Your Favorite Empire

[Wamitoria]

Long live the German Empire 1871-1935

The German Empire stopped existing in 1919.

Unless he doesn't accept the Weimar gov't as legitimate. In that case, it lasted until 1933.

[Industrial Republics]

Long live the German Empire 1871-1935

The German Empire stopped existing in 1919.

I'm guessing he means when the Nazi party overtook the government, but even then, Hitler was appointed Chancellor is '33. So where he thinks the Empire existed after WW1 is beyond me.

[The Pope States]

Long live the German Empire 1871-1935

The German Empire stopped existing in 1919.

WHat i mean is when Hitler took control in 1935

[Fedeledland]

The German Empire stopped existing in 1919.

WHat i mean is when Hitler took control in 1935

1933. And Germany was a republic between 1919 and 1933.

[SD_Film Artists]

The German Empire stopped existing in 1919.

I'm guessing he means when the Nazi party overtook the government, but even then, Hitler was appointed Chancellor is '33. So where he thinks the Empire existed after WW1 is beyond me.

Was the German Empire an empire in the same way that the Democratic Republic of Congo is democratic?

[Fedeledland]

Was the German Empire and empire in the same way that the Democratic Republic of Congo is democratic?

It was a true empire between 1871 and 1919.

[Harata]

The German Empire stopped existing in 1919.

Unless he doesn't accept the Weimar gov't as legitimate. In that case, it lasted until 1933.

Well, Reich is German for Empire, so you could technically say the German Empire lasted until 1945, though it's understandable why people wouldn't want to include the Nazi period.

[-The West Coast-]

The Race.

This person has earned Hath's total respect.

Ha.

[Wamitoria]

I'm guessing he means when the Nazi party overtook the government, but even then, Hitler was appointed Chancellor is '33. So where he thinks the Empire existed after WW1 is beyond me.

Was the German Empire an empire in the same way that the Democratic Republic of Congo is democratic?

Nah, it was a real empire.

[Fedeledland]

Was the German Empire an empire in the same way that the Democratic Republic of Congo is democratic?

Nah, it was a real empire.

That map is totally wrong. Venezuela was NEVER part of Germany.

[SD_Film Artists]

Was the German Empire an empire in the same way that the Democratic Republic of Congo is democratic?

Nah, it was a real empire.

Ah I see! Now that is an empire. The last argument I heard for it was that 'Germany became united, thus it was an empire'.

[Prometheos]

The Ottomans top the list for me, by far... apart from my native Britain.

The Russian Empire should be an option, though.

[Farnhamia]

The Ottomans top the list for me, by far... apart from my native Britain.

The Russian Empire should have been an option, too.

Why the Ottomans? Why any of them, really, but why the Turks, in particular?

[Wamitoria]

Nah, it was a real empire.

That map is totally wrong. Venezuela was NEVER part of Germany.

Meh, I guess you're right.

Here's a list of colonies of the German Empire.

[Industrial Republics]

Nah, it was a real empire.

That map is totally wrong. Venezuela was NEVER part of Germany.

It is yellow, so I'm assuming maybe some influence or trade? Not sure why it's colored to be honest.

[Waldo followers]

The Byzantines for me for staying alive when the western Romans collapsed.

[Farnhamia]

That map is totally wrong. Venezuela was NEVER part of Germany.

It is yellow, so I'm assuming maybe some influence or trade? Not sure why it's colored to be honest.

The yellow's marked "Little Venice" so ...

[Fedeledland]

It is yellow, so I'm assuming maybe some influence or trade? Not sure why it's colored to be honest.

The yellow's marked "Little Venice" so ...

It was a large area Charles V of Spain gave to a banker family. It was never part of Germany and still property of the Venezuelan state.

[The Archregimancy]

The Islamic Empire under the medieval caliphates was pretty badass.

Are we talking Seljuqs or Ayyubids?

Pretty obviously neither since neither dynasty claimed the caliphate.

The Seljuks were a Turkish dynasty of the 11th through 14th centuries who very briefly held a hegemony over much of the same territory of the classical Persian empire, but who after 1118 were largely confined to the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate of Rum.

