Dutch military power was at its height in the middle of the 17th century and in that era the Dutch navy was one of the biggest navies in the world.[94]
By the middle of the 17th century, the Dutch had overtaken Portugal as the dominant player in the spice and silk trade, and in 1652 founded a colony at Cape Town on the coast of South Africa, as a way-station for its ships on the route between Europe and Asia. After the first settlers spread out around the Company station, nomadic white livestock farmers, or Trekboers, moved more widely afield, leaving the richer, but limited, farming lands of the coast for the drier interior tableland. Between 1602 and 1796, many Europeans were sent to work in the Asia trade. The majority died of disease or made their way back to Europe, but some of them made the Indies their new home. Interaction between the Dutch and native population mainly took place in Sri Lanka and the modern Indonesian Islands.
Sweden emerged as a great European power under Axel Oxenstierna and King Gustavus Adolphus.[104] As a result of acquiring territories seized from Russia and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as its involvement in the Thirty Years' War, Sweden found itself transformed into the leading power of the Baltic Sea[105] and the leader of Protestantism. Although not a very populous country, Sweden has achieved the status of the dominant power in northern Europe due to its efficient administration, a near monopoly on copper production in Europe, a strong arms industry, and a robust and innovative army with capable leaders.[105] The mid-17th and early 18th centuries were Sweden's most successful years as a great power.[106]
During the Thirty Years' War, Sweden sought to conquer land from the Holy Roman Empire. After its defeat in the Battle of Nördlingen (1634), Sweden was left with only a couple of territories in present-day northern Germany. After France intervened on the same side as Sweden, the tide shifted in its favor. As the war continued, the civilian and military death toll grew, and when it was over, it led to severe depopulation in the German states. Although exact population estimates do not exist, historians estimate that the population of the Holy Roman Empire fell by one-third as a result of the war.[107] Sweden had seats in the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, and was able to interfere in its politics.[105] Sweden's involvement in the Thirty Years' War weakened Imperial authority and delayed the unification of German states, which occurred only in the 19th century.[104]
Sweden controlled most of the Baltic Sea, where its only notable rival in the 17th century remained Poland, therefore Sweden initiated several invasions of Poland in an effort to conquer Polish coastal regions as well,[105] however, except for the capture of central Livonia with Riga in the 1620s,[104] without lasting success.[64] Other major rivals of Sweden in the struggle for hegemony in Northern Europe were Denmark and Russia.[105] During the Northern War of 1655–1660, Sweden even made unsuccessful attempts to definitively end the existence of Denmark and Poland as sovereign entities.[64][105]
Sweden also had colonial possessions as a minor colonial Empire that existed from 1638 to 1663 and later from 1784 to 1878. Sweden founded overseas colonies, principally in the New World. New Sweden was founded in the valley of the Delaware River in 1638, and Sweden later laid claim to a number of Caribbean islands.[108] A string of Swedish forts and trading posts was constructed along the coast of West Africa as well, but these were not designed for Swedish settlers.
Sweden reached its largest territorial extent during the rule of Charles X (1622–1660) after the treaty of Roskilde in 1658. After half a century of expansive warfare, the Swedish economy had deteriorated. It would become the lifetime task of Charles' son, Charles XI (1655–1697), to rebuild the economy and refit the army. His legacy to his son, the coming ruler of Sweden Charles XII, was one of the finest arsenals in the world, with a large standing army and a great fleet. Sweden's largest threat at this time, Russia, had a larger army but was far behind in both equipment and training.[109] The Swedish army crushed the Russians at the Battle of Narva in 1700, one of the first battles of the Great Northern War. The campaign had a successful opening for Sweden, which came to occupy half of Poland and Charles laid claim to the Polish throne. But after a long march exposed by cossack raids, the Russian Tsar Peter the Great's scorched-earth techniques and the very cold Russian climate, the Swedes stood weakened with shattered confidence and enormously outnumbered by the Russian army at Poltava.[105][110] The decisive Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava (1709) marked the end of Sweden as a great power.[111]
The French empire with its colonies (dark blue) and occupied territories (light blue) in 1812
France kept its status through the modern era, as a dominant empire possessing many colonies in various locations around the world. The French colonial empire is the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 16th century to the late 1960s (some see the French control of places such as New Caledonia as a continuation of that colonial empire). The first French colonial empire reached its peak in 1680 at over 10,000,000 km2 (3,900,000 sq mi), which at the time, was the second largest in the world behind the Spanish Empire. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. At its height in the 1920s and 1930s, including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 13,500,000 km2 (5,200,000 sq mi) at the time, which represented 10% of the Earth's total land area.[112] The total area of the French colonial empire, with the first (mainly in the Americas and Asia) and second (mainly in Africa and Asia), combined, reached 24,000,000 km2 (9,300,000 sq mi), the second-largest ever overall.[113]
France began to establish colonies in North America, the Caribbean and India, following Spanish and Portuguese successes during the Age of Discovery, in rivalry with Britain for supremacy. A series of wars with Britain during the 18th and early 19th centuries, which France lost, ended its colonial ambitions on these continents, and with it what some historians term the "first" French colonial empire. In the 19th century, France established a new empire in Africa and South East Asia. Some of these colonies lasted beyond the Second World War, and were integrated into France proper as overseas territories.
The British Empire in the modern era was built primarily in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. It included colonies in Canada, the Caribbean, and India, and shortly thereafter began the settlement of Australia and New Zealand. Following France's 1815 defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain took possession of many more overseas territories in Africa and Asia, and established an informal empire of free trade in South America, Persia, and more.
At its height, the British Empire was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. In 1815–1914 the Pax Britannica was the most powerful unitary authority in history due to the Royal Navy's unprecedented naval predominance.[115]
During the 19th century, the United Kingdom was the first country in the world to industrialise and embrace free trade, giving birth to the Industrial Revolution. The rapid industrial growth after the conquests of the wealthy Mughal Bengal transformed Great Britain into the world's largest industrial and financial power, while the world's largest navy gave it undisputed control of the seas and international trade routes, an advantage which helped the British Empire, after a mid-century liberal reaction against empire-building, to grow faster than ever before. The Victorian empire colonised large parts of Africa, including such territories as South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Nigeria, and Ghana, most of Oceania, colonies in the Far East, such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, and took control over the whole Indian subcontinent, making it the largest empire in the world.[116]
The political and social changes and economic disruption in the United Kingdom and throughout the world caused by the First World War, followed only two decades later by the Second World War, caused the Empire to gradually break up as colonies were given independence. Much of the reason the Empire ceased was because many colonies by the mid-20th century were no longer as undeveloped as at the arrival of British control nor as dependent and social changes throughout the world during the first half of the 20th century gave rise to national identity. The British Government, reeling from the economic cost of two successive world wars and changing social attitudes towards being an empire, felt it could no longer afford to maintain it if the country were to recover economically, pay for the newly created welfare state, and fight the newly emerged Cold War with the Soviet Union.
The influence and power of the British Empire dropped dramatically after the Second World War, especially after the Partition of India in 1947 and the Suez Crisis in 1956. The Commonwealth of Nations is the successor to the Empire, where the United Kingdom is an equal member with all other states.
Russian Empire (green) as of 1866, at the time of the maximum territorial expansion of the empire[118]
The Russian Empire as a state, existed from 1721 until it was declared a republic in 1917. The Russian Empire was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest empires in world history, surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongolian empires: at one point in 1866, it stretched from Northern Europe across Asia and into North America.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea on the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east. With 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population of the world at the time, after Qing China and the British Empire. Like all empires it represented a large disparity in economic, ethnic, and religious positions. Its government, ruled by the Emperor, was one of the last absolute monarchies in Europe. Prior to the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 Russia was one of the five major Great Powers of Europe.[119]
After the death of the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, in 1924, Joseph Stalin eventually won a power struggle and led the country through a large-scale industrialization with a command economy and political repression. On 23 August 1939, after unsuccessful efforts to form an anti-fascist alliance with Western powers, the Soviets signed the non-aggression agreement with Nazi Germany. After the start of World War II, the formally neutral Soviets invaded and annexed territories of several Central and Eastern European states, including eastern Poland, the Baltic states, northeastern Romania and eastern Finland.
