Talk:List of empires
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French Empire?
[edit]Unless it's on there under a different name and I'm missing it, the modern French empire isn't on there (only ancient and medieval ones), that's major, should be addressed.
s just us Americans thinking we are better than every one else when we aint id rather live in Europe than here its a dump. Only historical and true empires should be listed not ones we wish existed.
Need Lydian Empire
[edit]Adding little flags
[edit]Adding little flags to Possible and informal empires.
Sumer and Rome
[edit]I noticed that the duration for Sumer also includes the period of time when it was basically a culture and collection of city states, not an Empire by any stretch. With Rome, its time is omitted from its early Kingdom and Republic days. This seems like a bit of a double standard does it not? The first 1500 years of Sumer's existence does not fall within what we would consider an empire. As well, should the Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire not be merged into one submission for the list? I understand historians gave them a different name, however, the people still considered themselves Roman as they were, it very much is a continuation, not a different entity.
What is an empire?
[edit]Please can a consensus be made on what an empire is, like a dozen people before me I implore some consensus to be made. Legendarycool (talk) 10:23, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
- I think inclusion on this list should rest on "do reliable sources say X was an empire" if yes it's on the list if no not. An empire is a term that's generally applied to things on a case by case basis and not based on a set of criteria, I feel like coming up with criteria for what an empire is would verge on OR. DervotNum4 (talk) 22:16, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- I would agree that coming up with our own criteria would be OR. However, at this point this page does not even match up with the "empires" template because people remove certain states if they do not explicitly have empire in the name despite academic consensus. Perhaps if they are not an empire in name (ex: Inca empire, British empire, etc.) and their main article does not refer to them as an empire somewhere (ex: Abbasid Caliphate, Qing dynasty, both of which was actually removed) they must be added only with citations. digiulio8 talk contribs 17:55, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
- That would work. DervotNum4 (talk) 18:01, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
- I would agree that coming up with our own criteria would be OR. However, at this point this page does not even match up with the "empires" template because people remove certain states if they do not explicitly have empire in the name despite academic consensus. Perhaps if they are not an empire in name (ex: Inca empire, British empire, etc.) and their main article does not refer to them as an empire somewhere (ex: Abbasid Caliphate, Qing dynasty, both of which was actually removed) they must be added only with citations. digiulio8 talk contribs 17:55, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
This list doesn't make any sense
[edit]Apparently puppet states with the word empire or an organization like the Hospitaller Knights are considered empires meanwhile Chinese dynasties that were very much empires are not included? This is why wikipedia is so unreliable, the editors' subjective biases affect the information shown. Like what are the islamic caliphates if not empires? but somehow the Empire of Vietnam is in the list. Please make it make sense 120.29.87.120 (talk) 14:52, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
- Now that I think about it, maybe this wikipedia page should be removed entirely. 120.29.87.120 (talk) 14:54, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
- Every entry should be supported by a citation saying that it's an empire. Binksternet (talk) 19:01, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
- The Umayyad Caliphate's wikipedia page literally says empire as its status not to mention the Chinese dynasties have all the requirements of being an empire but are not listed here. Are you trying to suggest the wikipedia pages of those actual empires be edited first to include the word "empire"? Your rule doesn't make any sense. 120.29.87.120 (talk) 03:13, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
- Missing the Kmer Empire, Champa Empire
- According to Google
- Lists of empires are often incomplete because defining what constitutes an "empire" is subjective and historical records are often incomplete or biased, leading to variations in which entities are included and the scope of their inclusion.
- Defining "Empire":
- Subjectivity-
- What qualifies as an empire? Some scholars rely on size, territory, or a specific type of government structure to define an empire, while others prioritize cultural or ideological impact. This leads to varying interpretations and inclusion of different entities.
- Lack of Uniform Criteria:
- There's no universally agreed-upon set of criteria to determine if a given entity qualifies as an empire.
- Context:
- For example, some regions may be considered to be under the influence of another country or group but without being fully considered an empire.
- Historical Context and Sources:
- Incomplete Records:
- Historical records are often incomplete, biased, or simply don't exist for some areas or time periods. This makes it difficult to accurately assess and compare the extent and nature of different "empires".
- Focus on Major Empires:
- Historians often focus on larger, more well-known empires and neglect smaller or less significant ones, leading to an imbalance in the lists.
