Largest Empires by Share of World Population
About This Dataset
Largest Empires by Share of World Population
Ruling the most land and ruling the most people are different achievements. This chart ranks empires by the share of the world's population they governed at their peak, expressed as a percentage of everyone alive at that time.
Analysis
The Qing dynasty governed 37% of the world's population in 1800, the largest share any empire has ever held, ahead of the Northern Song dynasty on 33% in 1100. This ranking is very different from the land-area one: empires built on dense agricultural populations appear here, while those that covered vast but thinly populated territory do not. Every empire on this chart ruled at least a fifth of humanity, and the smallest share shown is the British Empire on 23%.
Key Findings
🏆
Qing dynasty leads in Share of world population at peak (%) with 37.
📊
Average Share of world population at peak (%): 28 · median: 28.
↔️
Gap: Qing dynasty is 1.6× larger than British Empire.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Wikipedia - List of largest empires
- Coverage
- 12 entities · 12 observations
- Measure
- Share of world population at peak (%)
- Last updated
- 10 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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