In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to further reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing economic stagnation. The Cold War ended during his tenure and in 1989, Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective Marxist–Leninist regimes. Strong nationalist and separatist movements broke out across the USSR. Gorbachev initiated a referendum—boycotted by the Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova—which resulted in the majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the Union as a renewed federation. In August 1991, a coup d'état was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a high-profile role in facing down the coup. The main result was the banning of the Communist Party. The republics led by Russia and Ukraine declared independence. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned. All the republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states. The Russian Federation (formerly the Russian SFSR) assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and is recognized as its continued legal personality in world affairs.
Before its dissolution, the USSR had maintained its status as a world superpower alongside the United States, for four decades after World War II. Sometimes also called "the Soviet Empire", it exercised its hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe and worldwide with military and economic strength, proxy conflicts and influence in developing countries and funding of scientific research, especially in space technology and weaponry.[124][125]
The United States has exercised and continues to exercise worldwide economic, cultural, and military influence.
Founded in 1776 by thirteen coastal colonies that declared their independence from Great Britain, the United States began its western expansion following the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of U.S. sovereignty in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The treaty bequeathed to the nascent republic all land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, and Americans began migrating there in large numbers at the end of the 18th Century, resulting in the displacement of Native American cultures, often through native peoples' forcible deportation and violent wars of eviction. These efforts at expansion were greatly strengthened by the 1787 Constitutional Convention, which resulted in the ratification of the United States Constitution and transformed the U.S. from a loose confederation of semi-autonomous states into a federal entity with a strong national core. In 1803, the United States acquired Louisiana from France, doubling the country's size and extending its borders to the Rocky Mountains.
American power and population grew rapidly, so that by 1823 President James Monroe felt confident enough to issue his Monroe Doctrine, which warned European powers against further seizure of land in North America. This was the beginning of the U.S.'s emergence as a regional power in North America. That process was confirmed in the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848, in which the United States, invaded Mexico to protect Texas and acquire California. The war included the deployment of U.S. forces into Mexico, the taking of Veracruz by sea, and the occupation of Mexico City by American troops (which finally resulted in Mexico's defeat). In the peace treaty (Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo) that followed, the U.S. annexed the northern half of Mexico, comprising what is now the Southwestern United States.[126] During the course of the war, the United States also negotiated by treaty the acquisition of the Oregon Territory's southern half from Great Britain. In 1867, William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire. President Ulysses Grant was defeated by Congress in his scheme to annex the Dominican Republic. The United States defeated Spain in the Spanish–American War in 1898, and gained the possessions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The independent republic of Hawaii was annexed in 1898. The United States became a major victoriouspower in both World Wars, and became a major economic power after World War I tired out the European powers.[127]
The Empire of Japan in 1942. The empire until 1905 is in dark green, acquisitions until 1930 are in lighter green, and occupied/conceded territories are in the lightest green.
The Empire of Japan, officially the Empire of Great Japan or simply Great Japan (Dai Nippon), was an empire that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of Japan on 3 May 1947.
Imperial Japan's rapid industrialization and militarization under the slogan Fukoku kyōhei (富国強兵, "Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Army") led to its emergence as a great power, eventually culminating in its shock victory in the Russo-Japanese War, the first time an Asian country had soundly defeated a relatively modern European great power. This resulted in a further rise of nationalism in Japan, and its recognition by other nations as a rising power.[128]
In August 1914, former President of the United States William Howard Taft listed Japan and his country as the only two great powers uninvolved in World War I.[129] After its military victories against China (First Sino-Japanese War, and the later invasion of Manchuria) and Russia, the Japanese Empire was considered to be one of the major powers worldwide.
Its eventual membership in the Axis alliance, and the conquest of a large part of the Asia-Pacific region, allowed Japan to control much-needed resources for its further development. The maximum extent of the empire was gained during the Second World War, when Japan conquered many Asian and Pacific countries (see Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere). At the height of its power in 1942, the Japanese Empire ruled over a geographic area spanning 7,400,000 km2 (2,857,200 sq mi) to 8,508,100 km2 (3,285,000 sq mi).[130] This made it the 12th or 11th largest empire in history.[131]
After suffering many defeats and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allies on 2 September 1945. A period of occupation by the Allies followed the surrender, and a new constitution was created with American involvement. The constitution came into force on 3 May 1947, officially dissolving the Empire. American occupation and reconstruction of the country continued well into the 1950s, eventually forming the current nation-state whose title is simply that ("the nation of Japan" Nippon-koku) or just "Japan".
Every territory ever controlled by the Italian Empire at some point in time during World War II. Kingdom of Italy (dark green), Italian colonial empire (light green) and Italian occupied territories (grey).
Modern Italy was unified, from a collection of small states, over several decades during the modern era. The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861, and the Risorgimento was only truly completed by 1871, with the capture of Rome and its designation as the kingdom's capital city.
The Italian colonial empire was created after Italy joined other European powers in establishing colonies overseas during the "scramble for Africa". By this time, France, Spain, Portugal, Britain, and the Netherlands, had already carved out large empires over several hundred years. One of the last remaining areas open to colonisation was on the African continent.[132][133]
By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Italy had annexed Eritrea and Somalia, and had wrested control of portions of the Ottoman Empire, including Libya, though it was defeated in its attempt to conquer Ethiopia. The Fascist regime under Italian dictator Benito Mussolini which came to power in 1922 sought to increase the size of the empire further. Ethiopia was successfully taken, four decades after the previous failure, and Italy's European borders were expanded. An official "Italian Empire" was proclaimed on 9 May 1936 following the conquest of Ethiopia.[134] Before the outbreak of World War II, Italy boasted the fifth-largest economy in Europe and the seventh in the world.[135]
Italy sided with Nazi Germany during World War II, but Britain soon captured Italian overseas colonies. By the time Italy itself was invaded in 1943, its empire had ceased to exist. On 8 September 1943 the Fascist regime of Mussolini collapsed, and a civil war broke out between the Italian Social Republic, supported by Axis forces, and the Italian Resistance Movement, supported by Allied forces.
The Kingdom of Prussia attained its greatest importance in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it conquered various territories previously held by Sweden,[136][137] Austria, Poland, France, Denmark, and various minor German principalities.[138] It became a European great power under the reign of Frederick II of Prussia (1740–1786).[138] It dominated Northern Germany politically, economically, and in terms of population, and played a key role in the unification of Germany in 1871.
After 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals, and railways. In 1871, Germany had a population of 41 million people; by 1913, this had increased to 68 million. A heavily rural collection of states in 1815, the now united Germany became predominantly urban.[139] The success of German industrialization manifested itself in two ways since the early 20th century: The German factories were larger and more modern than their British and French counterparts.[140] During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire became the industrial, technological, and scientific giant of Europe, and by 1913, Germany was the largest economy in Continental Europe and the third-largest in the world.[141] Germany built up the longest railway network of Europe, the world's strongest army,[142] and a fast-growing industrial base.[143] Starting very small in 1871, in a few decades, the navy became second only to Britain's Royal Navy, as Germany planned to match it. After the removal of Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II in 1890, the empire embarked on Weltpolitik – a bellicose new course that ultimately contributed to the outbreak of World War I.
Wilhelm II wanted Germany to have her "place in the sun", like Britain, which he constantly wished to emulate or rival.[144] With German traders and merchants already active worldwide, he encouraged colonial efforts in Africa and the Pacific ("new imperialism"), causing the German Empire to vie with other European powers for remaining "unclaimed" territories. With the encouragement or at least the acquiescence of Britain, which at this stage saw Germany as a counterweight to her old rival France, Germany acquired German Southwest Africa (modern Namibia), German Kamerun (modern Cameroon), Togoland (modern Togo) and German East Africa (modern Rwanda, Burundi, and the mainland part of current Tanzania). Islands were gained in the Pacific through purchase and treaties and also a 99-year lease for the territory of Kiautschou in northeast China. But of these German colonies, only Togoland and German Samoa (after 1908) became self-sufficient and profitable; all others required subsidies from the Berlin treasury for building infrastructure, school systems, hospitals and other institutions.
