Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Horror Films (Special Mention) (2) Vampire Horror

Screenshot of Christopher Lee as Dracula in the 1958 film (public domain image from Internet Archive)

 

 

(2) VAMPIRE HORROR

 

Vampire horror films originate among the first horror films – and indeed in the dawn of the film industry itself.

My pet theory is that this is the product of happy coincidence between the publication (and popularity) of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897 and the origins of the film entertainment industry, particularly in Hollywood.

Dracula was theatrical in its very conception – not surprisingly given Stoker’s background in theatre – and hence readily cinematic for adaptation. Dracula often reads like a play – and indeed Stoker himself adapted it as one in its first year of publication.

After that, you have the 1922 film Nosferatu directed by F.W. Murnau, infamous as essentially a version of Dracula with the serial numbers filed off, before the iconic cinematic incarnation of Dracula with Bela Lugosi in the title role in 1931.

From there, the rest is vampire horror film history – whether featuring Dracula himself (including Christopher Lee being as iconic in the role as Lugosi) or any number of vampires drawn from an almost infinite variety of vampire folklore, including the folklore attached to Dracula in the novel or its adaptations.

As with my SF horror special mention, I’ll probably flesh this out but for now my vampire horror film top ten on the spot:

 

1 – LET ME IN (2010)

 

Presently sixth place in my Top 10 Horror Films – you can read more about it (and vampire horror films in general) there

 

2 – THE HUNGER (1983)

 

One of the more ‘artsy’ vampire horror films out there – with a cast of beautiful people (Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon). Based (loosely) on a novel by Whitley Streiber, it features a love triangle between a doctor specialising in ageing research and a vampire couple.

 

3 – THE KEEP (1983)

 

Vampires and Nazis – what more do you want? How about Gandalf vs Dracula? (Well, before Gandalf facing off with Dracula actor Christopher Lee as Saruman in the Jackson Lord of the Ring films).

Okay – technically it’s not a vampire (or Dracula) but something posing as one, adapted from the novel by F. Scott Wilson. Still, I’m counting it as another of the more ‘artsy’ vampire horror films out there, albeit somewhat lacking in coherence for anything but cult following. Some big names among its actors – including Ian McKellan obviously for my Gandalf vs Dracula joke.

 

4 – FRIGHT NIGHT (1985)

 

Probably my favorite vampire film to watch – classic pulp fun! What do you do when a vampire becomes your next door neighbor? Call on the celebrity film vampire hunter turned late night horror TV host, of course.

 

5 – THE LOST BOYS (1987)

 

Classic 80s vampire film, albeit trying a little too much too be cool for my taste and not as fun as Fright Night, that other classic 1980s vampire film.

 

6 – LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM (1988)

 

Stoker strikes again! A film adapted from his 1911 novel – I suspect very loosely, borrowing from his more famous novel to feature snake-vampires in a pagan cult to a snake-god. Snakes for the snake-god! Slither in!

 

Directed by Ken Russell in his characteristic controversial flamboyant or psychedelic style – not to mention kinky, hence coiling itself deep in my psyche

 

7 – BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992)

 

Apocalypse Now in Transylvania!

(Amusingly, Kim Newman did a short story doing just that inspired by the film).

Yes – that’s a quip based on the same director, Francis Ford Coppola, but captures the same cinematic visual style he brought to both. Also – it wouldn’t take too much to rewrite it as Apocalypse Now, except going upriver in Transylvania to take out Dracula.

That said – it’s still my favorite cinematic adaptation of Dracula, albeit playing somewhat loose with the novel at times, and Gary Oldham assumes a place close to Lugosi and Lee as iconic depictions of Dracula.

 

8 – FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996)

 

A vampire horror film by Robert Rodriguez (and Tarantino) so iconic that it has spawned a whole franchise – mostly lacklustre film sequels but I liked the TV series adaptation.

Gangster criminals on the run in Mexico vs stripper vampires? What more could you want? Well, apart from Salma Hayek’s Santanico Pandemonium, whose snake dance will be hot-branded in my psyche forever.

 

9 – 30 DAYS OF NIGHT (2007)

 

Technically this should be in my comic book films as it is based on a comic series of the same name but it’s one of my favorite vampire horror films to watch so I’m ranking it here instead.

The title says the plot and premise – vampire congregate on the Alaskan town of Barrow for an all you can eat buffet opportunity of the titular thirty days of night in the depths of winter.

 

10 – ABIGAL (2024)

 

My present wildcard tenth place entry in my Top 10 Horror Films as best horror film of 2024 – you can read about it there.

 

HONORABLE MENTION

 

(2000) SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

 

Speaking of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, the premise of this film is that it got a lot more real than you’d think. Willem Dafoe shines as usual, as does John Malkovich.

 

(2021) BLOOD RED SKY

 

Putting the red into red-eye flight when hijackers take a plane with a surprise among the passengers.

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Best & Worst Roman Emperors (3) Best: Aurelian

Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome: Crisis of the Third Century

 

 

(3) BEST: AURELIAN –

NON-DYNASTIC / CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY

(270 – 275 AD: 5 YEARS 3 MONTHS)

 

Restitutor Orbis and Sol Invictus, the Restorer of the World and the Unconquered Sun.

 

“Flash

Ah-ah

Saviour of the universe

Flash

Ah-ah

He’ll save every one of us

Flash

Ah-ah

He’s a miracle

Flash

Ah-ah

King of the impossible”.

 

Really, I could just continue with the lyrics of Queen’s Flash Gordon theme song for the rest of this entry…and I will!

 

“He’s for every one of us

Stand for every one of us

He’ll save with a mighty hand

Every man, every woman, every child with a mighty Flash.

 

Flash

A-ah!

Flash

A-ah!

He’ll save every one of us.

 

Just a man, with a man’s courage

He knows nothing but a man

But he can never fail

No one but the pure in heart may find the golden grail

Oh-oh-oh

Oh-oh-oh-oh”

 

Aurelian, Aurelian, we love you

But we only have five years to save the Roman Empire!

 

It was the darkest depths of the Crisis of the Third Century, the Roman Empire was on the brink of doom as Germanic barbarians and Sassanid Persians rampaged deep within it, while the empire itself had broken into three parts, the western and eastern parts all but seceding as or conquered by the Gallic Empire and Palmyrene Empire respectively.

And then Aurelian became emperor.

“As emperor, he won an unprecedented series of military victories which reunited the Roman Empire after it had nearly disintegrated under the pressure of barbarian invasions and internal revolts…During his reign, he defeated the Alamanni after a devastating war. He also defeated the Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi. Aurelian restored the Empire’s eastern provinces after his conquest of the Palmyrene Empire in 273. The following year he conquered the Gallic Empire in the west, reuniting the Empire in its entirety.”

Or in the characteristic eloquence of Edward Gibbon, “every instant of that short period was filled by some memorable achievement. He put an end to the Gothic war, chastised the Germans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain out of the hands of Tetricus, and destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had erected in the East on the ruins of the afflicted empire”.

All under the guise and wearing the mask of Sol Invictus, the divine Unconquered Sun. Yeah – that’s right, the same deity of Emperor Elagabalus, but cool and badass in battle from one end of the empire to the other rather than dirty dancing around an altar.

I can’t resist quoting Dovahhatty on Aurelian, as he transcends mere Youtube and becomes art:

“The empire was now at the mercy of evil and chaos, enemies within and abroad, tearing it apart. And in these darkest of times, the greatest of all men arose…Aurelian. At the start of the crisis, he enlisted in the legions to serve Rome when she needed him most. Battle after battle, he defeated Rome’s enemies with talent and skill never seen before. Emperor after emperor he served, killing barbarians and traitors alike, always loyal and victorious.”

The preceding emperor chose Aurelian to be his successor on his deathbed – “With tears in his eyes, Claudius begged Aurelian to save Rome as its emperor with his last dying breath. For God and Empire, he put on the mask, marching on Italy and deposing the usurper Quintillus. When the Vandals dared invade his home, he marched back and slaughtered every last one of them. And as the Germans invaded Italy itself, he crushed their hordes against the ocean, denying them any mercy”.

“Once in Rome, he restored the economy from decadence, cleansing the city of all corrupt senators. To make Rome eternal, he ordered built the Aurelian walls, so that it would stand a thousand years more. After decades of terrorizing the Danube, Aurelian crushed the Goths and delivering justice to Cniva. For the empire’s sake, he evacuated the citizens of Dacia, strengthening the Danube against invasion”.

“Sailing east, Aurelian gathered his cavalrymen and slaughtered Zenobia’s army, making her flee away. Palymyra was then destroyed for all time, Zenobia captured before fleeing to the Sassanids”

“Returning west, he defeated Tetricus’ legions of traitors, making him bow again to the light of Rome. Restoring the empire from the brink of collapse, Aurelian was acclaimed Restitutor Orbis, the Restorer of the World…In only five glorious years, Aurelian had made Rome one empire with one emperor under one god”.

Sadly however, we come to Dovahhatty’s postscript – “Setting sail for the east, Aurelian engaged in one final campaign, seeking to destroy all of Rome’s enemies. But just as his unrivalled accomplishments made him a hero, so did it fill others with envy and resentment. As Aurelian built a world of good and order, their evil and chaos grew more and more threatened. Through lies they convinced themselves, a perfect man could not be allowed to exist. In the darkest of nights, the Praetorians gave in to their evil and committed their worst crime…the world is stilled”

Alas, that’s right – his reign was only for a “short period”, as he was betrayed and assassinated while on his final campaign to settle scores with the Sassanid Empire. But for the short duration of his reign – only five years, cut short by his untimely assassination – he might well be top entry.

Even so, but for Aurelian, the empire may well have fallen in the third century, instead of falling in the fifth as it did, with its eastern half enduring for a millennium beyond that. His reign may not have quite ended the crisis, but it saved the empire and came close enough to give his successors the opportunity to end it.