The Ayyubids were the Kurdish dynasty founded by Saladin that was largely based in Egypt; they lasted from 1171-1341, but usually weren't particularly significant after Saladin's death.

The primary medieval dynasties of the Sunni Caliphate after the four non-dynastic Righteous Caliphs after Mohammed were the Damascus-based Ummayads (661-750; and then 929-1031 as Caliphs in Spain) and the Baghdad-based Abbasids (750-1258; though shadow caliphs continued in Cairo until 1519). The Abbasid Caliphate can be considered the historical continuation of the Ummayad

There was also an important Shiite Caliphate, the Fatimids, which was largely based in North Africa from 909 through 1171 (when they were deposed by Saladin), and came very close at one point to replacing Sunni Islam as the dominant strain within the faith of the Prophet, even briefly pushing the by now largely moribund Abbasids out of Baghdad.

I think that in a 'Favorite Empire' thread, one should list their favorite Empire, not their favorite general group of Empires

And I think in a favourite empire thread, it's best for teenagers not to pretend to knowledge they don't have in an attempt to be condescending to their peers, since Buffy was explicitly referring to 'medieval Caliphates', and not 'random medieval Muslim dynasties'.

Since the Abbasids are usually considered the continuation of the same Caliphate controlled by the Ummayads, I'd say that Buffy's original point was basically valid - at least for the period 661-1258 - and he became unnecessarily defensive once people started conflating 'Medieval Caliphate' with 'any powerful medieval Muslim dynasty'.

And if the Abbasid family itself was largely politically powerless for much of the last 300 years of their history in Baghdad, the Caliphate remained culturally significant, and their residual prestige was well worth the effort for others to attempt to control; they are no more invalid a choice in that regard than the Holy Roman Empire after Frederick II.

That Buffy was so defensive suggests that he didn't really grasp the broader historical framework either; but his point wasn't nearly as invalid as some have subsequently claimed if it had been appropriately framed since he did explicitly say 'medieval Caliphates'. Had he been able to distinguish the two Sunni dynasties from the Shiite Fatimids, I'd say his point would have been entirely sound.

In which case you're in favor of everyone from the tolerant early Ayyubids <snip>

See, that's twice you've made that mistake now - even leaving aside the fact that if you did mean the Abbasids, they're not even the first dynasty of the Caliphate.

[The Archregimancy]

It is yellow, so I'm assuming maybe some influence or trade? Not sure why it's colored to be honest.

The yellow's marked "Little Venice" so ...

Fedeledland's subsequent explanation is unclear and incomplete, but basically sound.

The Welser brothers, a banking family from Augsburg, were given control of what is currently Venezuela by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V - who was also king of Spain - in 1528. At the time, most of Venezuela was an insignificant and unimportant part of Spain's recently-conquered American Empire, with only the pearl fisheries of the northeast offering any exploitable commercial opportunities.

The bankers lost control of their colony in 1556, but for that 28 year period, Venezuela's European colonists were almost all German miners who spent most of their time looking for gold. Governor Nikolaus Federmann even went so far as to cross the Andes and attempt to take control of modern Colombia as well.

It was a brief and not particularly significant interlude in the long term - except for the Welsers introducing African slavery to Venezuela. German colonists numbered in their dozens, but some 4,000 slaves were shipped over.

It's best to consider Little Venice as a colony of Germans in the Spanish Empire rather than as a 'German colony'.


Though, in the 19th century, a new batch of German settlers in Venezuela would found Colonia Tovar, which to this day looks like this:

[Nazis in Space]

why are the mongolian empire not an option who is not a fan off barbarian horsemen who created the largest empire in the history of earth

While the mongols started out as mostly illiterate horsemen, it should be noted that they were quite quick to integrate infantry, combat engineers and their associated machinery, and other such things into their military. And while they were remarkably efficient at killing people, they were also remarkably fair in their treatment of subjugated populations once the war was over. While they did, admittedly, continually suffer from a lack of literacy, which one may wish to describe as 'Barbaric', personally, I'd view them as rather less barbaric than the folks they conquered.

I'm a fan of the Persian Empire. In terms of civil rights, they were way ahead of their time.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Their freedom of religion deal was... Standard operating procedure at the time (Always has been for everyone except the adherents of the abrahamitic faiths, really), and there's plenty of sources describing the existence, purpose and function of the persian secret police. Nowadays, we'd call it one hell of a tyranny.