German-occupied territories during World War II in 1942. Germany (Reich) is shown in darkest green.
Germany rose back to be a great power in 1933, when Nazi Germany replaced the Weimar Republic as the new government of Germany. The most pressing economic matter the Nazis initially faced was the 30 per cent national unemployment rate.[148] Economist Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics, created a scheme for deficit financing in May 1933. Capital projects were paid for with the issuance of promissory notes called Mefo bills. When the notes were presented for payment, the Reichsbank printed money. Hitler and his economic team expected that the upcoming territorial expansion would provide the means of repaying the soaring national debt.[149] Schacht's administration achieved a rapid decline in the unemployment rate, the largest of any country during the Great Depression.[148] Economic recovery was uneven, with reduced hours of work and erratic availability of necessities, leading to disenchantment with the regime as early as 1934.[150]
In October 1933, the Junkers Aircraft Works was expropriated. In concert with other aircraft manufacturers and under the direction of Aviation Minister Göring, production was ramped up. From a workforce of 3,200 people producing 100 units per year in 1932, the industry grew to employ a quarter of a million workers manufacturing over 10,000 technically advanced aircraft annually less than ten years later.[151]
An elaborate bureaucracy was created to regulate imports of raw materials and finished goods with the intention of eliminating foreign competition in the German marketplace and improving the nation's balance of payments. The Nazis encouraged the development of synthetic replacements for materials such as oil and textiles.[152] As the market was experiencing a glut and prices for petroleum were low, in 1933 the Nazi government made a profit-sharing agreement with IG Farben, guaranteeing them a 5 per cent return on capital invested in their synthetic oil plant at Leuna. Any profits in excess of that amount would be turned over to the Reich. By 1936, Farben regretted making the deal, as excess profits were by then being generated.[153] In another attempt to secure an adequate wartime supply of petroleum, Germany intimidated Romania into signing a trade agreement in March 1939.[154]
Major public works projects financed with deficit spending included the construction of a network of Autobahnen and providing funding for programmes initiated by the previous government for housing and agricultural improvements.[155] To stimulate the construction industry, credit was offered to private businesses and subsidies were made available for home purchases and repairs.[156] On the condition that the wife would leave the workforce, a loan of up to 1,000 Reichsmarks could be accessed by young couples of Aryan descent who intended to marry, and the amount that had to be repaid was reduced by 25 per cent for each child born.[157] The caveat that the woman had to remain unemployed outside the home was dropped by 1937 due to a shortage of skilled labourers.[158]
Envisioning widespread car ownership as part of the new Germany, Hitler arranged for designer Ferdinand Porsche to draw up plans for the KdF-wagen (Strength Through Joy car), intended to be an automobile that everyone could afford. A prototype was displayed at the International Motor Show in Berlin on 17 February 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, the factory was converted to produce military vehicles. None were sold until after the war, when the vehicle was renamed the Volkswagen (people's car).[159]
Six million people were unemployed when the Nazis took power in 1933 and by 1937 there were fewer than a million.[160] This was in part due to the removal of women from the workforce.[161] Real wages dropped by 25 per cent between 1933 and 1938.[148] After the dissolution of the trade unions in May 1933, their funds were seized and their leadership arrested,[162] including those who attempted to co-operate with the Nazis.[163] A new organisation, the German Labour Front, was created and placed under Nazi Party functionary Robert Ley.[162] The average work week was 43 hours in 1933; by 1939 this increased to 47 hours.[164]
By early 1934, the focus shifted towards rearmament. By 1935, military expenditures accounted for 73 per cent of the government's purchases of goods and services.[165] On 18 October 1936, Hitler named Göring as Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, intended to speed up rearmament.[166] In addition to calling for the rapid construction of steel mills, synthetic rubber plants, and other factories, Göring instituted wage and price controls and restricted the issuance of stock dividends.[148] Large expenditures were made on rearmament in spite of growing deficits.[167] Plans unveiled in late 1938 for massive increases to the navy and air force were impossible to fulfil, as Germany lacked the finances and material resources to build the planned units, as well as the necessary fuel required to keep them running.[168] With the introduction of compulsory military service in 1935, the Reichswehr, which had been limited to 100,000 by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, expanded to 750,000 on active service at the start of World War II, with a million more in the reserve.[169] By January 1939, unemployment was down to 301,800 and it dropped to only 77,500 by September.[170]
After triumphing in economic success, the Nazis started a hostile foreign expansion policy. They first sent troops to occupy the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, then annexed Austria and Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938. In 1939, they further annexed the Czech part of Czechoslovakia and founded the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and annexed the Lithuanian port city of Klaipėda. The Slovak part of Czechoslovakia declared independence under German support and the Slovak Republic was established.
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, but was forced to retreat following a number of Allied victories. This marks the start of the collapse of the German Reich. On 8 May 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies and the regime was dissolved shortly thereafter.
The Habsburg Empire became one of the key powers in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, with a sphere of influence stretching over Central Europe, Germany, and Italy. During the second half of the 19th century, the Habsburgs could not prevent the unification of Italy and Germany. Eventually, the complex internal power struggle resulted in the establishment of a so-called dual monarchy between Austria and Hungary. Austria-Hungary maintained a strong economy, and its vast population gave it the industry and manpower to compete against other European powers.[171]
France's economy is highly diversified; services represent two-thirds of both the workforce and GDP,[198] while the industrial sector accounts for a fifth of GDP and a similar proportion of employment. France is the third-biggest manufacturing country in Europe, behind Germany and Italy, and ranks eighth in the world by share of global manufacturing output, at 1.9 percent.[199] Less than 2 percent of GDP is generated by the primary sector, namely agriculture;[200] however, France's agricultural sector is among the largest in value and leads the EU in terms of overall production.[201]
In 2018, France was the fifth-largest trading nation in the world and the second-largest in Europe, with the value of exports representing over a fifth of GDP.[202] Its membership in the Eurozone and the broader European Single Market facilitate access to capital, goods, services, and skilled labour.[203] Despite protectionist policies over certain industries, particularly in agriculture, France has generally played a leading role in fostering free trade and commercial integration in Europe in order to enhance its economy.[204][205] In 2019, it ranked first in Europe and 13th in the world in foreign direct investment, with European countries and the United States being leading sources.[206] Similarly, France is ranked 6th on the FDI Confidence Index.[207] The Paris region has the highest concentration of multinational firms in Europe.[208]
With 27 companies that are part of the world's biggest 500 companies, France was in 2024 the second-most represented European country in the 2024 Fortune Global 500, behind Germany (29 companies) and ahead of the UK (22).[209] In addition, some companies such as Airbus, while not listed as French, have their operational headquarters set in France. As of December 2024, France was also the country that weighed the most on the Eurozone's EURO STOXX 50 (representing 41.8% of all total assets), ahead of Germany (26.5%), controlling six of the top ten companies in the list.[210]
Several French corporations rank amongst the largest in their industries[211] such as AXA in insurance, the world's second-largest insurance company by total nonbanking assets in 2020[212][213] and Air France in air transportation.[214] Luxury and consumer good are particularly relevant, with L'Oreal being the world's largest cosmetic company while LVMH and Kering are the world's two largest luxury product companies. In energy and utilities, GDF-Suez and EDF are amongst the largest energy companies in the world, and Areva, now Framatome, is a large nuclear-energy company; Veolia Environnement is the world's largest environmental services and water management company; Vinci SA, Bouygues and Eiffage are large construction companies, with Vinci having the highest market capitalization of all construction companies;[215]Michelin ranks in the top 3 tire manufacturers; JCDecaux is the world's largest outdoor advertising corporation; BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Société Générale rank amongst the largest in the world by assets; Capgemini and Atos are among the largest technology consulting companies; Carrefour is the world's second-largest retail group in terms of revenue; Total is the world's fourth-largest private oil company; Danone is the world's fifth-largest food company and the world's largest supplier of mineral water; Sanofi is the world's fifth-largest pharmaceutical company; Publicis is the world's third-largest advertising company; Groupe PSA, now Stellantis, is the world's 4th and Europe's second-largest automaker; Accor is the leading European hotel group; Alstom is one of the world's leading conglomerates in rail transport.