 

EMPIRE-SAVER – THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL

 

MAXIMUS

 

Gothicus Maximus, Germanicus Maximus, Parthicus Maximus. Hell – Maximum Maximus, Restitutor Orbis. Okay – that last one is mine.

 

DEIFIED

 

Of course!

 

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT?

 

Given that I quoted the script from Dovahhatty’s video for Aurelian, Dovahhatty did indeed do right by Aurelian – as a chad so glorious you can’t ever see his face above his chin (not unlike Judge Dredd) and other historical figures have visions of him. However, I don’t quite so far as Dovahhatty, who ranks him as luckier than Augustus and greater than Trajan.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT SOL INVICTUS TIER?)

Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Horror Films (Special Mention) (1) SF Horror (Body Horror & Cosmic Horror)

Poster art for the 1979 Alien film with one of the most iconic SF horror film taglines – “In space no one can hear you scream.”

 

(1) SF HORROR (BODY HORROR & COSMIC HORROR)

 

My preferred horror films tend to be supernatural or SF horror, but I tend to rank the latter as SF rather than horror.

The dividing line is partly my idiosyncratic opinion that the science fiction elements predominate in SF, such as where the sources of horror are aliens or time-travelling killer robots, but is also partly to preserve the SF entries in my Top 10 Fantasy and SF Films.

Alien, The Terminator, and The Thing are my holy trinity of SF horror but since they are all entries in my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Films I won’t feature them again here.

Well, except to note that Alien was essentially haunted house horror IN SPACE, with a spaceship for a haunted house (neatly solving the so-called haunted house problem of why the protagonists simply don’t leave the house) and the titular xenomorph for the ghost. In a sense the whole franchise is this in one way or another.

The Thing is also another alien haunted house horror story, except with an Antarctic base as haunted house – with the haunted house problem posed by the onset of winter as well as by seeking to avoid the Thing infecting the outside world.

Alien and The Thing also illustrate the subgenres of body horror and cosmic horror that recur with SF horror.

The Terminator was essentially robot slasher horror – okay, technically cyborg slasher horror.

 

I’ll probably flesh this out (heh) but for now my SF horror top ten on the spot (consisting of entries not featured in my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Horror Films):

 

 

1 JOHN CARPENTER – THEY LIVE (1988)

 

Of course, John Carpenter’s SF horror magnum opus is The Thing (featured in my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Films) but I had to feature him here with this entry as one of my two leading SF horror directors.

 

Which brings me to my next entry…

 

2 DAVID CRONENBERG – THE FLY (1986)

 

Yes, it’s a remake – but what an entry! Also representative of David Cronenberg, the other of my two leading SF horror directors – and whose work embodies (heh) body horror, so much so that Rick and Morty referenced it (as Cronenberging their world when they turn Earth into a population of body horror monstrosities).

 

3 – INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978)

 

Yes – the original was in 1956 (based on the 1954 novel by Jack Finney and symbolic of Cold War paranoia) but this is my favorite of the “franchise”, particularly for its downer ending (with that shriek).

 

4 – PREDATOR (1987)

 

Probably more people think of this film and its subsequent franchise as SF action, but the Predator is essentially an alien slasher stalking humans for prey – not unlike the franchise with its audience at this point.

 

5 – TREMORS (1990)

 

Like the previous entry, probably more people think of this film (and its franchise) as comedic SF action but there’s enough of a horror element for me to count it.

 

6 – THE FACULTY (1998)

 

Fun spin on The Thing in a high school – including a fun spin on that blood sample test for the Thing.

 

7 – SLITHER (2006)

 

James Gunn does an SF horror alien invasion – with doses of body and cosmic horror.

 

8 – CLOVERFIELD / 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2008-2016)

 

I’m counting these as the same franchise for production rather than plot – the first is upated alien kaiju horror, the second is survival horror with one hell of a twist at the end.

 

9 – LIFE (2017)

 

Ah, Calvin – you rubbery rascal. Essentially another alien haunted house horror story IN SPACE.

 

10 – A QUIET PLACE (2018-2024)

 

Shhh – essentially alien slasher horror stalking by sound.

Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Horror Films (Special Mention)

One of the most iconic silhouettes in horror film history – Count Orlok from the 1922 German film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror directed by F.W. Murnau, essentially a version of Dracula

 

“Horror is a genre of fiction that exploits the primal fears of viewers” – “that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes”.

It’s also a genre in which I watch a lot of films, so I don’t just have a Top 10 Horror Films – I also have my usual twenty special mentions for my top tens, including sub-genre or thematic entries as about half (or more) of my special mentions.

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Best & Worst Roman Emperors (4) Worst: Honorius

Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome XVIII: Barbarians at the Gates

 

(4) WORST: HONORIUS –

THEODOSIAN DYNASTY

(395 – 423 AD AD: 28 YEARS 6 MONTHS 29 DAYS)

 

Chicken boy.

Dovahhatty summed him up best – “Honorius continued on living as he always had, laying around, babbling like an idiot as the world around him fell apart, but for one exception. One day Honorius turned it all around and decided, for once, to do the best possible thing he could do for the empire and died, after ruling Rome for a godawful thirty years.”

Getting up there as candidate for the worst Roman emperor ever, although you could easily shuffle him with Valentinian III – a.k.a Honorius II – for that spot, as they are so uncannily similar as to be interchangeable. I know I said it before for Valentinian III but it’s worth saying again for Honorius – each was a model of supine inactivity as the empire crumbled, except for betraying the loyal subordinate who was the one holding things together and stabbing that man in the back, as well as each with one of the two notorious sacks of Rome following shortly afterwards. Between the two of them and their inexplicably long reigns, almost 60 years in combination, they broke the western Roman empire and presided over its fall. It’s like the Roman Empire cloned its crappiest emperor, just so it could have him reign twice to ensure its own fall.

Now I have ranked Honorius as worse than Valentinian III as Honorius came first and you know how it is for the diminishing returns of sequels – Valentinian III hit all the same beats and even tried to have some new twists but it just wasn’t up to the original. Less flippantly, Valentinian III inherited the wreckage of the western empire from Honorius – in particular, the barbarians firmly ensconced within the empire as they had not been before Honorius. Not that Valentinian III would do or was ever going to do anything but wreck it further.

In the case of Honorius, the loyal subordinate was his general Stilicho, who had also been his regent and was his father-in-law. Now I have argued that Valentinian’s betrayal of Aetius was worse, but that is more a matter of his direct personal involvement – killing Aetius himself – being more despicable. The betrayal by Honorius of Stilicho was more destructive for the empire.

Firstly, at least Valentinian III waited until the threat of Attila and his Huns had receded from Italy (and the empire itself as it turned out) before his betrayal of Aetius. Honorius betrayed Stilicho when the threat of Alaric and his Visigoths to Italy and Rome was still very much dire. Secondly – and worse – Honorius’ betrayal of Stilicho strengthened that threat, both by removing Stilicho as the effective deterrent to it and with the defection of Stilicho’s foederati troops en masse to Alaric following Honorius’ massacre of their families as Stilicho’s camp followers.Thirdly, at least Valentinian’s betrayal of Alaric had the prompt consequence of Valentinian’s own assassination, where Honorius continued to burden the empire with his reign for another fifteen years.

Although Honorius didn’t have to wait that long for the sack of Rome which followed as a consequence of his betrayal of Stilicho. That betrayal led in a direct line to the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Visigoths in 410, which again was arguably worse than the corresponding sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455.

Firstly, the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 was a profound shock to the empire, the first such sack for eight centuries. While the sack of Rome by the Vandals was more destructive – such that the Vandals lent their name as a synonym for destruction ever since – it lacked that same sense of shock given the recent occurrence of the first sack. Secondly, at least Valentinian wasn’t still alive to injure Rome further with his continued existence for its sack in 455 AD. Thirdly, Honorius added insult to injury with his initial alarm that Rome had “perished” was a reference to his favorite pet chicken he had named Roma, where he was relieved to find out it was only in reference to the actual city. That story has been identified to be likely an apocryphal one, but it’s just too true to his character and symbolic with respect to it involving a chicken that I accept it anyway.

The only distinction between Honorius and Valentinian III that led to the former reigning fifteen more years after his betrayal of Stilicho was that Honorius was fortunate enough to have a capable general (and briefly co-emperor) in Constantius III to substitute for Stilicho propping up him and the empire. All Valentinian III had after Aetius was Petronius Maximus and we’ve seen how well that went – his own assassination and the sack of Rome.

Also, Honorius was literally the creepy uncle to Valentinian, albeit more to Valentinian’s mother (and his half sister), so I blame Honorius somewhat for how Valentinian turned out.

As usual, Edward Gibbon had the best snark about Honorius, which I can’t resist quoting in all its glory –

“His feeble and languid disposition was alike incapable of discharging the duties of his rank…the amusement of feeding poultry became the serious and daily care of the monarch of the West, who resigned the reins of empire to the firm and skilful hand of his guardian Stilicho…The predecessors of Honorius were accustomed to animate by their example, or at least by their presence, the valour of the legions; and the dates of their laws attest the perpetual activity of their motions through the provinces of the Roman world. But the son of Theodosius passed the slumber of his life a captive in his palace, a stranger in his country, and the patient, almost the indifferent, spectator of the ruin of the Western empire, which was repeatedly attacked, and finally subverted, by the arms of the barbarians. In the eventful history of a reign of twenty-eight years, it will seldom be necessary to mention the name of the emperor Honorius”.

 

EMPIRE BREAKER

 

Arguably the emperor who broke the empire more than anyone else.

I’m not going to even bother with imperial victory titles or deification – he had none and deserved less. I’m not sure the Senate was doing damnatio memoriae by then.

