Just so AND we’re better looking then them.
Because the United States was isolationist and maintained only a tiny military, I’d still rank Great Britain as the “most powerful” country in the world in the interwar period. I’d place the moment of transition in 1942, when the United States ramped up war production and became the dominant partner in the Atlantic Alliance.
Before that, Great Britain was indisputably the dominant power in the West since the Napoleonic Wars, and in the world at least since the first Opium War with China. Before the Opium Wars, it’s hard to compare Britain and China; Britain had a navy and an empire and projected its power all over the world, but didn’t dominate Europe to anywhere near the extent that China dominated Asia.
Did you not read the very post of mine you were responding to? I explicitly said that Russia would almost definitely hit Europe if it were in a nuclear exchange with the United States.
I also said that I don’t believe a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia would necessarily result in countries like Brazil and India getting hit, China wouldn’t necessarily get hit either. South Korea probably wouldn’t get hit.
My point being that civilization would continue on after a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States. Not in Russia or the United States, but Brazil and India certainly qualify as “civilized” countries. Undoubtedly the world would enter bad times economically with the complete destruction of the United States economy–but I don’t believe that lone would result in the decivilization of India and Brazil. Not to mention South Korea, possibly China.
Probably, but that won’t stop me from making another one:
Sumeria, 4300 BC - 3000 BC
Egypt, 3000 BC - 900 BC
Assyria, 900 BC- 612 BC
Babylonia 612 BC - 539 BC
Persia 539 BC - 331 BC
Macedonia 331 BC - 323 BC
Seleucid Empire 323 BC - 221 BC
China 221 BC - AD 189
Roman Empire 189 - 286
Eastern Roman / Byzantine Empire 286 - 589
China 589 - 907
Abbasid Caliphate 907 - 945
Persia 945 - 960
China 960 - 1215
Mongolia 1215 - 1260
China 1260 - 1492
Spain 1492 - 1648
France 1648 - 1759
Great Britain 1759 - 1792
France 1792 - 1812
Great Britain 1812 - 1942
United States 1942 - present
Everything about such a list is arbitrary, but the most arbitrary aspect is fixing the transition points between China and the West. I’ve chosen to list China as the most powerful country during the periods in which it was unified, until 1492, when the European powers became capable of projecting their power across the oceans. I’ve also given China primacy during the period from 960 to 1215, when it wasn’t unified, because there was no dominant Western empire at this time.
The most remarkable entries are surely Macedonia and Mongolia. Both exploded out of nowhere to become nine-day wonders. Had I chosen to consider China under Kublai Khan to be Mongolian instead of Chinese, Mongolian domination would have lasted longer.
Moral of the list: China has staying power. Don’t bet against them one day returning to the top spot.
I would disagree, because I think you’re giving too much importance to the military. Barring some exceptional circumstances, what ultimately matters the most is wealth (from population, production, trade, technology, etc…) and wealth had flown in droves from the UK (and other european countries) to the USA.
You mention the fact that the USA went almost overnight from a quite isolationist country with a tiny military to a military superpower around 1942, and this is an evidence that it was already the most powerful nation. Nobody else could have pulled that. The USA just had chosen until then to limit itself while at the same time the UK was overextending itself. It might have given the appearance that the UK was more powerful than it really was and the USA less than it really was, but I don’t think that contemporaries were fooled by this appearance.
So, I too would pick 1918 as the symbolic date. Especially since it’s by entering WWI that the USA demonstrated it was now a global power, not by entering WWII.
Hmmm… Shouldn’t the Ottoman empire appear as the top dog during this period? I really don’t know about China, but I’m pretty convinced the Ottomans were significantly more powerful than Spain at the beginning of the 16th century.
So, picking the symbolic dates of the fall of Byzance and of the battle of Lepante, I would change your proposed timeline in the following way :
China 1260-1452
Ottoman Empire 1452-1571
Spain 1571-1643
(I picked 1643 instead of 1648 for Spain because I don’t know what happened in 1648 and 1643 was the first major defeat for the “tercios”.)
I’m unconvinced by this weird switch between the UK and France as well. Even though the UK was on the winning side of the 7 years war, I dont think it resulted in a significant change in the overall equilibrium. Of course the UK agrandized its colonial empire but she would be defeated twenty years later in 1781, and ten years after that, you give back the proeminence to France. It would makes more sense in my opinion to suppress this argued 1759-1792 UK dominance.
Also : why 1759, rather than 1763 (end of the 7 years war)? And why 1812 rather than 1815 (Waterloo), 1814 (Napoleon’s abdication) or even 1813 (Leipzig, which was the defeat that sealed Napoleon’s fate).
OK I figured out what happened in 1648. Rather obvious, especially after I picked 1643 :smack: .
The US overtook the UK in economic might in 1910. I read this in the Guiness Book of Records many years ago.