Under the doctrine of Dirigisme, the government historically played a major role in the economy; policies such as indicative planning and nationalisation are credited for contributing to three decades of unprecedented postwar economic growth known as Trente Glorieuses.[216] Policies aimed at promoting economic dynamism and privatisation have improved France's economic standing globally: it is among the world's 10 most innovative countries in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index,[217] and the 15th most competitive, according to the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report (up two places from 2018).[218]
According to the IMF, France ranks 22nd in GDP per capita, with roughly $48,000 per inhabitant.[224] It placed 28th in the Human Development Index, indicating very high and rising human development.[225]Public corruption is among the lowest in the world, with France consistently ranking among the 30 least corrupt countries since the Corruption Perceptions Index began in 2012; it placed 21st in 2021, 2022 and 2023.[226] France is Europe's second-largest spender in research and development, at over 2 percent of GDP; globally, it ranks 12th.[227]
France is also the second largest contributor to the European Space Agency after Germany,[228] and is its de facto leader: France maintains and shares a fully-functioning space program with the European Union, the third-oldest in the world; the CNES, the French space agency, controls the Guiana Space Center, from where the ESA launches its missions. Kourou counts among the launch centers with the highest rates of successful launches in the world, with Ariane 5 achieving a 95.5% success rate over its history.[229]
Paris is a leading global city, has the largest GDP of any city and Europe, and one of the largest in the world.[230] It ranks as the first city in Europe (and 3rd worldwide) by the number of companies classified in Fortune's Fortune Global 500.[231]Paris produced US$984 billion at market exchange rates in 2021[232] while the economy of the Paris metropolitan area — the largest in Europe with London — generates around $1.0 trillion.[232] Paris has been ranked as the 2nd most attractive global city in the world in 2019 by KPMG.[233]La Défense, Paris's Central Business District, was ranked by Ernst & Young in 2017 as the leading business district in continental Europe, and fourth in the world.[234] The other major economic centres of the country include Lyon, Toulouse (centre of the European aerospace industry), Marseille and Lille.
France also maintains a strong military presence in the world, with one of the highest military expenditures in the world, overseas bases in Germany, Africa and the Middle East, and troops around the world in its various overseas territories. The French military routinely conducts military operations in foreign countries, such as operation Barkhane, Chammal and Boali, with anti-terror and stabilization operations being the most frequent. France is also at the helm of the European Union's defence program, having pushed extensively for PESCO and, more generally, for French and European independence from outside influences.[235][236]
France remains the oldest-standing great power, and while its influence has waned, notably in Africa, it remains a source of soft power, a diplomatic powerhouse[237] with a strong economy and military allowing it to exert influence in all regions of the world, in a much more friendly manner compared to its colonial and belligerent past – for instance, with de Gaulle's buildup of relations with the PRC, or by recently building close relations with India, or even by heading a new, comprehensive treaty on climate change.
Since the end of the second World War, the United Kingdom has been described as a "super power in decline".[252] Nonetheless, a 2019 study in geopolitical capability (carried out by the UK-based Henry Jackson Society) found the United Kingdom to be the most powerful nation in Europe and the second most powerful in the world behind the United States.[253] Several other studies point to the United Kingdom as one of the top ten countries country in soft power,[254] diplomatic missions,[237] and economy.[255]
In the aftermath of the second World War and the Suez crisis, the United Kingdom substantially declined as a world power. Towards the end of the 20th century, and especially under the Conservative-led government of Margaret Thatcher and the Labour-led government of Tony Blair, the United Kingdom underwent a period of strong economic growth and cultural reach, especially in the United States; the relationship between the UK and the US is generally considered to be among the strongest international relationships. A notable break in this tradition occurred under the administration of Barack Obama who sought to align with Germany as a principal European ally.[256][257] Although a highly controversial figure in the United Kingdom, President Donald Trump described the UK-US relationship as "just so important" and the administration of President Joe Biden has restored traditional relations, reiterating that "the United States has no closer ally than the United Kingdom".[258]
The UK has been described as a "cultural superpower",[259][260] and London, one of the highest-ranking global cities, has been described as a world cultural capital[261][262] and the center of European trade, at least until its withdrawal from the European Union.[263] With 22 companies that are part of the world's biggest 500 companies, the UK was in 2024 the third-most represented European country in the Fortune Global 500 index.
The UK has several military bases around the world and in the territories it controls, with the island of Diego Garcia being used for major operations during the War on Terror. After leaving the European Union, the UK formed a new strategic partnership with Australia and the United States named AUKUS. It remains one of the driving forces of NATO, and committed significant international aid during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The United Kingdom, while no longer the superpower it used to be, remains a country with a diversified and powerful economy, with its culture, language and diplomatic ability reaching and influencing all regions of the world. With a strong military and a nuclear arsenal, the UK remains a great power.
In 2014, Stephen Kinzer of The Boston Globe compared Russia's actions with its own neighbouring territories, to those of "any other superpower", taking Ukraine and Crimea as examples.[274] A mixed opinion has been offered by Matthew Fleischer of the Los Angeles Times: he contends that Russia will not become a superpower unless climate change eats away at the permafrost that covers, as of March 2014, two-thirds of the country's landmass. The absence of this permafrost would reveal immense stores of oil, natural gas, and precious minerals, as well as potential farmland, which would allow Russia to "become the world's bread basket—and control the planet's food supply".[275]
Since the creation of the Wagner Group in 2014, Russia has used it to intervene in various conflicts (while maintaining plausible deniability) in Africa aside from being involved in Libya, Syria, and even Venezuela by projecting power far away from the borders of the former Soviet Union.[281][282][283]
However, several analysts commented on the fact that Russia showed signs of an aging and shrinking population. Fred Weir said that this severely constricts and limits Russia's potential to re-emerge as a central world power.[284] In 2011, British historian and professor Niall Ferguson also highlighted the negative effects of Russia's declining population, and suggested that Russia is on its way to "global irrelevance".[285] Russia has, however, shown a slight population growth since the late 2000s, partly due to immigration and slowly rising birth rates.[286]
Nathan Smith of the National Business Review has said that despite Russia having potential, it did not win the new "Cold War" in the 1980s, and thus makes superpower status inaccurate.[287]Dmitry Medvedev predicted that if the Russian elite is not consolidated, Russia will disappear as a single state.[288]Vladimir Putin said the moment the Caucasus leaves Russia, other territorial regions would follow.[289]
After Russia's poor performance in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, some analysts questioned Russia's military and power projection capabilities.[290][291][292][293][294] After two years of war, the Russian army did make progress in Ukraine, but the country's economy and resources have been strained. Russia's ally Syria was overrun by rebels, and Bashar al-Assad was granted asylum in Russia.[295] Nevertheless, Russia maintains the world's largest nuclear arsenal, a large military force, and can project influence around the world, spreading propaganda online with companies such as the Internet Research Agency. As political scientist Daniel W. Drezner puts it in a Washington Post article, Russia is still a great power. "But it is not the great power everyone thought it was [before the war]".