 

DID DOVAHATTY DO RIGHT?

 

Probably the virgin emperor Dovahhatty did best – and said it best, as evidenced by the quote I featured at the outset.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

F-TIER (FAIL TIER)

 

 

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Best & Worst Roman Emperors (4) Best: Hadrian

Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome XII: The Five Good Emperors

 

 

(4) BEST: HADRIAN –

NERVA-ANTONINE DYNASTY / FIVE GOOD EMPERORS

(117 – 138 AD: 20 YEARS 10 MONTHS 29 DAYS)

 

The definitive Roman emperor, exceeded as such only by my top two entries.

That’s notable in that he did not add any conquests to the empire, but instead withdrew from the conquests of his predecessor, particularly in Mesopotamia but to some extent in Dacia as well. Although the Romans themselves tended to esteem expansionism, Hadrian focused on the consolidation of the empire – “Hadrian preferred to invest in the development of stable, defensible borders and the unification of the empire’s disparate peoples”.

It is hard not to see that as the correct focus, as Hadrian presided over an empire at its peak strength and stability, without any adversary of real substance let alone rival or threat to it. Otherwise, it might have become overstretched (or more so) – and it’s possible that even his predecessor who had conquered Mesopotamia (from Persia) “may have thought his gains in Mesopotamia indefensible and abandoned them shortly before his death”.

As such, unlike other emperors in this top ten Hadrian did not even have to engage in any robust military action in defense of the empire – with one notable exception where he was very robust indeed with the one substantial adversary that revolted against the empire during his reign, which we’ll get to shortly.

However, Hadrian didn’t just sit on the empire’s laurels. He “also developed permanent fortifications and military posts along the empire’s border (limites, sl. limes) to support his policy of stability, peace and preparedness”, including the wall in Britain that famously bore his name. “Hadrian’s policy was peace through strength”, emphasised by discipline – “troops practised intensive, regular drill routines” and historian Cassius Dio “praised Hadrian’s emphasis on spit and polish as cause for the generally peaceful character of his reign”.

Fortifications weren’t all he built or rebuilt – Hadrian was famed for his building projects throughout the empire. To that end, Hadrian “travelled almost constantly throughout the empire” and “was to spend more than half his reign outside Italy”.

Hadrian was notoriously fond of Greece and the Greeks – the Historia Augusta opined he may have been “a little too much Greek” – and fond of a Greek in particular, the youth Antinous.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that but I would say that Hadrian deifying Antinous after the latter’s untimely death as a gay god was a step too far. Some men will literally apotheosize their dead catamite instead going to therapy.

The other notorious aspect of Hadrian’s regime was wiping Jerusalem and Judaea off the map in response to the Jewish Bar Kokhba Revolt. The Caledonian chieftain Calgacus as quoted (or concocted) by Tacitus had seen nothing yet when he said the Romans make a desert and call it peace – Hadrian showed how it was really done.

Hadrian was also initiated into in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries – which I’d like to think of as the classical equivalent of the Illuminati, or perhaps just the actual Illuminati as who knows how far back that secret society and their conspiracies go…?

 

EMPIRE BASER:

 

Arguably the most based of them all.

 

MAXIMUS:

 

I don’t think he claimed any – putting down revolts isn’t quite the same thing

 

DEIFICATION:

 

O yes – although his successor had to insist on it to the Senate

 

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT?

 

Yes – as another one of the five good chad emperors, aptly depicted in my feature image with the Wall from the Game of Thrones TV series – itself influenced by Hadrian’s eponymous wall in Britain.

I particularly like Dovahhatty’s joke about Hadrian being infra-gay – at the opposite end of the spectrum to Elagabalus being ultra-gay. Indeed, as I understand it, that joke reflects the dichotomy the Romans themselves drew for sexuality – between the active, dominant or masculine role and the passive, submissive or feminine role. Or to put it bluntly, between the giving and receiving roles. Men could engage in the former “without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status” – hence infra-gay rather than ultra-gay – although deifying your dead ultra-gay lover was probably pushing the boundaries of Roman social acceptability.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Horror Films (Complete Top 10)

Janet Leigh in the 1960 film Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock – one of the most iconic scenes in film, and yes, it’s horror

 

 

“Horror is a genre of fiction that exploits the primal fears of viewers” – “that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes”.

That always prompts for me the parallel with Greek tragedy and its quality of catharsis proposed by Aristotle through the pity and fear experienced by the audience – a quality that would apply equally to Shakespearean tragedy.

It seems ironic that I compare the high art of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy with the notoriously low art of horror films – sometimes I quip that there’s no such thing as a bad B-grade horror film, speaking to my fandom of the latter. Of course, that quip becomes less funny when I add that there’s no such thing as an A-grade horror film either. That’s an overstatement but perhaps not by too much.

However jarring it may be, I stand by that comparison between Greek or Shakespearean tragedy and horror films, at least as holding up in similar qualities of catharsis. And it wouldn’t take too much to tweak most Greek or Shakespearean tragedies into horror films – now there’s an idea for stark ravings or a top ten.

Back to that quip there’s no such thing as an A-grade horror film, while the horror film genre may be mostly cheap and exploitative (something of a virtue for studios seeking high returns on low costs or budding directors seeking to start careers), it does have surprising depth to it that is top ten-worthy of itself – not least in its various sub-genres or different national styles of horror.

“This is a very broad genre, it can go from tasteful and timeless tales of psychological suspense (a trademark of people like Alfred Hitchcock) to gross out horror (which tends to become campy). It often employs the supernatural but “normal” people are more than sufficient to scare audiences when used properly”.

I’ll be frank – my own tastes in horror lean towards dark fantasy or supernatural horror. I don’t tend to like more, well, mundane sources of horror, albeit with quite a few exceptions. I do like films that might be called SF horror – Alien, Terminator, The Thing – but I like them so much more as SF that I tend to rank them in my top Fantasy & SF Films. I will have a closer look at SF horror as a sub-genre in my special mentions, both here and for my Fantasy & SF Films.

And “despite being the subject of social and legal controversy due to their subject matter, some horror films and franchises have seen major commercial success, influenced society and spawned several popular culture icons.”

Anyway, these are my Top 10 Horror Films.

 

 

 

(10) ABIGAIL (2024)

 

As usual, my wildcard tenth place entry is my pick for best horror film of the present year – so best horror film of 2024

And yes – Abigail was the most fun I had in a horror film in 2024, even if it was cheesy as hell and not actually that scary because it tended to telegraph its punches, including the film’s central twist in its trailer.

But what can I say? I love a fun vampire film and this one was apparently loosely based – very loosely based – on the 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter.

Part of the fun was the ensemble cast. Giancarlo Esposito, who seems to be the go-to guy to add smooth badass vocal charm to film or animated series. Dan Stevens – who is always fun in horror film roles and should be in more of them. Melissa Barrera further establishing herself as horror film scream queen (although she’ll never eclipse the high queen Jenna Ortega).

It’s a film that was in quite a few top ten horror film lists for 2024. In the words of critic, BJ Colangelo from Slashfilm – “With a pitch-perfect ensemble cast, exquisitely timed laugh-out-loud moments of humor, a barrage of twists (or should I say pirouettes?), an unbelievable amount of blood, killer action set pieces…Abigail sets the bar as the most fun you can have with a horror movie of the year. In other words, Abigail is horror on pointe”.

Yes, those ballet references are on point – or should I say are on pointe.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD-TIER)

 

 

 

(9) THE RITUAL (2017)

 

What can I say? Despite mixed reviews, I’m a fan of this British supernatural folk horror film’s “monster”, which still has one of the most strikingly innovative designs I’ve seen in horror film, and with literal mindbending effect on its prey – or sacrificial victims – to match.

Not to mention the sense of forested claustrophobia and creeping doom for its British hiker protagonist and friends taking the worst shortcut ever through the weird woods of Sweden.

Ah yes, it’s that old fantasy or horror trope – don’t go into the woods. Or Sweden.

Apparently it’s (loosely) based on a novel of the same name by Adam Nevill – “and is best described as the love child of The Blair Witch Project and The Wicker Man”, except far better than the former, not least for seeing the horror stalking the protagonist hikers.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(8) THE BABADOOK (2014)

 

“Why can’t you just be normal?”

Well, I guess there’s no hope of that – the kid’s Australian. As is the rest of this psychological or supernatural horror film.

I say psychological or supernatural because the titular monster that haunts the widow protagonist – or is that antagonist? – struggling to raise the son she admonishes as lacking normalcy works on both levels, perhaps literally.

And that’s pretty much all one can say of this film’s premise and plot without spoiling it, except of course for the ultimate moral of the story that pop-up books are evil. And the meme that the Babadook is apparently gay because Netflix categorized him that way.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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The scene from the film for my feature quote in which the basic premise is explained to the heroine

 

(7) IT FOLLOWS (2014)

 

“It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear. And it absolutely will not stop…ever, until you are dead!”

No, wait – that’s the Terminator but it’s essentially the same as the “It” in It Follows. Think the Terminator as sex demon – and not in a good way, the way that would involve my fever dreams of Kristanna Loken’s T-X.

As in the shapeshifting demonic stalker, invisible to all but whom It is stalking, as STD allegory kind of way.

“You’re not going to believe me. But I need you to remember what I’m saying. Okay? This thing…it’s going to follow you. Somebody gave it to me, and I passed it to you, back in the car. It could look like someone you know, or it could be a stranger in a crowd. Whatever helps it to get close to you. It could look like anyone…but there is only one of it. And sometimes…sometimes I think it looks like people you love. Just to hurt you. […] You get rid of it, okay? Just sleep with someone as soon as you can. Just pass it along. If it kills you, it’ll come after me. Do you understand?”

