Largest Empires in History by Land Area

About This Dataset

The largest empires in history ranked by peak land area in millions of square kilometres. The British Empire is the biggest ever, covering about 35.5 million km² - roughly a quarter of the world's land - at its height in the 1920s.

✨ AI Insight

The British Empire (35.5M km²) leads decisively, about 11.5M km² ahead of the Mongol Empire (24.0M) - itself the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Russian Empire (22.8M) sits just behind, meaning the top three each controlled more than 20 million km². A clear gap then drops to the Qing dynasty (14.7M) and Spanish Empire (13.7M), after which a tight cluster of the Second French colonial empire, the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates and the Yuan dynasty all fall between 11.0 and 11.5M. The list contrasts two models of empire: sprawling maritime colonial powers (British, Spanish, French) whose territory was scattered across continents, and vast contiguous land empires (Mongol, Russian, Qing) built by overland conquest.

Source: Wikipedia - List of Largest Empires

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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British Empire leads with 36 in All Time.

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Average value in All Time: 18 · median: 14.

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Gap in All Time: British Empire is 3.2× larger than Umayyad Caliphate.