The United States was the foremost of the world's two superpowers during the Cold War. After the Cold War, the most common belief held that only the United States fulfilled the criteria to be considered a superpower.[175][296] Regardless of the debate on its status as a superpower, the United States is considered a great power.[172][173][174][175][176][178][179]
The economic strength of the United States is a major driving force of its power. The United States is a highly developed country, and its economy accounts for approximately more than a quarter of global GDP, the world's largest by country. By value, the United States is the world's largest importer and second-largest exporter. Although it accounts for just over 4.2% of the world's total population, the U.S. holds over 30% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share held by any country. The US has large resources of minerals, energy resources, metals, and timber, a large and modernized farming industry and a large industrial base. The United States dollar is the dominant world reserve currency. US systems were rooted in capitalist economic theory based on supply and demand, that is, production determined by customers' demands. America was allied with the G7 major economies. US economic policy prescriptions were the "standard" reform packages promoted for crisis-wrackeddeveloping countries by Washington, DC–based international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, as well as the US Treasury Department.[299] The US also provides aid to developing countries through USAID.
The cultural impact of the US, often known as Americanization, is seen in the influence on other countries of US music, TV, films, art, and fashion, as well as the desire for freedom of speech and other guaranteed rights its residents enjoy. Various styles of music born in the US have become globally influential.[302]
In 2011, the U.S. had 10 major strengths according to Chinese scholar Peng Yuan, the director of the Institute of American Studies of the China Institutes for Contemporary International Studies. He noted that the United States had a sizable population (300 million), enjoys its position as a two-ocean power, and has abundant natural resources. Besides, he believed that the United States' military muscle, high technology, fair education system, cultural power, cyber power, allies (as the United States has more allies than any other state), global force projection, intelligence capabilities (as demonstrated by the killing of Osama bin Laden), intellectual think tanks and research institutes, and strategic power lead the United States into the superpower status it now enjoys. However, he noted that the recent breakdown of bipartisanship in the US, economic slowdown, intractable deficits and rising debt, societal polarization, and the weakening of US institutional power since the US can no longer dominate global institutions, are the current flaws of the United States' power.[304]
Regardless of its recent issues, the economic, technological and military dominance of the United States keep the country as the world's foremost great power for the time being.
Japan was ranked as the world's fourth most-powerful military in 2015.[321] The military capabilities of the Japan Self-Defense Forces are held back by the pacifist 1947 constitution. However, there is a gradual push for a constitutional amendment. On 18 September 2015, the National Diet enacted the 2015 Japanese military legislation, a series of laws that allow Japan's Self-Defense Forces to collective self-defense of allies in combat for the first time under its constitution.[322] In May 2017, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe set a 2020 deadline for revising Article 9, which would legitimize the JSDF in the Constitution.[323] However, Article 9 has not yet been revised as of 2024, and Japan's military forces are still only meant for its own defense.
Japan is not the military giant it once was, and its new constitution restrains its power projection to having a single overseas military base, in Djibouti. However, its vast economical strength, alliances, and cultural influence over the world still make it one of the world's great powers.
Italy's great power strength includes a vast advanced economy,[324][325] the second-strongest manufacturing industry in Europe,[326] a large luxury goods market,[327] a large national budget and the third largest gold reserve in the world. It has one of the largest SDRs and voting power in the IMF.[328] The country is a cultural superpower[329] and it has close ties with the rest of the Catholic world as the home of the Pope. Italy is a key player in maintaining international security, especially in the wider Mediterranean region,[note 1] by performing air policing duties for its allies and commanding multinational forces in foreign countries.[330] The country has therefore developed considerable military capabilities by building two aircraft carriers and establishing some overseas military bases. The country is home to two nuclear bases and, as part of the NATO nuclear sharing program, therefore has a retaliatory nuclear capacity despite nominally being a non-nuclear state. According to the former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, Italy's plans of nuclear retaliation during the Cold War consisted of targeting nuclear weapons in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in case the Soviet Union waged nuclear war against NATO.[331] He acknowledged the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Italy, and speculated about the possible presence of British and French nuclear weapons.[332] Italy secretly developed its own nuclear weapons program, and one in collaboration with France and Germany, but abandoned such projects when it joined the nuclear sharing program.[333][334] The country has developed the ABMPAAMS system.[335] It has developed several space-launch vehicles, such as Alfa and more recently Vega. In more recent years, under the auspices of European space agency, it has demonstrated the reentry and landing of a spacecraft, the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle. Italy is home to one of two ground operations centres of the Galileo global satellite navigation system.
Countries which signed cooperation documents related to the Belt and Road Initiative, which is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 150 countries and international organizations
On a foreign exchange rate basis, some estimates in 2020 and early 2021 said that China could overtake the U.S. in 2028,[360] or 2026 if the Chinese currency further strengthened.[361] As of July 2021, Bloomberg L.P. analysts estimated that China may either overtake the U.S. to become the world's biggest economy in the 2030s or never be able to reach such a goal.[362]
The nation receives continual coverage in the popular press of its emerging superpower status,[363][364][365][366][367][368] and has been identified as a rising or emerging economic growth and military superpower by academics and other experts. The "rise of China" has been named the top news story of the 21st century by the Global Language Monitor, as measured by the number of appearances in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet and blogosphere, and in social media.[369][370][371][372][373] The term "Second Superpower" has been applied by scholars to the possibility that the People's Republic of China could emerge with global power and influence on par with the United States.[374] The potential for the two countries to form stronger relations to address global issues is sometimes referred to as the Group of Two.
Barry Buzan asserted in 2004 that "China certainly presents the most promising all-round profile" of a potential superpower. Buzan claimed that "China is currently the most fashionable potential superpower and the one whose degree of alienation from the dominant international society makes it the most obvious political challenger." However, he noted this challenge is constrained by the major challenges of development and by the fact that its rise could trigger a counter-coalition of states in Asia.[375]
Parag Khanna stated in 2008 that by making massive trade and investment deals with Latin America and Africa, China had established its presence as a superpower along with the European Union and the United States. China's rise is demonstrated by its rising share of trade in its gross domestic product. He believed that China's "consultative style" had allowed it to develop political and economic ties with many countries, including those viewed as rogue states by the United States. He stated that the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation founded with Russia and the Central Asian countries may eventually be the "NATO of the East".[376]
Historian Timothy Garton Ash argued in 2011 that the International Monetary Fund predicting that China's GDP (purchasing power parity adjusted) would overtake that of the United States in 2016 – which it did in 2013 – and that a power shift to a world with several superpowers was happening in the early 21st century. However, China is still lacking in soft power and power projection abilities and has a low GDP per capita. The article also stated that the Pew Research Center in a 2009 survey found that people in 15 out of 22 countries believed that China had already overtaken or would overtake the US as the world's leading superpower.[377]
In an interview given in 2011, Singapore's first premier, Lee Kuan Yew, stated that while China supplanting the United States is not a foregone conclusion, Chinese leaders are nonetheless serious about displacing the United States as the most powerful country in Asia. "They have transformed a poor society by an economic miracle to become now the second-largest economy in the world. How could they not aspire to be number 1 in Asia, and in time the world?"[378] The Chinese strategy, Lee maintains, will revolve around their "huge and increasingly highly skilled and educated workers to out-sell and out-build all others".[379] Nevertheless, relations with the United States, at least in the medium term, will not take a turn for the worse because China will "avoid any action that will sour up relations with the U.S. To challenge a stronger and technologically superior power like the U.S. will abort their 'peaceful rise.'"[379] Though Lee believes China is genuinely interested in growing within the global framework the United States has created, it is biding its time until it becomes strong enough to successfully redefine the prevailing political and economic order.[380]
China is thought to be on the course to becoming the world's largest economy and is making rapid progress in many areas. The United States is seen as a declining superpower, as indicated by factors such as poor economic recovery, financial disorder, high deficits, increasing political polarization, and overregulation forcing jobs overseas in China.[381][382][383] However, after the COVID-19 pandemic, China's economic growth has greatly stalled, and while the country is still progressing, its rapid rise has been considerably slowed.[384][385][386]
Some consensus has concluded that China has reached the qualifications of superpower status, citing China's growing political clout and leadership in certain economic sectors. Although China's military projection is still premature and untested, the perceived humiliation of US leadership in failing to prevent its closest allies from joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,[387] along with the Belt and Road Initiative and China's role in the worldwide groundings of the Boeing 737 MAX,[388] was seen as a paradigm shift or an inflection point to the unipolar world order that dominated post-Cold War international relations. University Professor Øystein Tunsjø argues that competition between China and the USA will increase, leading to the gap between them decreasing, while the gap between the two countries and the rest of the top ten largest economies will widen.[389] Additionally, economics correspondent, Peter S. Goodman and Beijing Bureau Chief of China, Jane Perlez further stated that China is using a combination of its economic might and growing military advancements to pressure, coerce and change the current world order to accommodate China's interests at the expense of the United States and its allies.[390]
Diplomatically, China has seen some success in Africa, becoming the largest trading partner of the continent,[391] and has made some overtures towards Europe. However, the country's authoritarian rule and controversies such as with the Uyghurs have soured relations with the major European powers.