That quote from the cowardly cad Hugh who infects the female protagonist with it pretty much sums up the film’s plot and premise. Otherwise the mythos of It – where It came from or anything meaningful about It other than Its relentless pursuit of Its prey, albeit at leisurely walking pace – remains tantalizingly unknown, adding to the creepiness.

The film received critical acclaim and grossed many times more than its shoestring budget – which is something of the appeal of horror films for studios – prompting a sequel presently in development, They Follows.

It has also achieved, dare I say it, a cult following “with many calling it a modern horror classic and one of the best horror films of the 2010s” – “smart, original and, above all, terrifying, It Follows is the rare modern horror film that works on multiple levels – and leaves a lingering sting.”

Part of those levels or that sting is the deeper thematic interpretations with respect to the source and symbolism of It – of which the most obvious is that STD allegory but which extends to other meanings.

As per its director – “I’m not personally that interested in where ‘it’ comes from. To me, it’s dream logic in the sense that they’re in a nightmare, and when you’re in a nightmare there’s no solving the nightmare. Even if you try to solve it…We’re all here for a limited amount of time and we can’t escape our mortality… but love and sex are two ways in which we can at least temporarily push death away.”

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Poster art for the film

 

 

(6) LET ME IN (2010)

 

It wouldn’t be a top ten list of horror films without at least one vampire film.

Although is it just me or are there very few vampire films that are genuine horror (as in genuinely scary)? Is it just that we’re too familiar with vampires (or that they’re too played out) for them to be a true source of horror? Sure, there are many vampire films, but they seem to me to be effectively films in (or at least combining) other genres. (And don’t get me started on the abomination that is Twilight).

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan of quite a few vampire films, which I rank in my special mentions (and indeed stake my top ten vampire films), but they tend to not quite cross my threshold of genuine horror.

And again, don’t get me wrong – I have been genuinely scared (in that I had actual nightmares – my horror litmus test!) by vampire novels, including the big daddy of them all, Dracula. (Although it probably helps if you read it in your childhood with a fever). Not to mention Stephen King’s Dracula in Maine, also known as Salem’s Lot.

However, it takes a return to the depiction of vampires as alien predatory entities to humanity to invoke horror on the screen for me – the shark-like predators of 30 Days of Night, or the Lovecraftian parasites in the TV series The Strain.

So that is why I found Let Me In a refreshingly revamped horror film – revamped also from its origin in the Swedish novel and film Let The Right One In. For one thing, there is just something inherently unsettling about child vampires – in this case, the vampire girl played by Chloe Grace Moritz. For another, the horror was not so much from any scares in it, but again more conceptual or existential – particularly in the relationship between the vampire girl and an alienated and bullied boy. In the words of TV Tropes, the film “is most notable for being simultaneously heartwarming and horrifying. Although it has few outright scares, it can be a deeply disturbing movie, as the main characters’ relationship invokes both young love and a temptation into darkness”.

You know it’s a good horror film, when Stephen King raves about it – “Let Me In is a genre-busting triumph. Not just a horror film, but the best American horror film in the last 20 years.”

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(5) THE HITCHER (1986)

 

Things are about to get a whole lot…schlockier (and more idiosyncratic) in my top five horror films. But as I like to say, there’s no such thing as a bad B-grade horror film. (Although I’m not entirely sure that there’s such a thing as an A-grade horror film either).

 

It’s not exactly high art – indeed, it’s mostly exploitative – but there’s just something about The Hitcher, a “road action-horror” film with Rutger Hauer in the title role (or Sean Bean if you saw the remake but you really should have watched the original).

The plot is simple enough – a young man driving across the United States narrowly escapes death at the hands of the titular hitcher, a travelling serial killer, but then finds himself in a weirdly co-dependent cat-and-mouse game with the killer. Like many slasher films, the killer (who goes by the name of John Ryder), is not supernatural, but seemingly comes close in his invulnerability and his ability to shadow the protagonist.

Or in this case, Hauer seems to be replicating his replicant role from Blade Runner (and as usual, Hauer is awesome in this). As I have argued with a friend who insists upon classifying every SF film as action – if you want to see a non-SF action The Terminator, see The Hitcher. (My usual sarcastic line when he states The Terminator is action not SF – “Really? The film with its entire premise as a cyborg travelling in time back from a future Robot War isn’t SF?!)

As a bonus (at least according to TV Tropes), the film was inspired by The Doors’ song Riders on the Storm – “There’s a killer on the road / His brain is squirming like a toad / Take a long holiday / Let the children play / If you give this man a ride / Sweet family will die”. Even more so as the film opens on the road in a storm and the Hitcher gives his name as John Ryder.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Film poster art

 

(4) DEAD & BURIED (1981)

 

And now for one of my true guilty pleasures, as things continue along the schlockier and more idiosyncratic vein of my fifth place entry – but hot damn, I have a soft spot for this film, ever since I stumbled upon it. Yes, it’s somewhat obscure and off the beaten cinematic track. It had a decent enough scriptwriting pedigree – written by the writers of Alien – but it didn’t perform well at the box office and was even initially banned as a “video nasty” in the United Kingdom, yet acquired something of a cult following.

It’s a zombie film with a bit of a difference – and a hell of a few twists, particularly a “twist ending that would give M. Night Shyamalan a run for his money”. Grisly mob lynchings start being committed against tourists passing through the small, sleepy peaceful New England town of Potter’s Bluff, only for the victims to then appear again in the town – while the sheriff investigates, drawn from one level of existential horror to another.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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The iconic film poster art

 

 

(3) JAWS (1975)

 

DA-DUM

 

The original and still the best shark horror movie – as well as the source of my enduring fandom of shark movies. And yet I still go swimming at the beach most days in summer and warm days in winter. Of course, there’s not too many giant great white sharks at my beach. I hope.

Based on the best-selling novel by Peter Benchley, it is one of those rare examples where the movie exceeds the book – because the film skipped all the small-town drama (Matt Hooper has an affair with Sheriff Brody’s wife?!) which one skipped over for the shark attacks when reading the book anyway.

It was fortuitous that the mechanical sharks, nicknamed Bruce, malfunctioned more often than not, as they were not terribly realistic (I’ve seen the one at the Hollywood Universal Studios tour), but more importantly, they forced director Steven Spielberg to substitute effects designed at suggesting the shark’s presence – including the now iconic ominous and minimalist orchestral theme by composer John Williams. These effects tend to be more tense (and haunting) than the actual appearance of the shark.

The plot – including effects, images and lines from the film – is ingrained into popular culture, revolving around the film’s antagonist, the giant great white shark preying on people in the waters of Amity Island. (Although the town’s mayor becomes something of a secondary antagonist, as he doesn’t seem to mind the shark chowing down on tourists so long as they’ve spent those delicious tourist dollars in the town first). A trio famously formed to hunt the shark – police sheriff Brody, marine biologist Hooper and everyone’s favorite insane professional shark hunter Ahab Quint.

“Now considered one of the greatest films ever made, Jaws was the prototypical summer blockbuster, with its release regarded as a watershed moment in motion picture history. Jaws became the highest-grossing film of all time until the release of Star Wars”.

Not bad for a simple shark horror movie.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(2) THE WICKER MAN (1973)

 

No – not the one with the bees, Robin Hardy’s original cult classic “creep-fest starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee – with a final reel that’s become an intrinsic piece of horror iconography”.

Of course, it’s slow-burn horror more in the sense of classical tragedy of creeping doom a la Euripides’ The Bacchae (and a stealth sequel to Caesar’s The Gallic Wars). Also a classic in the subgenre of folk horror – horror based on old folklore or old folkloric rituals, typically the pagan faiths of yore as here. While it was most common in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s surprisingly prevalent, particularly in the so-called folk horror revival in the 2010s – The Wicker Man is predecessor to 2019’s Midsommar.

A Variety article summed it up nicely – “It’s a film set on an island in the Scottish Hebrides, full of gnarly blokes in pubs, that turns out to be a secret sect of Celtic pagan worship. There are dances around the maypole and nymphs leaping through fire, and there is Christopher Lee, sinister in a benevolent sherry-club way, as if he were presiding over a kinky episode of “Fantasy Island,” as the commune’s lord and master. There’s period kitsch in “The Wicker Man,” yet the movie taps into something memorable: a death cult that wears a gleaming smile, as if it were the missing link between Charles Manson’s followers and the Jonestown horde. In spirit, the film takes off from the last scene of “Rosemary’s Baby,” with all those devil worshippers gathered for a party in the Castavets’ apartment — a terrifying vision of middle-class evil. Yet “The Wicker Man” lands, if anything, in an even more unruly place. Watching it, you can’t see the devil, but you can see the scary power of mass belief”.

Also – naked Britt Ekland (and Britt Ekland’s body double) with that infamous wall-slapping seductive dancing and singing.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Evil Dead poster art that I’d argue has transcended film iconography and become part of the Jungian collective unconscious

 

 

(1) EVIL DEAD (1981-1992 / 2013-2023)

 

Hail to the king, baby!

What else? The Evil Dead, the film and the following franchise, are not high art but they embody (in virtually every sense of that word) the archetypal B-grade horror movie in all its fun and glory, with tongue ever more firmly in cheek.

As stated by TV Tropes – “in 1979, a bunch of college dropouts got together in a cabin in Tennessee and made a film with a standard B-Movie plot; this film was The Evil Dead. The film, which was directed by Sam Raimi and starred (the chin himself) Bruce Campbell, succeeded through elaborate gore effects, slick cinematography, and sheer audacity to make enough money to warrant two sequels and get into the public consciousness”.

It is remarkable that a movie made by college dropouts on a shoestring budget – and effects that resemble claymation or plasticine at times – should have any impact upon public consciousness, let alone the enduring impact it and its sequels had upon mine.

“Join us, Ashleeeeey!”