During the early Fifteenth Century, I don’t think there’s any question that Ming Dynasty China was the most powerful country in the world. The early Mings not only maintained their traditional domination of east Asia, but also had the world’s strongest navy, which they sent as far afield as Madagascar and the Philippines.
From about 1450 through their fall in 1644, the Mings did weaken, and they disbanded their navy. But on the traditional measures of land power–size of armies, land area ruled, population ruled–I still feel that they outranked the Ottomans. So if I were to delay Spain’s emergence until after 1492–and you could certainly make a case for a much later date–I would continue to rank China Number One until that date.
My selection of the Seven Years War as a turning point between Britain and France is a North America-centric selection. In 1759 the British won the Battle of Quebec, and for those of us on this side of the pond, that’s what the Seven Years War was all about! 
But seriously, my logic for having Europe outrank China during this period is based on the ability to project power overseas, and Britain dominated France in this respect after the Seven Years War. They lost the American Revolutionary War when their own colonists joined the French, but France gained little from that war and went into debt so deeply that her monarchy fell eleven years later.
In 1792 France unleashed its revolutionary army at Valmy and forced a brief reassessment . . .
The retreat from Moscow, and all that. In hindsight, though, I should have ended the heyday of Napoleonic France at the Battle of Trafalgar, in 1805. (Or maybe I should have left Britain on top.) At that time France returned to being purely a continental power, which by my standards isn’t enough to claim the top spot. (I didn’t rank Hitler or the Soviet Union for the same reason.)
With the introduction of the Westphalian Order, but possibly also before that, I think The Netherlands became the most powerful force around, expanding around the world in a way that France (or any other country for that matter) did not. Although I realize that most of this is about military might, and that the strength of the Dutch was to trade and to not get involved in any military hassle, I still guess a case can be made that for the better part of the 17th century, the Netherlands was the most powerful country in the world.
With me on this is Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which is definitely a good read if you are interested in this topic.
The problem with the Netherlands is that contrarily to the UK, it wasn’t in a position to ignore the military threat represented by other european powers. That’s just geography. Netherlands had the largest concentration of wealth at this time, and was proportionnally the wealthiest european nation. However its limited size, population and production prevented it from being a very influential country in Europe.
What demonstrates this, in my opinion, is that during this era the Netherlands fought for its continued existence, while France was fighting to expand its territorial possessions and its influence on the continent. The king of France could wake up and think “what about invading the Netherlands this time?”, while for the Stathouder invading France wasn’t an option.
However, regading military power, it seems to me that until 1650 or so, and maybe a little longer, the Dutch navy was on par with Britain’s and France’s navies. But unfortunately, it did have land borders.
Fine, but of course it was not. The Russians, for instance, probably couldn’t care less about Quebec. And the territorial swaps in north America and India were dependants on the outcome of the 7 years war. Not only was France not that much interested in these “acres of snow”, but also the directing idea was that it didn’t really matter if it lost them during the war, as long as it could win it and as a result get them back in the peace settlement. As long as the war was going on, the continued domination of Britain over Canada wasn’t granted, whether or not it had won the sideshow at Quebec. That’s why it makes much more sense to put the cut off date at 1763 than 1759.
Ehh. This was the academic vogue as little as ten years ago but I think there’s been a rapidly growing re-apperciation for the Med in general. If we stick with Italy proper there’s weight to the argument, but when we expand the Roman Empire to include subject peoples such as the Greeks it becomes a tie, at best. It really comes down to how we define ‘empire’ and ‘accomplishments.’
The Romans may have had a ballista that could fire 11 shots per minute. Per minute! That’s one shot every five and a half seconds! Now that’s just freakin’ cool. Can you imagine being the legionary that got to point that thing? Your closest living military comparison won’t show up until the effing Vickers gun! It also has no real bearing on the conversation, I just like talking about it and this thread is as good as any.
When some consensus is reached the information would be great to put on a graphic timeline.
I thought that when the Spanish went to the Americas, they described the Aztec and Inca civilisations as being more advanced than Europe. Whether that means more powerful is up for debate.
What about the Angkor and Cambodia at its height?
Whatever gave you that idea? The Spaniards were too busy plundering and enslaving to worry about how “advanced” someone else might be. In any case, objectively, the Aztecs and Incas didn’t have large domestic animals, steel swords, firearms, or vessels capable of crossing the ocean, and the Incas didn’t have writing.
Power is to some degree a function of the capacities of one’s neighbors, and the Aztec and Inca empires were more “powerful” within their neighborhoods than most Fifteenth Century European nations. However, they weren’t nearly as large or as dominant over a large area as China.
If the Khmer Empire were to bid for a spot, it would be during the Tenth Century when both China and Western Europe were fragmented. However, I feel the Islamic states in between were more powerful at that time.