The 2019 Chinese Defense White Paper highlights the growing strategic competition between China and the United States. According to Anthony H. Cordesman, although the paper flags both China and the US as competing superpowers, it was far more moderate in its treatment of the US in contrast to the United States' view on Chinese military developments. Cordesman states that the paper was a warning that will shape Sino-American relations as China becomes stronger than Russia in virtually every aspect other than its nuclear arsenal.[392]
On 19 August 2019, the United States Studies Centre published a report, suggesting that Washington no longer enjoys primacy in the Indo-Pacific. It stresses that the War on Terror has greatly distracted the US response to China's role in the Pacific; that US military force in the region has greatly atrophied whereas Beijing only grew stronger and more capable since the September 11 attacks, to the point that China could now actively challenge the United States over the Indo-Pacific.[393] China's challenging the United States for global predominance constitutes the core issue in the debate over the American decline.[394][395][396]
China's emergence as a global economic power is tied to its large working population.[397] However, the population in China is aging faster than almost any other country in history.[397][398] Current demographic trends could hinder economic growth, create challenging social problems, and limit China's capabilities to act as a new global hegemon.[397][399][400][401] China's primarily debt-driven economic growth also creates concerns for substantial credit default risks and a potential financial crisis.
Germany's social market economy has a highly skilled labour force, a low level of corruption, and a high level of innovation.[403][404][405] Its GDP per capita measured in purchasing power standards amounts to 121% of the EU27 average (100%).[406] The service sector contributes approximately 69% of the total GDP, industry 31%, and agriculture 1% as of 2017[update].[403] Its unemployment rate, published by Eurostat, amounts to 3.2% as of January 2020[update], which is the fourth-lowest in the EU.[407]
While recent years have seen German overtures towards Russia labeled a mistake,[426] and the German economy has been struggling, having the lowest GDP growth among the G7 during recent years,[427][428] Germany remains one of the largest and most advanced economies, with a strong, slowly recovering military,[429] and is still considered a great power.
Some nations, while not fitting the criteria to be considered or recognized as a great power yet, are emerging, with a fast-growing economy, as major driving forces in the modern world. Examples of such powers include India, or Brazil.[430][431][432]
^The concept of Mediterraneo Allargato (Enlarged Mediterranean) includes the Horn of Africa, the Balkans and the MENA region
References
^Webster, Charles K, Sir (ed), British Diplomacy 1813–1815: Selected Documents Dealing with the Reconciliation of Europe, G Bell (1931), p307.
^Toje, A. (2010). The European Union as a small power: After the post-Cold War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
^Harrison, T., & J. Paul Getty Museum. (2009). The great empires of the ancient world. Los Angeles, Calif: J. Paul Getty Museum.
^Yonge, C. M. (1882). A pictorial history of the world's great nations: From the earliest dates to the present time. New York: S. Hess.
^In Powell, T. (1888). Illustrated home book of the world's great nations: Being a geographical, historical and pictorial encyclopedia. Chicago: People's Pub. Co.
^Edward Sylvester Ellis, Charles F. Horne (1906). The story of the greatest nations: from the dawn of history to the twentieth century : a comprehensive history founded upon the leading authorities, including a complete chronology of the world and a pronouncing vocabulary of each nation, Volume 1. F. R. Niglutsch.
^Jones, J. A. P.; Jones, J. A. P., eds. (1997). Europe, 1500–1600. Challenging history / [general ed.: J. A. P. Jones] (1. publ ed.). Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Nelson. ISBN978-0-17-435064-4.
^Fumaroli, Marc; Howard, Richard (2010). When the world spoke French. New York review books classics. New York: New York Review Books. ISBN978-1-59017-375-6.
^Montagnon, Pierre (2010). Dictionnaire de la colonisation française. Paris: Pygmalion. ISBN978-2-7564-0265-9.
^Lyons, Martyn (1994). Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution. European Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN978-1-349-23436-3.
^Shovlin, John (2021). Trading with the enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-century quest for a peaceful world order. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-25356-6.
^Hamilton, C. I. (1993). Anglo-French naval rivalry, 1840-1870. Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-820261-5.
^Hamilton, Richard F.; Herwig, Holger H. (24 February 2003). "Chapter 1: World Wars: Definition and Causes". In Richard F. Hamilton; Holger H. Herwig (eds.). The Origins of World War I. Cambridge University Press. pp. 4–9. ISBN978-1-107-39386-8. Archived from the original on 21 January 2022. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
^Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923.
^H. Inaicik "The rise of the Ottoman Empire" in P.M. Holt, A.K. S. Lambstone, and B. Lewis (eds), The Cambridge History of Islam (2005).(Cambridge University). pages 295–200
^Leitsch, Walter (July 1983). "1683: The Siege of Vienna". History Today. 33 (7). Archived from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
^* Alan Palmer, The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire. (1992)
^Vianna, Hélio; Donato, Hernâni (1994). História do Brasil (15a. ed. rev. e atualizada até o governo de Fernando Collor ed.). São Paulo, SP: Melhoramentos. ISBN978-85-06-01999-3.
^Kamen, Henry (2004). Empire: how Spain became a world power, 1492–1763. New York: Perennial. ISBN978-0-06-093264-0.
^Nolan, Cathal J. (2008). Wars of the Age of Louis XIV, 1650–1715: An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization (1st ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN978-0-313-35920-0.
^Grant, R. G. (2017). 1001 Battles That Changed the Course of History. Chartwell. p. 214. ISBN978-0-7858-3553-0.
^ abcKort, Michael (2001). The Handbook of the New Eastern Europe. Brookfield, Connecticut. pp. 39–40.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Brand, Hanno (2005). Trade, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange: Continuity and change in the North Sea area and the Baltic c. 1350–1750. Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren. p. 17. ISBN90-6550-881-3.
^Małowist, Marian (2010). Western Europe, Eastern Europe and World Development, 13th–18th Centuries. Leiden/Boston: Brill. pp. 115–116. ISBN978-90-04-17917-2.
^Koyama, Satoshi (2007). "The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a Political Space: Its Unity and Complexity". Regions in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present (15). Slavic Research Center Hokkaido University: 137.
^Hu, Minghui. "High Qing Society" HIS 140B, 31 January 2018, UCSC
^Rowe, William (10 September 2012). China's Last Empire. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 66. ISBN978-0-674-06624-3.
^Porter, Jonathan (4 February 2016). Imperial China 1350–1900. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN978-1-4422-2293-9.
^Hu, Minghui. "Settlement and Border Regions". HIS 140B, 9 February 2018. UCSC
^Chu, Samuel C.; Liu, Kwang-Ching, eds. (1994). Li Hung-chang and China's early modernization. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. ISBN978-1-56324-242-7.
^Hooja, Rima (2006). A History of Rajasthan. Rupa. p. 454. ISBN9788129115010. From Baburs memoirs we learn that Sanga's success against the Mughal advance guard commanded by Abdul Aziz and other forces at Bayana, severely demoralised the fighting spirit of Baburs troops encamped near Sikri.
^Berndl, Klaus (2005). National Geographic Visual History of the World. National Geographic Society. pp. 318–320. ISBN978-0-7922-3695-5.