You know you’re in a for a gory horror ride in the first movie, as the classic group of teenagers heads to the classic cabin in the woods. There they unfortunately locate the demonic Book of the Dead or Necronomicon (borrowing from Lovecraft) which was studied by the cabin’s previous occupant – and even more unfortunately play the tape of the recitation invoking the Sumerian demons (although something seems to have been stalking the cabin and woods even prior to that recitation). Those demons possess each of them in turn, turning them into the titular evil dead which then attack the others, until ultimately only one of them, Ashley, is left to fend off the demons (including his girlfriend). This first film works quite effectively as horror, particularly as Ashley or Ash becomes the lone survivor fending off the evil dead in the seemingly eldritch architecture of the cabin. I mean, it’s probably the frantic cinematography but how many rooms does that cabin have? It’s like the Tardis in there. And you know it’s going to get bloody (and oh boy does it ever) when a further playing of the tape reveals that the only way to destroy the evil dead is…bodily dismemberment! Ewww!

The second film (Evil Dead 2), a partial remake and partial sequel, was made with more money but lacks the pure horror of the first, as embracing the absurdity of the premise, it moved from horror to comedy (and Ash became more invulnerable to the demonic threat).

The third film (Army of Darkness) fully embraced all its cheesy goodness and rule of cool as it almost entirely abandoned horror altogether for dark fantasy comedy, yet utterly glorious as a result (while Ash completed his transition into a virtually indestructible superhero). It follows from the second film, which saw Ash magically transported through time to the Middle Ages (yeah, it’s like that), in medieval Europe or perhaps the Latin kingdoms of the Crusades, where he soon has to face off against an undead army. It had the biggest budget of the original trilogy, as well as being the most well-known and quoted, with its memetic one-liners.

The franchise saw a remake of the original film with the Evil Dead film of 2013 – decent enough but somewhat forgettable as lacking the same pulpy fun and tongue-in-cheek humor of the original. That changed dramatically with the fifth entry into the franchise, Evil Dead Rise in 2023, which returned to the spirit and style of the original trilogy (and Evil Dead mythos) but with its own fun twists – and also perhaps the only Deadite that’s strangely…arousing. Whose your mummy?

The franchise has also seen a TV series, comics adaptations, video games…and a theatre musical?

Groovy!

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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FILM – HORROR: TOP 10 (TIER LIST)

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(1) EVIL DEAD

(2) THE WICKER MAN

(3) JAWS

If Evil Dead is my Old Testament of horror films, then The Wicker Man and Jaws are my New Testament. I know that reverses the chronology of the actual films, but The Evil Dead does travel in time. Alternatively, it’s my Necronomicon of horror films.

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(4) DEAD & BURIED

(5) THE HITCHER

(6) LET ME IN

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(7) IT FOLLOWS

(8) THE BABADOOK

(9) THE RITUAL

X-TIER (WILD TIER) – for best entry from 2024

(10) ABIGAIL

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Best & Worst Roman Emperors (5) Worst: Valentinian III

Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome XIX: The Fall of Rome

 

(5) WORST: VALENTINIAN III –

THEODOSIAN DYNASTY

(425 – 455 AD: 29 YEARS 4 MONTHS 21 DAYS)

 

Getting up there as the worst Roman emperor ever, although you could easily shuffle him and his predecessor Honorius for that spot, as they are so uncannily similar as to be interchangeable.

Each was a model of supine inactivity as the empire crumbled, except for betraying the loyal subordinate who was the one holding things together and stabbing that man in the back, with each having one of the two notorious sacks of Rome following shortly afterwards. Between the two of them and their inexplicably long reigns – of similar length of 30 years each – they broke the western Roman empire and presided over its fall. It’s like the Roman Empire cloned its crappiest emperor, just so it could have him reign twice over to ensure its own fall.

In the case of Valentinian III, that loyal subordinate was his general Aetius – who defeated Attila the Hun’s invasion of Gaul. One could argue that his betrayal of Aetius was even worse than the corresponding betrayal of Stilicho by Honorius. Firstly, because he waited until Aetius had defeated the Huns and felt secure enough that he no longer needed Aetius. Secondly because the creep did it himself, the only time he ever drew a sword, striking down the unarmed Aetius and with a pack to back him up no less. And thirdly, he had the sheer hubris to boast that he had done well to dispose of Aetius in such a way, prompting a counsellor’s famous reply “Whether well or not, I do not know. But know that you have cut off your right hand with your left”.

Edward Gibbon summed it up best with this acid observation in his characteristic prose – “But the emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, who had reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage, abused this apparent security to undermine the foundations of his own throne by the murder of the patrician Aetius. From the instinct of a base and jealous mind, he hated the man who was universally celebrated as the terror of the barbarians and the support of the republic.”

And in the case of Valentinian III, the notorious sack of Rome following shortly afterwards was the Sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455 AD – although he wasn’t alive to see it as fortunately karma had kicked in and he had been killed by two of Aetius’ loyal followers, orchestrated by Petronius Maximus.

A disgrace to the proud name of Valentinian the Great, although Valentinian III hailed from that worst of classical Roman dynasties, the Theodosian dynasty.

“Valentinian’s reign is marked by the dismemberment” – DISMEMBERMENT! – “of the Western Empire; by the time of his death, virtually all of North Africa, all of western Spain, and the majority of Gaul had passed out of Roman hands. He is described as spoiled, pleasure-loving, and heavily influenced by sorcerers and astrologers and devoted to religion”. That’s right – Valentinian III, resorting to sorcery and astrology in the ghost dance of the Roman Empire.

That devotion to religion, of course being Christianity – somewhat inconsistent with the influence “by sorcerers and astrologers” – at least contributed to him giving greater authority to the Papacy, which might explain his only good decision, using Pope Leo as an envoy to Attila the Hun in the latter’s invasion of Italy, which succeeded (among other things) in persuading Attila to leave Italy without sacking Rome, never to return to attack Italy or the empire as it turned out.

 

RATING: 1 STAR*

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EMPIRE BREAKER

 

THE empire breaker, along with his predecessor Honorius

 

MAXIMUS

 

No, just no.

 

DAMNED

 

He should have been – I’ll take his assassination as damnatio memoriae.

 

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT ?

 

Dovahhatty ranks him aptly as virgin emperor in the heartbreaking final episode of the series on classical empire, The Fall of Rome.

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Best & Worst Roman Emperors (5) Best: Constantine

Dovahhatty – Unbiased HIstory of Rome XVI: Constantine the Great

 

(5) BEST: CONSTANTINE –

CONSTANTINIAN DYNASTY

(306 – 337 AD: 30 YEARS 9 MONTHS 27 DAYS)

 

“In this sign thou shalt conquer”.

Diocletian may have created the Dominate but Constantine…dominated it (heh).

It’s hard to go past Dovahhatty’s summation of Constantine’s greatness –

“Having ruled as Rome’s emperor for over three decades, he displayed wisdom and virtue, was never defeated in battle, defended the empire against barbarians countless times, reunited Rome after a terrible civil war, transformed Christianity into a Roman, civilizing faith, and gave the empire a new capital that would last for over a thousand years. And it is for these reasons, and a thousand reasons more, that history will forever remember him, as Constantine the Great.”

Although, as we’ve seen, that title of the Great was used by Roman chroniclers to signify the first of his name (as emperor) rather than greatness, in the case of Constantine the greatness also applies.

In the eastern Roman empire, “it became a great honor for an emperor to be hailed as a new Constantine; ten emperors carried the name”, including the last ever Roman emperor, Constantine XI.

That carried over in the west as well. The Holy Roman Empire “reckoned Constantine among the venerable figures of its tradition” and Charlemagne “used monumental Constantinian forms in his court to suggest that he was Constantine’s successor and equal”. Charlemagne was one of many monarchs or royal dynasties that claimed descent from Constantine – Geoffrey of Monmouth even claimed it for King Arthur. (Weirdly, Monmouth also had Caracalla as a king of Britain).

“The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire…He built a new imperial residence at the city of Byzantium and renamed it New Rome, later adopting the name Constantinople after himself…It subsequently became the capital of the empire for more than a thousand years, the later Eastern Roman Empire”.

He also proclaimed that the Praetorian Guard, by now a byword in assassinating the emperors they were meant to safeguard, would be ABOLISHED – the subject of the greatest sequence in the entirety of Dovahhatty’s Unbiased History of Rome, even if Constantine didn’t gloriously slaughter them all as depicted.

As for the usual beating back barbarians from the borders, Constantine drove back the Picts in Britain (having succeeded his father as emperor while they were both in Britain), as well as winning campaigns against the Franks and Alemanni on the Rhine, and the Goths and Sarmatians on the Danube. He also reoccupied most of the long-lost province of Dacia (in his campaigns on the Danube) and at the time of his death was planning a campaign against the Sassanids in Persia (to end their raids on the eastern provinces).

However, as Adrian Goldsworthy wryly points out, Constantine spent as much (or more) time fighting other Romans as the Tetrarchy collapsed into chaos and civil war. However, this was as (or more) important for the empire as defeating the barbarians at its borders – as Constantine reunited and restored the empire under one emperor.

It was also during these civil wars that Constantine embraced Christianity for himself and the empire – through the legend of the sign that literally came to him in a dream, the Chi Ro or Labarum that he then had placed on the shields of his soldiers before winning the famous Battle of the Milvian Bridge against the usurper Maxentius. “By this sign, thou shalt conquer” – and he did!

Constantine didn’t just become the first Christian emperor – he also became a saint, “one of the only saints to be canonised in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox & Anglican Churches”. Indeed, he was (and is) hailed as the ‘Thirteenth Apostle’, a pretty impressive feat for someone who had his eldest son Crispus and wife Fausta executed – which remains a black mark against his name.