- Perspective:
- Different groups have different viewpoints on what constitutes an empire and what they want included in a list
- Language:
- Some languages may be lost with time, which can make historical data more difficult to obtain and interpret
- This post is long enough, but historians often don't include Micro-Empires, Non-State Empires, Cultural Empires
- EJKP (talk) 17:26, 12 March 2025 (UTC)
- I don't understand the point you're trying to make. DervotNum4 (talk) 17:48, 12 March 2025 (UTC)
- The Umayyad Caliphate's wikipedia page literally says empire as its status not to mention the Chinese dynasties have all the requirements of being an empire but are not listed here. Are you trying to suggest the wikipedia pages of those actual empires be edited first to include the word "empire"? Your rule doesn't make any sense. 120.29.87.120 (talk) 03:13, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
Recent empires
[edit]Why is there no mention of the Soviet Empire, the New Russian Empire under Putin, the American Empire, and its expected demise under Trump? These are highly relevant topics. Why are these omitted? Thanks for answering. 2001:569:BCE6:D600:114C:84C6:8C4D:D9AA (talk) 22:56, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
- Who defines them as empires in the first place? And who claims that Donald Trump would cause the end of American imperialism? Dimadick (talk) 13:24, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
- As much as I agree with you of America being an empire, our policy requires sources regardless of how obvious of a fact it is. Rager7 (talk) 22:57, 19 February 2025 (UTC)
Establishing criteria for inclusion or moving towards deletion
[edit]There are lots of complaints in this talk page about why this list is bad and should perhaps be deleted, but a "list of empires" page is definitely something that people will come looking for, so it seems reasonable to try to clean it up. Maybe a good first step would be to establish in the lede what an "empire" is for purposes of inclusion in this list? As it is, this list is a collection of articles that someone thought kinda fit with a lot of odd corner cases, e.g. British Raj, which in its article is listed as "sometimes called the Indian Empire, though not officially". If we can't give a solid, relatively neutral standard for inclusion this article is going to cause a lot of extremely bad arguments.
Obviously "empire" is a loaded term with a lot of baggage, so maybe we could make reference to other Wikipedia articles? This page could point to articles which
1. are about real world political entities;
2. are called "empires" explicitly in their articles or titles as a result of broad consensus among historians, e.g. Mughal Empire counts, British Raj does not;
3. possibly meet some other requirements for inclusion based on notability, e.g. must have lasted some number of years, be of a certain size, threshold for historical certainty in existence/dates/rulership (excluding e.g. the Xia Dynasty), etc.
Something like this. Otherwise it should be nominated for deletion --- Empire also lists empires and presumably has a lot more eyes on it. Taklpeidjqkwlj (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- As previously stated an entree should only be on this list if reliable sources reffer to them as such. As it stands most of the entrees on the list don't have any citations on them and instead rely on the pages they link to, this should be fixed. DervotNum4 (talk) 22:48, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
Regarding the citation needed tags on the page
[edit]Recently I've gone through this page and tried to add citations to all the entries, and I have done bar a few which I've left citation needed tags on. I am posting a list of the entrees with those tags and some details about my inability to find a source for them.
- Chenla, looked around JSTOR for a source supporting this one and couldn't find it. From what I can tell Chenla is the predeccessor to the Khmer Empire and might have been put on this list by virtue of that (if so it should be removed)
- German Empire (1848–1849), this is one that I'm pretty sure existed but I've just had trouble finding a source for it for three main reasons, 1 - It seems to be quite obscure, having existed for only about a year. 2 - it shares its name with the German Empire thus making searching up articles about it much harder. 3 - all the valid sources on its page were to German books and articles and I can't read German. If a German reader could thumb through those for confirmation that would be great.
- Goryeo, couldn't find an entry for it being an empire on JSTOR, its page seems to indicate that it was organised like an empire but not that it was an empire.
- Empire of Great Fulo, is an odd one because "Empire of Great Fulo" gave zero results on JSTOR whereas just about every other page with empire in the title gave some results, there were also only one result for Denanke, which did not say it was an empire. The two Cambridge University Press sources on its page yielded nothing related to empires. Most of the page seems to be based off of a single French book, as I can't read French I could not verify the empire's name. Someone who can read French looking through the book would be good.
- Shu Han, this was a rump state of the Han empire, but that does not automatically make it an empire and I was unable to find a source for it being one on JSTOR.
- Singhasari, couldn't find a source for this one being an Empire on JSTOR, could be sources elsewhere though
- Tây Sơn dynasty, this was an imperial dynasty of Vietnam, as it stand an imperial dynasty is not the same as an empire, with the imperial dynasties of China almost all of them are also reffered to as Qing Empire, Ming Empire, Han Empire, etc, I have found no sources calling vietnam the "Tây Sơn Empire" but they could exist I only checked on JSTOR