^Stein, Burton (2010), A History of India, John Wiley & Sons, pp. 159–, ISBN978-1-4443-2351-1 Quote: "The imperial career of the Mughal house is conventionally reckoned to have ended in 1707 when the emperor Aurangzeb, a fifth-generation descendant of Babur, died. His fifty-year reign began in 1658 with the Mughal state seeming as strong as ever or even stronger. But in Aurangzeb's later years the state was brought to the brink of destruction, over which it toppled within a decade and a half after his death; by 1720 imperial Mughal rule was largely finished and an epoch of two imperial centuries had closed."
^Richards, John F. (1995), The Mughal Empire, Cambridge University Press, p. xv, ISBN978-0-521-56603-2 Quote: "By the latter date (1720) the essential structure of the centralized state was disintegrated beyond repair."
^Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (2003). Modern South Asia: history, culture, political economy (Reprinted ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN978-0-415-16951-6.
^Pagaza, Ignacio; Argyriades, Demetrios (2009). Winning the Needed Change: Saving Our Planet Earth. IOS Press. p. 129. ISBN978-1-58603-958-5.
^Om Prakash, "Empire, Mughal", History of World Trade Since 1450, edited by John J. McCusker, vol. 1, Macmillan Reference US, 2006, pp. 237–240, World History in Context. Retrieved 3 August 2017
^Parthasarathi, Prasannan (2011), Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850, Cambridge University Press, p. 2, ISBN978-1-139-49889-0
^Hunt, John (2005). Campbell, Heather-Ann (ed.). Dutch South Africa: Early Settlers at the Cape, 1652–1708. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 2–13. ISBN978-1-904744-95-5.
^Hsin-Hui, Chiu (2008). The Colonial 'civilizing Process' in Dutch Formosa: 1624–1662. Leiden: Tuta Sub Aegide Pallas. pp. 3–8. ISBN978-9004165076.
^Nanda, J. N (2005). Bengal: the unique state. Concept Publishing Company. p. 10. 2005. ISBN978-81-8069-149-2. Bengal [...] was rich in the production and export of grain, salt, fruit, maize, liquors and wines, precious metals and ornaments besides the output of its handlooms in silk and cotton. Europe referred to Bengal as the richest country to trade with.
^Om Prakash, "Empire, MughalArchived 18 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine", History of World Trade Since 1450, edited by John J. McCusker, vol. 1, Macmillan Reference USA, 2006, pp. 237–240, World History in Context. Retrieved 3 August 2017
^Hobkirk, Michael (1992). Land, Sea or Air?: Military Priorities- Historical Choices. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 77–80. ISBN978-0-312-07493-7.
^Lunde, Henrik O. (2014). A warrior dynasty: the rise and decline of Sweden as a military superpower. Philadelphia Oxford: Casemate. ISBN978-1-61200-243-9.
^De Vries, Jan (2009). "The economic crisis of the seventeenth century after fifty years". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 40 (2): 160.
^Thompson, Mark L. (2013). The contest for the Delaware Valley: allegiance, identity, and empire in the seventeenth century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN978-0-8071-5058-0.
^Esposito, Gabriele; Rava, Giuseppe (2019). Armies of the Great Northern War 1700–1720. Men-at-arms. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN978-1-4728-3366-2.
^Kekke Stadin, "The masculine image of a great power: Representations of Swedish imperial power c. 1630–1690." Scandinavian journal of history 30.1 (2005): 61–82.
^Aldrich, Robert (1996). Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion. European Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN978-1-349-24729-5.
^Page, Melvin E.; Sonnenburg, Penny M., eds. (2003). Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN978-1-57607-335-3.
^ abAngus Maddison. The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (p. 98, 242). OECD, Paris, 2001.
^Nigel Dalziel, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire (2006),
^Timothy H. Parsons, The British Imperial Century, 1815–1914: A World History Perspective (2nd ed. 2019)
^Timothy H. Parsons, The Second British Empire (2014)
^After 1866, Alaska was sold and South Sakhalin lost to Japan, but Batum, Kars, Pamir, and the Transcaspian region (Turkmenistan) were acquired. The map incorrectly shows Tuva in dark green, although in reality the protectorate over Tuva was only established in 1914.
^Iver B. Neumann, "Russia as a great power, 1815–2007." Journal of International Relations and Development 11.2 (2008): 128–151. online
^Cross, Robin (2002). The battle of Kursk: Operation Citadel 1943. Classic military history. London ; New York: Penguin. ISBN978-0-14-139109-0.
^Tucker, Spencer; Arnold, James R.; Wiener, Roberta; Pierpaoli, Paul G.; Cutrer, Thomas W.; Santoni, Pedro, eds. (2013). The encyclopedia of the Mexican-American War: a political, social, and military history. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. ISBN978-1-85109-853-8.
^Steinberg, John W.; Wolf, David, eds. (2007). The Russo-Japanese war in global perspective: World War Zero. Volume 2. History of warfare 1385-7827. Leiden Boston: Brill. ISBN978-90-04-14284-8.
^James, David H. (2011). The rise and fall of the Japanese Empire. Routledge library editions : Japan. Oxon [England]: Routledge. ISBN978-1-136-92546-7.
^Giuseppe Finaldi, A History of Italian Colonialism, 1860–1907: Europe's Last Empire (Routledge, 2016).
^Angelo Del Boca, "The myths, suppressions, denials, and defaults of Italian colonialism." in Patrizia Palumbo, ed. A place in the sun: Africa in Italian colonial culture from post-unification to the present (2003): 17–36.
^Levy-Leboyer, Maurice (1981). Disparities in Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution. Paul Bairoch, Maurice Levy-Leboyerd. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN978-1-349-04707-9.
^Good, David F.; Good, David F.; Good, David F. (1986). Der wirtschaftliche Aufstieg des Habsburgerreiches 1750 – 1914. Forschungen zur Geschichte des Donauraumes. Translated by Streissler, Monika. Wien Köln Graz: Böhlau. ISBN978-3-205-06390-2.
^ abcFarrell, Theo (2013). Transforming Military Power – Since the Cold War: Britain, France, and the United States, 1991–2012. Sten Rynning, Terry Terriff (1st ed.). West Nyack: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-107-36014-3.
^ abcdefghSterio, Milena (2013). The right to self-determination under international law: "selfistans", secession and the rule of the great powers. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. xii (preface). ISBN978-0415668187. ("The great powers are super-sovereign states: an exclusive club of the most powerful states economically, militarily, politically and strategically. These states include veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council (United States, United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia), as well as economic powerhouses such as Germany, Italy and Japan.")
^ abcdeYasmi Adriansyah, 'Questioning Indonesia's place in the world', Asia Times (20 September 2011): 'Though there are still debates on which countries belong to which category, there is a common understanding that the GP [great power] countries are the United States, China, United Kingdom, France, and Russia. Besides their political and economic dominance of the global arena, these countries have a special status in the United Nations Security Council with their permanent seats and veto rights.'
^ abcdefKuper, Stephen. "Clarifying the nation's role strengthens the impact of a National Security Strategy 2019". Archived from the original on 10 December 2021. Retrieved 22 January 2020. Traditionally, great powers have been defined by their global reach and ability to direct the flow of international affairs. There are a number of recognised great powers within the context of contemporary international relations – with Great Britain, France, India and Russia recognised as nuclear-capable great powers, while Germany, Italy and Japan are identified as conventional great powers
^ abcdefT.V. Paul; James J. Wirtz; Michel Fortmann (2005). "Great+power"&pg=PA59 Balance of Power. State University of New York Press. pp. 59, 282. ISBN978-0-7914-6401-4. Accordingly, the great powers after the Cold War are Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States p. 59
^ abcdefCarter, Keith Lambert (2019). Great Power, Arms, And Alliances. Retrieved 25 January 2021. U.S., Russia, China, France, Germany, U.K. and Italy – Table on page 56,72 (Major powers-great power criteria)
^"Global Wealth Report"(PDF). Credit Suisse. October 2010. Archived(PDF) from the original on 9 November 2014. Retrieved 27 October 2014. "In euro and USD terms, the total wealth of French households is very sizeable. Although it has just 1% of the world's adults, France ranks fourth among nations in aggregate household wealth – behind China and just ahead of Germany. Europe as a whole accounts for 35% of the individuals in the global top 1%, but France itself contributes a quarter of the European contingent.