 

EMPIRE-MAKER

 

Yes – only one emperor was truly the empire maker but Constantine gave it a makeover, enduring for a century in the west and more than a millennium in the east

 

MAXIMUS:

 

And how! Germanicus Maximus, Sarmaticus Maximus, Gothicus Maximus, Dacicus Maximus.

 

DEIFIED:

 

And sainted too, earning the double whammy of deification and canonization.

 

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT?

 

O yes – as chad with a video solely for his reign and one of the greatest sequences of his whole Unbiased History series, Constantine’s abolition of the Praetorian Guard. Also, did you not see Dovahhatty’s summation of Constantine I quoted in my feature.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (Special Mention – Complete)

 

I introduced my Top 10 Wars of History on the basis that I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, so it’s not surprising that I’ve also always found empires a fascinating subject of history, again from the fortunate perspective of being well removed from the sharp end of them – and have similarly ranked my Top 10 Empires of History.

But I don’t just have a top ten. As usual for my top tens, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions – where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty. My special mentions are also where I tend to have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.

 

 

Diachronic map of the main empires of the modern era (1492-1945) – by Nagihuan for Wikipedia “Colonial Empires” under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Declaration

 

(1) EUROPEAN EMPIRES

 

The definitive imperialism for most of the world – not least because it was the imperialism that defined the modern world, the first truly global imperialism that transformed the world from regional to global.

Indeed, so much so that imperialism is often defined exclusively as European imperialism, particularly when you throw in my next three special mentions as offshoots of it to broaden it to Western imperialism.

This ignores that empires predated European imperialism throughout the world, well before the existence or even the concept of the European nations behind it. A substantial part of the impact of European imperialism lies in how recent it is, eclipsing any predecessors, and the wounds it inflicted are still raw. No one seeks reparations from Roman or Mongolian imperialism.

It’s striking to think that decolonization or independence is within living memory for many of the subjects of European imperialism, particularly in Africa, with some empires clinging on into the 1970s (looking at you, Portugal ) or even beyond in legacy or some residual colonies (looking at you, Hong Kong).

Equally it ignores that many of the states that fought or fell to European imperialism were themselves empires, often aggressively or belligerently so. Indeed, I’d say all of them, at least for any polities that comprised more than one ethnic group or beyond tribes and tribal confederations. Even more homogenous or tribal polities tended to be imperial in nature over their own members, in the absence of any concept of participatory representation, where they were not actually imperial to or over their neighbors.

Ironically, it was European political concepts that undermined the default imperial state settings that applied elsewhere or prior to them, as they would the European empires themselves.

However, European imperialism was distinctive in a number of ways so as to distinguish it as the modern definition of imperialism. One is that very factor – that it is recent or modern. Another is that it consisted almost entirely of maritime empires, as opposed to the more usual territorial empires conquering adjoining or neighboring territories by land. Of course, they are not the only maritime empires in history, but those other empires either tended to be more mixed between maritime and territorial conquests or lacked the same reach (or both).

And that last point brings us to the most distinctive feature of European imperialism – its unprecedented scope, scale, and transformative force, particularly when viewed collectively, as it tends to be outside Europe.

In terms of scale and scope, it reached to every metaphorical corner of the globe, including an unparalleled command of the seas (and even skies), and to every continent, including Antarctica. Only a few countries remained independent of one European empire or another – and even then independence was often only nominal or more a balance of power between competing European nations or spheres of influence. It is not for nothing that of the top ten empires in history by land area or size, four of them are European.

And in terms of transformative force, we are living in the world it made – “to which we owe the development of transport and communication” as well as “the spread of science and technology”, industry and trade, and European culture and political ideologies. Not to mention the spread of European languages as global lingua franca – English above all, but also French and Spanish.

And yes – that transformative force had its negative aspects, which indeed tend to be the focus of contemporary perspectives on European imperialism to the exclusion of anything else. Although history is not a balance sheet, all European powers were quite prepared to resort to brutality when they had to, albeit some more so than others, or else they wouldn’t have had any empires.

Although the rest of the world tends to see European imperialism collectively – with some justice – that does conceal that there was not one European imperial power but several, as a general rule fiercely competitive with each other. Indeed, the fierce competition between European nations is often identified as a reason for European imperialism in the first place, as European technological and other advancement owed itself to European nations competing – and warring – with each other.

It also conceals that there was more than one European imperialism within what was, after all, a span of over at least half a millennium. A common historical classification is to divide European imperialism into two broad phases, albeit overlapping – as for example with the classification of the British and French Empires into their First and Second Empires which largely reflects those phases (although the Spanish and Portuguese Empires might arguably be divided into three phases).

In the first phase, from Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas in 1492 through to the early nineteenth century or so – often styled as the Age of Discovery – the subject of European imperialism was predominantly the Americas. European imperialism did extend to Africa and Asia but was limited – in Africa as tropical disease limited European encroachment into the continent’s interior (although European penetration of the continent’s coastline and the consequent Atlantic slave trade was damaging enough) and in Asia as its polities were mostly robust enough to resist direct conquest.

This phase was certainly marked by fierce competition between European powers, despite the early lead of Spain and Portugal, which cooperated with each other at least in dividing the world up into their respective spheres of influence, by papal mediation in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (although only after Portugal nudged the line further west to party it up in Brazil).

Other European nations disagreed as three others competed with the Spanish and Portuguese to round out the big five imperial powers in this phase – the British (or English prior to 1707), the French, and after they became independent of Spain, the Dutch. The British and French eclipsed the Spanish and Portuguese as they fought in what was no less than an Anglo-French contest for global supremacy, fought particularly in North America and India.

That phase came to end with the first wave of decolonization or wars of independence by their American settler states, although substantial parts of the Americas remained in European empires or spheres of influence.

While the second phase effectively began before the end of the first phase, it acquired its full force after the Napoleonic Wars in what is often styled as the Age of Imperialism or New Imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, as the European powers descended on Asia and Africa, the latter styled as the Scramble for Africa.

While they remained competitive to the point of occasional conflict in this phase, the European powers were remarkably cooperative in negotiating their empires or spheres of influence, although a large part of that was necessity from British naval supremacy or Pax Britannica

European imperialism deserves and will get its own top 10 (and special mentions) to do it justice, not least for ranking the individual European imperial powers. The focus of this entry are the classic eight continental European imperial powers and their empires- British (who also rank third in my Top 10 Empires), Spanish (who also rank fifth in my Top 10 Empires), French, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians, Germans and Italians.

Some might note that this omits a significant European empire, indeed the largest apart from the British – but this was distinctive and separate enough to earn its own special mention entry, as were the two other substantial non-European imperial powers in the Age of Imperialism.

A proper tier ranking of the classic eight will await their own top ten list for European empires, but Britain was obviously top dog in this phase of imperialism. Spain, which had been the British Empire of the first phase, was knocked down to mid-tier when most of its Latin American empire won its independence, then to bottom tier when defeated by the United States in the Spanish-American War.

France, the Netherlands, and Portugal all rank in high or mid-tier, with Belgium ranking in low tier for its abominations in the Congo – and latecomers Germany and Italy bringing up the rear in bottom-tier with the scraps left by other empires. Italy earned the particular humiliation of being defeated by Ethiopia, so that the latter remained the only African state to retain independence (apart from the American founded state of Liberia).

However, the charges of European imperialism don’t stop with the end of formal European empires, as European powers are charged with simply substituting neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism -“which leverages economic power” (or other forms of power and influence) “rather than military force” (or direct means of control) “in an informal empire”.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

Russian Empire by Milenioscuro for Wikipedia “Russian Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

(2) RUSSIAN & SOVIET EMPIRES

 

Bizarro European empire and third largest empire by size in history, such that even the residual state of Russia remains the largest nation in the world.

Why bizarro European empire? Well, for one thing, as J.M. Roberts pointed out in Triumph of the West, it’s always been unclear where the West ends going east – and in particular on which side of the line of Western civilization the Russian state falls.

For another, the Russian Empire was distinct from other European empires, but ironically its closest parallel is with the United States, albeit still weirdly so, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed when he presciently predicted them – in 1835! – as the future global powers on parallel but opposing paths:

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles which nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained with the ploughshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

The primary distinction with other European empires was that, with one notable exception, the Russian Empire was not a maritime empire. Indeed, it was famously landlocked, with an equally famous strategic policy of seeking unobstructed warm-water ports.

Instead, it was a good old-fashioned territorial empire, expanding eastwards from European Russia across Siberia and central Asia, hence its parallel with the United States and its westward ‘manifest destiny’ or territorial expansion (in both cases to the Pacific).

Unlike the United States, it had more arguable justification in terms of its security against historical invasions of nomadic tribe from the steppes, most famously the Mongols – but like the United States (and unlike European maritime empires), it absorbed and retained its territorial conquests or expansion into itself as a nation.

Ultimately, the Russian empire’s eastward expansion brought it to the Pacific Ocean but more fundamentally, to the borders of an Asian state armed with firearms and robust enough to resist it – Qing China, in its prime and powerful enough to defeat Russia in the Sino-Russian border conflicts of the seventeenth century.

Of course, Qing China famously waned in the nineteenth century, while Russia had grown stronger such that it was again able to make encroachments eastwards, but was confronted by Britain and the new rising power in north-east Asia – Japan.

However the Pacific saw that one notable exception for Russia’s maritime empire – as a latecomer in the first phase of European imperialism in the Americas, most famously claiming Alaska (equally famously bought from them by the United States in 1867) but also extending to California and even Hawaii before receding back.

The Russian Empire also expanded southwards through central Asia, but was again blocked by Britain in the so-called Great Game, as well as more regional empires such as the Ottoman Empire. That saw the southernmost extent of the Russian Empire, which did not scramble for Africa like other European empires and was constrained by its naval limitations from extending elsewhere in Asia.

