When empires were carved by the sword
The stories of history’s greatest empires reveal a recurring pattern: conquest without restraint, expansion without limits and an inevitable fall
Long before international law, borders drawn on maps or the idea of national sovereignty, power belonged to those who could seize it. In the ancient world and throughout the Middle Ages, kings did not negotiate territories — they took them by force.
Empires were built through invasion, fear and force, often collapsing under the same weight that once sustained them.
The stories of history's greatest empires reveal a recurring pattern: conquest without restraint, expansion without limits and an inevitable fall.
Neo-Assyrian Empire
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One of the earliest examples of imperial brutality was the Neo-Assyrian Empire, founded around 911 BC when King Adad-nirari II began reclaiming lost Assyrian lands in Mesopotamia. What started as a regional power turned into what historians later called a "world empire" by the mid-eighth century BC under Tiglath-Pileser III.
The Assyrians ruled through terror. Their armies crushed the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, conquered Egypt, ended the Elamite Empire, and repeatedly took Babylon. Cities that resisted were erased. Yet this very violence united their enemies.
In 612 BC, a coalition of Medes and Babylonians sacked Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. By 609 BC, the empire had completely vanished, leaving behind ruins and warnings.
Mongol Empire
In 1206, a man named Temujin unified the nomadic tribes of the Mongolian plateau and took the title Genghis Khan.
Within a decade, the Mongol Empire expanded in all directions, becoming an empire almost immediately. Their cavalry devastated the Jin and Song dynasties in China, obliterated the Khwarazmian Empire in Persia, crushed the Kievan Rus', and destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate by sacking Baghdad.
At its height, it was the largest contiguous land empire in history. But scale became its weakness. By 1260, it fractured into four separate Khanates, including the Yuan Dynasty in China. By 1368, even these successor states had collapsed or been overthrown.
Ottoman Empire
In Anatolia, a small Turkish principality founded around 1299 by Osman I began expansion. The Ottoman Empire officially entered imperial history in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire.
Empires were built through invasion, fear and force, often collapsing under the same weight that once sustained them.
Over centuries, the Ottomans forcefully annexed the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt and Syria, the Kingdoms of Hungary and Serbia, and vast regions of North Africa and Greece. Unlike earlier empires, they lasted for over six centuries.
Their end came not through a single invasion, but a gradual decline, nationalist revolts, and a fatal alliance in World War I. In 1922, the sultanate was abolished, making way for modern Turkey.
Mughal Empire
In 1526, Babur, a Central Asian ruler, invaded from Afghanistan and defeated the Lodi Dynasty, founding the Mughal Empire. It was an empire from birth, built entirely through conquest. The Mughals subdued the Rajput kingdoms, absorbed the Deccan Sultanates, Ahmadnagar, Bijapur and Golconda, and conquered Bengal.
Internal rebellions and Persian invasions weakened them in the eighteenth century, but it was the British East India Company that dismantled their power piece by piece. After the 1857 Indian Rebellion, the last Mughal emperor was deposed.
British Empire
The British Empire had become the most expansive empire the world had ever seen. Beginning as trading posts in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Britain emerged as a global imperial power after defeating France in the Seven Years' War and taking control of India.
The empire dismantled or subjugated hundreds of states, including the Mughal Empire, the Maratha Confederacy, the Kingdom of Kandy, the Zulu Kingdom, the Ashanti Empire, and countless Native American nations.
Exhausted by World War II, Britain retreated from its empire. India's independence in 1947 marked the beginning of the end, with the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 serving as its symbolic conclusion.
Qing Dynasty
In East Asia, the Qing Dynasty emerged from Manchuria in 1636, capturing Beijing in 1644 and overthrowing the Ming Empire. The Qing expanded aggressively, annexing Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Outer Mongolia after crushing the Dzungar Khanate.
Yet foreign humiliation, internal corruption, and popular revolt proved fatal. In 1912, the Xinhai Revolution forced the abdication of Puyi, a child emperor, ending imperial rule in China.