^Jack S. Levy, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495–1975, (2014) p. 29
^Aldrich, Robert (2024). France in World Politics. Routledge Revivals Series. John Connell (1st ed.). Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN978-1-032-84176-2.
^"Field Listing :: Area". The World Factbook. CIA. Archived from the original on 31 January 2014. Retrieved 1 November 2015. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^United Kingdom Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (May 2017). "Toponymic guidelines for the United Kingdom". GOV.UK. 10.2 Definitions. usually shortened to United Kingdom ... The abbreviation is UK or U.K.
^"Definition of Great Britain in English". Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 4 October 2013. Retrieved 29 October 2014. Great Britain is the name for the island that comprises England, Scotland and Wales, although the term is also used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom.
^"Key facts about the United Kingdom". Directgov. Archived from the original on 15 October 2012. Retrieved 6 March 2015. The full title of this country is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Great Britain is made up of England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom (UK) is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 'Britain' is used informally, usually meaning the United Kingdom. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not part of the UK.
^Hogg, p. 424 chapter 9 English Worldwide by David Crystal: "approximately one in four of the worlds population are capable of communicating to a useful level in English".
^Gamble, Andrew (1994). Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy and the British State (Fourth ed.). London: The MacMillan Press. p. xiv. ISBN978-0-333-61441-9.
^Gabriele Abbondanza, Italy as a Regional Power: the African Context from National Unification to the Present Day (Rome: Aracne, 2016)
^"Operation Alba may be considered one of the most important instances in which Italy has acted as a regional power, taking the lead in executing a technically and politically coherent and determined strategy." See Federiga Bindi, Italy and the European Union (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), p. 171.
^Sterio, Milena (2013). The right to self-determination under international law : "selfistans", secession and the rule of the great powers. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. xii (preface). ISBN978-0-415-66818-7. Retrieved 13 June 2016. ("The great powers are super-sovereign states: an exclusive club of the most powerful states economically, militarily, politically and strategically. These states include veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council (United States, United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia), as well as economic powerhouses such as Germany, Italy and Japan.")
^Doenecke, Justus D.; Stoler, Mark A. (2005). Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt's Foreign Policies, 1933–1945. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 62. ISBN978-0-8476-9416-7. THE FOUR POLICEMEN AND CHINA POLICY in turning to the wider issue of the entire postwar order, one notes that by 1942 FDR saw four great powers as the major guarantors of the peace. In order of importance, they were the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Britain.
^Lemahieu, Herve. "Five big takeaways from the 2019 Asia Power Index". Lowy Institute. Archived from the original on 24 July 2021. Retrieved 6 May 2020. China, the emerging superpower, netted the highest gains in overall power in 2019, ranking first in half of the eight Index measures. For the first time, China narrowly edged out the United States in the Index's assessment of economic resources. In absolute terms, China's economy grew by more than the total size of Australia's economy in 2018. The world's largest trading nation has also paradoxically seen its GDP become less dependent on exports. This makes China less vulnerable to an escalating trade war than most other Asian economies.
^Elliot, Larry (26 December 2020). "China to overtake US as world's biggest economy by 2028, report predicts". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 December 2020. With the US expected to contract by 5% this year, China will narrow the gap with its biggest rival, the CEBR said. Overall, global gross domestic product is forecast to decline by 4.4% this year, in the biggest one-year fall since the second world war. Douglas McWilliams, the CEBR's deputy chairman, said: "The big news in this forecast is the speed of growth of the Chinese economy. We expect it to become an upper-income economy during the current five-year plan period (2020–25). And we expect it to overtake the US a full five years earlier than we did a year ago. It would pass the per capita threshold of $12,536 (£9,215) to become a high-income country by 2023.
^Cordesman, Anthony (1 October 2019). "China and the United States: Cooperation, Competition, and/or Conflict". Center for Strategic and International Studies. Retrieved 22 March 2021. Seen from this perspective, such trends clearly that show that China already is a true economic superpower with growing resources and a steadily improving technology base. Its military structure is evolving to the point where China can compare or compete with the U.S. – at least in Asia.
^Silver, Laura; Devlin, Kat; Huang, Christine (5 December 2019). "China's Economic Growth Mostly Welcomed in Emerging Markets, but Neighbors Wary of Its Influence". Pew Research Center. Retrieved 22 March 2021. China has emerged as a global economic superpower in recent decades. It is not only the world's second largest economy and the largest exporter by value, but it has also been investing in overseas infrastructure and development at a rapid clip
^Lendon, Brad (5 March 2021). "China has built the world's largest navy. Now what's Beijing going to do with it?". CNN. Retrieved 22 March 2021. In 2018, China held 40% of the world's shipbuilding market by gross tons, according to United Nations figures cited by the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, well ahead of second place South Korea at 25%. Put in a historical perspective, China's shipbuilding numbers are staggering – dwarfing even the U.S. efforts of World War II. China built more ships in one year of peace time (2019) than the U.S. did in four of war (1941–1945).
^Lemahieu, Herve (29 May 2019). "Five big takeaways from the 2019 Asia Power Index". Lowy Institute. Archived from the original on 24 July 2021. Retrieved 22 March 2021. China, the emerging superpower, netted the highest gains in overall power in 2019, ranking first in half of the eight Index measures. For the first time, China narrowly edged out the United States in the Index's assessment of economic resources. In absolute terms China's economy grew by more than the total size of Australia's economy in 2018. The world's largest trading nation has also paradoxically seen its GDP become less dependent on exports. This makes China less vulnerable to an escalating trade war than most other Asian economies.
^21世纪新闻排行中国崛起居首位 [The rise of China ranked first place in 21st century news]. Ycwb.com (in Chinese). 7 May 2011. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
^Kuan Yew Lee; Graham Allison; Robert D. Blackwill; Ali Wyne (1 February 2013). "Future of China". Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World. MIT Press. p. 2. ISBN978-0-262-01912-5. Retrieved 11 December 2015.
^Ziegler, Nicholas (2019). Governing Ideas: Strategies for Innovation in France and Germany. Cornell Studies in Political Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN978-1-5017-4496-9.
^ ab"Germany". The World Factbook. CIA. Archived from the original on 9 January 2021. Retrieved 29 March 2020.
^Lavery, Scott; Schmid, Davide (2018). Frankfurt as a financial centre after Brexit(PDF) (Report). SPERI Global Political Economy Brief. University of Sheffield. Archived(PDF) from the original on 20 June 2021. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
Banks, Arthur. (1988) A World Atlas of Military History 1861–1945
Cambridge Modern History Atlas (1912) online. 141 maps
Catchpole, Brian. (1982) Map History of the Modern World
Cooper, F. (2008). Empires and Political Imagination in World History. Princeton [u.a.]: Princeton University Press.
Daniels, Patricia S. and Stephen G. Hyslop, Almanac of World History (3rd ed 2014); 384pp well illustrated
Doyle, M. W. (1986). Empires. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
Farrington, K. (2003). Historical Atlas of Empires. London: Mercury.
Grenville, J.A.S. (1994) A History of the World in the Twentieth Century (1994). online
Haywood, John. (1997) Atlas of world historyonline
Joffe, Josef. The myth of America's decline: Politics, economics, and a half century of false prophecies ( WW Norton & Company, 2014).
Kinder, Hermann and Werner Hilgemann. The Penguin Atlas of World History (2 vol, 2004); advanced topical atlas. excerpt of vol 1 also see excerpt vol 2
Langer, William, ed. (1973) An Encyclopedia of World History (1948 And later editions) online
Stearns, Peter, ed. The Encyclopedia of World History (2007), 1245pp; update of Langer
.png)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