It also expanded westwards into Europe itself, taking Finland from a waning Sweden and partitioning territory (with Prussia and Austria) from the waning Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Despite all this, the Russian imperial state came crashing down like the three other great imperial states of Europe brought down by the First World War – Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – but more dramatically or spectacularly as it was succeeded by the world’s first communist state, the Soviet Union.

As a communist state, the Soviet Union styled itself as anti-imperialist, but ironically closely emulated or even exceeded the imperialism of its predecessor – arguably in the tradition of two other states that styled themselves as anti-imperialist as they created empires of their own, the United States and Japan.

Initially Soviet imperialism was limited within the former Russian empire itself, but with its rise to superpower escalated to reclaiming its predecessor’s lost territory and then to extending further than the Russian empire ever did, except across the Pacific to the Americas – starting westward to the heart of Europe with its subject satellite states after the Second World War, opposed by the United States in the Cold War, fulfilling de Tocqueville’s prediction.

It also renewed the Russian sphere of influence in north-east Asia, although that fell afoul of a resurgent China, ironically a rival communist state originally within (and a product of) that influence.

The most dramatic success of Soviet imperialism was when it graduated from the traditional territorial empire of its predecessor to the maritime empire of European empires, ironically as those empires were scrambling out of Africa and elsewhere – indeed expanding its influence under its continued anti-imperial guise of supporting decolonization or ‘liberation’ movements from those empires, with overlapping successes in Cuba, south-east Asia and Africa.

Despite all this – and accelerated by one imperial expedition too many into Afghanistan – the Soviet state came crashing down in the end of the Cold War, but not before President Reagan had famously characterized it as the “evil empire”, an epithet much relished by its east European subjects who in turn revolted against it in its death throes.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 


The American Empire at its greatest extent (1898-1902) in terms of directly controlled territory by Red4tribe for Wikipedia “American Imperialism” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

(3) AMERICAN EMPIRE

 

“Pick a spot…Any spot. I guarantee you we will have American troops there within thirty years. The Empire that you dreamed of while reading Tacitus” – The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Pax Americana – you’re living in it.

Perhaps the most paradoxical empire – or least the subject of the most vexed debate as to what extent it is an empire at all or whether it is imperialism without an empire, arising from the pervasive sense of its own exceptionalism.

A large part of that is that the United States has traditionally styled itself as anti-imperialist, or in the phrase of Thomas Jefferson, “an empire of liberty”, from its very founding in revolution against the British Empire through its traditional foreign policy encapsulated in the Monroe Doctrine of opposing European imperialism in the Americas – or American intervention beyond the Americas.

However, the United States would hardly be alone in pursuing imperialism while styling itself as anti-imperialist or even doing so in the name of anti-imperialism, as ironically two of its most formidable opponents did the same – Japan and the Soviet Union.

So the very idea of American imperialism or empire, let alone their nature, is one that meets substantial resistance.

However, there was at least the territorial expansion of the United States, as it manifested its destiny westwards across the continent from the very outset, ultimately to the Pacific – to the cost or destruction of all native American peoples in its path, and about half of Mexico.

Again ironically, that was parallel to the eastwards territorial expansion of the Russian empire across Siberia to the Pacific – as Alexis de Tocqueville observed as the basis for his prediction of them as opposing world powers.

Unlike the predominantly maritime empires of other European powers, the Russian empire was predominantly a territorial empire – and so , it is argued, was the United States, particularly as similarly to the Russian Empire and unlike European maritime empires, it absorbed and retained its territorial conquests or expansion into itself as a nation.

Whether one accepts the territorial expansion of the United States as imperialism or an empire, there can be no argument that the United States indeed was or had a formal empire for at least part of its history, as in the map in my feature image, albeit as a latecomer to the Age of Imperialism (or New Imperialism) in the late 19th century.

And it went about being a latecomer in the smartest possible way – it simply picked up someone else’s empire at a bargain bin sale of its own creation, the best pickings of the remaining Spanish empire in the Spanish-American War of 1898.

In that war, the United States acquired the Philippines (while also crushing the Philippines independence movement in the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1902) as well as Puerto Rico and Guam – both of which it retains as territories today (while the Philippines became independent in 1946).

It also effectively acquired Cuba as a de facto colony even when it did not formally occupy Cuba. Even before that, it had extended its manifest destiny beyond the continent into the Pacific, as it annexed Hawaii (and afterwards to other Pacific islands, such as American Samoa).

However, when people refer to American imperialism, they tend not to be referring to its limited formal empire – or at least not just referring to it – but its informal empire, “the expansion of American political, economic, cultural, and media influence beyond the boundaries of the United States”.

That is, hegemony or sphere of influence in more positive terms, neo-imperialism or neo-colonialism in more negative terms, “which leverages economic power rather than military force in an informal empire” or means of control other than formal annexation or rule. Of course, that may still involve military force when it needs to, but generally neo-imperialism by definition proposes more subtle or indirect means of coercion or influence.

My own view tends towards that of imperialism without an empire – whether or not the United States has comprised a formal or informal empire, its foreign and military policy has unquestionably been imperialistic, at least at certain times and places.

Foremost among those times and places would be its southern neighbors at, well most times actually, because the United States has been at its shabbiest dealing with Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine may have been anti-imperialist towards European powers in the Americas, but not so much for the United States – indeed, it implies the Americas to be their exclusive sphere.

The influence of the United States extended well beyond the Americas with its rise to world power in the world wars, not least in its system of alliances, in what was (or is) dubbed the American Century – indeed, to a world-encircling extent exceeding even that of the British Empire, which it is frequently portrayed as inheriting or succeeding.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

Map of the Japanese Empire at its peak in 1942 (although it did extend its territory in China in 1944-1945) by San Jose for Wikipedia “Japan during World War II” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

(4) JAPANESE EMPIRE

 

One of the oldest empires but also one of the newest – which, among other things, makes it one of the oddest.

There were older empires than Japan, whose mythology traces its imperial line to legendary founder Jimmo in 660 BC, although more conventional history tends to trace its origins “in the late Kofun period of the 3rd-6th centuries AD”. However, it is the oldest empire still existing, at least in retaining an emperor, the last state to do so, albeit as ceremonial head of state.

Which brings us to the one of many oddities of Japan’s empire – that for the vast majority of its history, Japan had an emperor without an empire.

Firstly, in the sense that Japan was a homogenous polity that mostly kept to itself, apart from importing cultural influences, mostly from China – contrary to how empire is typically defined as one nation or people ruling over another. In that sense, the Japanese emperor was a somewhat inflated term for monarch, albeit a cult figure in the native Japanese religion of Shinto.

Secondly, in the sense that for a substantial part of its history, the emperor wasn’t even that, but a lame-duck monarch where de facto power was held by military aristocrats in what is generally known as the shogunate. Ironically, it is during one of these periods that Japan actually embarked on empire in the conventional definition of the term – its invasions of Korea in 1592-1598.

Japan was also one of the newest empires, a latecomer in the Age of Imperialism – and as the only Asian imperial power of that otherwise exclusive club of European empires, seen as somewhat of a gate crasher or interloper, although ironically its primary crash course was for collision with the other non-European imperial power, the United States.

Japan narrowly escaped being the subject of an imperial power or powers that was the fate of the rest of Asia. When European imperialism first tentatively reached east Asia about three centuries before in the Age of Discovery, Japan decided it was having none of that and famously sealed itself off in isolationism.

That couldn’t last forever, as European imperialism had bigger guns in the Age of Imperialism – and the United States forced Japan to open up with classic gunboat diplomacy (in the literal form of a fleet commanded by Commodore Perry), starting Japan’s love-hate relationship with the United States as an object of admiration and awe but also potential hostility and rivalry.

That saw Japan revive its emperor within a new centralized government in the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and adapt all those features of European nations that led to their imperial power – in the smartest possible way by following world leaders in their fields, notably building their navy on expertise from Britain and their army on expertise from France, before swapping out the latter for Germany after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

And what more distinctive European feature was there than an empire? So Japan set about acquiring that too – modestly at first, from its immediate neighbors, starting with the Ryukuan island kingdom in 1879. By 1894, it was powerful enough to join in that other distinctive European feature in the nineteenth century – pawning Qing China, which it did in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, acquiring Taiwan, and continuing to use China as its punching bag thereafter.

However, its victory and claims against China saw it clash with European imperial powers keen to maintain the balance of power and their spheres of influence there – foremost among them Russia, looming largest against Japan in north-east Asia. That aligned Japan with Britain, which was similarly concerned with Russia, and they sealed their alignment with a formal alliance in 1902 – which allowed Japan to take on Russia directly and win in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

The spoils of victory in that war saw Japan revisit its ambitions in Korea, but this time successfully annexing it – where they were notoriously brutal ruling over it. Not Belgium-brutal, but still up there even on the scale of brutality in the Age of Imperialism.

Japan made more gains at the expense of Germany in and after the First World War – and at the expense of increasing hostility with the United States, prompting Britain to abandon the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

Which brings us perhaps to most of the oddities of the Japanese Empire, as it sowed the seeds of its rise to one of the largest territorial empires in history at the same time as the seeds of its decline as one of the shortest-lived empires in history. All the while on the path of evil empire, ultimately one that was dying and insane.