's far as tyrannies go, it was a pretty nice one, and by contemporary standards they were pretty okay - but they weren't leaps and bounds ahead of anyone.

It makes sense in the same way that the Church kept women down in Medieval Europe despite the evidence for such oppression in the bible being sketchy at best. It's Christianity, whether or not it was in the Bible.

Not really topical, but I'm just going to mention that during medieval times, the women's position in society was generally higher than post-reformation. The church was actually willing to engage in debates concerning whether feminine inferiority really applies, convents enabled women's education (Supposedly by banning reproductive functions, but... Nobody actually took that particularly serious at the time, to be quite frank. I've severe doubts that anyone outside of the higher nobility could seriously expect to marry a virgin, either - there's records of common folks throwing fits at clergymen who took the whole 'No sex before marriage' deal seriously), and so on.

Trust me, one gladiatorial show and you'd be wishing for scripted combat.

Why? This is coming from a guy who thought the "postal" series was the funniest thing ever, this is coming from somebody who often finds himself laughing at other people's misfortunes.
Pretty sure I'd like it.

For the same reason that Pro Wrestling attains vastly greater greater audiences and revenue than MMA. Scripted events look nicer than the real thing.

... Well, pro wrestling may be a bad example. Lets say, same reason Jackie Chan flicks attain greater audience than any kind of 'Real' fighting match barring boxing heavyweight world championships.

OTOH, the whole 'Dying' deal isn't that much of a problem. Gladiatorial fights rarely ended in death - though it was of course nasty enough to cause Spartakus and friends to get pretty annoyed with it (Actually, curious... Maybe the Romans reformed gladiatorial combat afterwards?)

[The Archregimancy]

Question, isn't the Byzantine Empire just the Eastern Roman Empire?

The Byzantines themselves certainly considered their empire, not without reason, to be the historical continuation of the entirety of the Roman Empire.

However, historical convention usually holds that the cultural, linguistic, and military transformations brought about in the territories ruled by Constantinople in the 7th and 8th centuries mean that we should more properly talk of a 'Byzantine' state after about 700 AD rather than a 'Roman' state.

But there's no set point for deciding when the Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire. The most common historical convention is the deposition of Phocas by Heraclius in 610 AD. Heraclius declared the Empire's language to be Greek, just about saved the Empire from conquest by Persians, Avars, and Slavs, and then lived long enough to see the beginning of the Arab conquests. Heraclius' grandson Constans II then completely reorganised the state into the Thematic system that served the empire so well until Manzikert.

But others have taken the reign of Leo I (457 AD) as the point where the Empire becomes 'Byzantine', and a few go as late as Leo III (747 AD) and his defence of Constantinople against the Arabs, while others accept Constantine I's 4th century refoundation of Byzantium as New Rome/Constantinople as the best convenient starting point.

In other words, everyone agrees that there was a Byzantine Empire, but there's considerable debate over when that empire properly begins.

[New Chalcedon]

Byzantine, duh. AS if it wasn't obvious from my IC posting style and the way I present my nation.

[Volnotova]

British Empire(During the Edwardian Era)
Byzantine Empire
And the German Empire

[Buffett and Colbert]

That Buffy was so defensive suggests that he didn't really grasp the broader historical framework either; but his point wasn't nearly as invalid as some have subsequently claimed if it had been appropriately framed since he did explicitly say 'medieval Caliphates'. Had he been able to distinguish the two Sunni dynasties from the Shiite Fatimids, I'd say his point would have been entirely sound.

Honestly, I don't claim to be a historian. I just wanted to generally refer to the medieval caliphates, plain and simple. You guys would certainly be right to nitpick if I had claimed to be all knowing about history and the various Empires, but I don't. I know you don't need to prove anything to anyone, but what CM was doing is unnecessary dickwaving, and that is what gets me very annoyed. I'll say it right here. I have only a vague idea of who the Seljuqs were and haven't even heard of the Ayyubids. I don't know anything about the two Sunni dynasties you're talking about, nor any potential differences between them and the Shiite Fatimids, aside from the religious ones. Do I give a flying fuck? No.