Yet on that path and even before, certainly from the Russo-Japanese War, Japan styled itself as anti-imperialist, in the tradition of those two other states that styled themselves as anti-imperialist while engaging in imperialism of their own, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Of course, for Japan this was against European imperialism – propagandizing their own imperialism with slogans such as “Asia for the Asians” and as the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, although they weren’t too big on the co- part of that title, more their own prosperity sphere. Those claims were not without some justice, but they were also with brutality and violence that eclipsed those of European imperialism as well as making their previous occupation of Korea seem like a picnic

Ultimately the Japanese Empire fell to defeat, primarily by the United States in the Pacific War – and Japan was not only shorn of its empire, but itself occupied by an American shogunate, albeit one that proved extraordinarily and unexpectedly enlightened in its role in the equally extraordinary and unexpected revival of Japan as an economic superpower, for a period second only to the United States itself. Which of course has seen Japan also accused of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism, substituting economic power for military victory in controlling other nations.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

Europe at the height of Axis success by Gorak ten-en for Wikipedia “Nazi Germany” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(5) NAZI EMPIRE

 

The evil empire par excellence. Although that is an overstatement – it was barely an empire.

Despite styling itself as the Third Reich after the first German “empire” or Reich of a thousand years, the Holy Roman Empire, it didn’t even last as long as the second, Wilhelmine Germany.

In total, Nazi Germany lasted only twelve years from 1933 to 1945 – for which it could only be described as imperial, at least beyond its original borders, for a little over half of that, from 1938 onwards. Well, perhaps from its involvement in the Spanish Civil War before that, although that failed to yield a reliable client state – and it was arguably preparing for its imperialism from its very inception.

And even for war beyond its borders from 1939 to 1945, the second half of that period was defending or retreating from conquests made in the first half – before its complete collapse, defeat, unconditional surrender, occupation and partition. So the Nazi empire was about three years of conquests, albeit impressive, then defending or retreating from those conquests before falling altogether.

The evil part, however, is not an overstatement. It can probably best be summed up by the Encyclopedia of Fantasy’s comparison of the First World War with the Second – “despite the attempts of propagandists on both sides, no wholly evil figure emerges from World War I to occupy the world’s imagination, no one of a viciousness so unmitigated that it seems almost supernatural; Hitler, on the other hand, has all the lineaments of a Dark Lord, and the Reich he hoped to found was a parody of the true Land”.

The Nazi empire, short-lived as it was, consisted of its conquests and occupied territory in Europe and north Africa – as well as its allies that started off resembling client states at best and finished off resembling hostages at worst.

And it was notorious for all the worst features of empire – war, extortion, plunder, slavery and genocide – arguably as a form of hyper-imperialism, both in intent and scale, more so by being crammed into a few short years.

It couldn’t even aspire to the caustic observation of empire by the Roman historian Tacitus through the mouthpiece of a Caledonian chieftain – that they make a desert and call it peace. Rather they made a desert and called it war.

The most that could be said for it was that its occupation of western Europe, extortionate as it was from the outset, was relatively benign – relatively that is, compared to its occupation of eastern Europe, brutal or genocidal as it was from the outset

“It has been argued, and not altogether frivolously, that the crucial German mistake of the Second World War was to have behaved atrociously to Poland and correctly to France when the reverse would have served German interests to better effect”.

On a related side note, I have never understood why the Germans crushed the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, rather than simply withdraw to leave it as a thorn in the Soviet side.

Ironically, there were strains of anti-imperialism within the Nazi empire, similar to those other modern imperial powers that styled themselves as anti-imperialist while creating empires or enacting imperialism of their own. That was particularly so as it opposed the British Empire and hence sporadically invoked or supported anti-imperialism against that empire, as well as its propaganda posing as defending itself (or Europe) from Soviet and American forms of imperialism.

But it couldn’t even do that right – as it was not particularly concerned with expressing such sentiments during its high tide of conquest, and they only came to the fore as it became increasingly desperate defending against its defeat.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT DEVIL-TIER?)

 

Assyrian Empire 824-671 BC

 

(6) MESOPOTAMIA – AKKADIAN, ASSYRIAN & BABYLONIAN EMPIRES

 

Ur-imperialism.

The original imperialism – in that Mesopotamia was the origin (or one of the origins) of human civilization, and even more so, states.

Of course those states were necessarily on a small scale, as in the archetypal city-states of Sumerian civilization, and their imperialism was similarly on a small scale, as in city states conquering other city states or their neighbors.

In his book Against the Grain, James C Scott strikingly argues that such imperialism was ingrained (heh) in those states from their very foundations in grain agriculture as an instrument and means of state control, depending on various degrees of forced labor or extraction.

Whether or not that is the case, Sumerian city states warred against each other in what might be regarded as micro-imperialism or proto-imperialism.

Or as I introduced it, ur-imperialism – both as the term ur- is used to connote an ancestral prototype or primeval origin, and for the Sumerian city state of Ur.

One of the aspects of that ur-imperialism is, like many other features of subsequent civilizations, Sumerian civilization created or set the standard features of imperial or at least palace states, including monumental architecture – such as ziggurats! – and imperial or royal cults of leadership.

Ultimately, Mesopotamia evolved to imperialism on a larger scale – with its three namesake empires best known in general history. The Akkadian empire – best known for Sargon of Akkad – managed to conquer or unite all Mesopotamian city states in an area similar to modern Iraq, in the floodplains of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that defined Mesopotamia.

However, the Akkadian Empire pales in comparison to the biggest and most belligerent of Mesopotamian empires, the Assyrian Empire (or technically neo-Assyrian Empire, as I understand it was a resurgence of the Assyrian state) – indeed, the largest empire in world history to that date.

To be honest, I don’t know too much about the Assyrian Empire, other than it being portrayed as one of the evil empires that menaced the Israelites in the Bible – and also that Jonah was ordered to its capital Ninevah by God before disobeying and being swallowed by the whale.

Although smaller than its predecessor, the Babylonian Empire (or again technically neo-Babylonian Empire) loomed larger in the Bible as one of its ultimate symbols, if not the ultimate symbol, of evil empire, because of the so-called Babylonian captivity and exile of the Jews.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion”.

Egypt and Babylon are the two famous (or infamous) poles of captivity for the Jews, but the latter is more raw in the Bible – because it was more recent (and less mythic), but also because the Old Testament was mostly written or compiled at or about that time.

And the symbolism of Babylon as evil empire loomed even larger in Christianity, due to its use as a symbol for Rome in the Book of Apocalypse, with the enduring imagery of that hot harlot, Mystery Babylon.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

The maximum borders of the Egyptian empire 1450 BC by J.G. Bartholomew in 1913 (public domain image – Wikipedia “New Kingdom of Egypt”

 

(7) EGYPTIAN EMPIRE

 

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Even more so than Mesopotamia, Egypt set the standard for imperial state chic, not least in its monumental architecture and statuary, as well as its priesthoods and divine ruler personality cult.

Indeed, it is not too difficult to see the stamp of Egyptian imperial chic even to the twentieth century and beyond, as in the Soviet Union but with a secular party priesthood devoted to the cycles of history as opposed to the Nile and cult of socialism rather than the sun god. Less pyramids perhaps, but equally monumental architecture and statuary, as well as a tendency towards equally grandiose and gigantic projects.

Ironically, despite this imperial chic, Egypt was not so much of an empire itself, except of course to its own subjects, as it largely kept within its own borders to the Nile. The exception is the imperial Egypt of the New Kingdom, when it extended southwards to Nubia and northwards through the Levant – under pharaohs such as Rameses, whose title in Greek gave us the figure in Shelley’s poem.

Also ironically, Egypt has consistently played an important role within empires, but more as imperial prize rather than ruling empire itself – starting with its conquest by Assyrian, Persian and Macedonian empires in turn.

The last also reveals something of an odd recurring tendency, for foreign invaders or subjects from an empire conquering or ruling Egypt to break away from that empire with their own dynasty within Egypt, which is then effectively regarded as Egyptian.

First and foremost among those was the Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by Alexander’s general Ptolemy as a successor state of the Macedonian empire and regarded as the last dynasty of ancient Egypt. It was the dynasty that gave history Egypt’s most famous female monarch, Cleopatra – also Egypt’s last reigning monarch, before its fall to the Roman Empire. Indeed, its fall transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.

Kudos to Cleopatra, however, for almost pulling all a second breakaway dynasty based in Egypt, this time from the Roman Empire in its eastern half, through her alliance with Mark Antony. Yes – it was a long shot but it’s tempting to imagine the counterfactual of their victory, perhaps anticipating the eastern Roman Empire by three centuries, except from Alexandria rather than Constantinople, with Greek as its lingua franca at an earlier date. Or alternatively something like the short-lived breakaway Palmyrene empire under Zenobia two centuries ahead of the Crisis of the Third Century.

Egypt then became an imperial prize for the Roman Empire – and its richest, the proverbial breadbasket of its empire. That always strikes me as strange from my perspective of contemporary Egypt and its comparative poverty – but then that is part of the more general strange feature that the Roman Empire’s eastern or southern African and Asian provinces were richer than its western and northern European provinces, the reverse of our contemporary perspective.

From there, it was briefly a battlefield between the eastern Roman (or Byzantine) empire and the resurgent Persian (or Sassanid) empire, before falling to the Arab conquest that defeated one and conquered the other.

Egypt remained in the hands of one caliphate after another, but rose to new prominence as the seat of power for the Fatimid Caliphate. The Fatimids did not quite fall within that recurring tendency for Egyptian breakaway dynasties, except perhaps in the last stages of their decline when their rule was effectively confined to Egypt – but the Mamluks did, the slave mercenary military case that rose to rule their own Sultanate in Egypt and beyond, even famously defeating the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalat in 1260.

The Mamluks declined in turn, but their role was replayed by Albanian mercenaries with Egypt as a province in the Ottoman Empire, led by their commander Muhammed Ali Pasha, who founded his own dynasty, nominally subject to but effectively independent from the Ottoman Empire.

Egypt became a protectorate of the British Empire, as Egypt again rose to prominence as an imperial prize, not for its agriculture but for the newly constructed Suez Canal as maritime trade route.

And once again ironically, Egypt and the Suez Canal subsequently rose to prominence as the imperial humiliation of the British Empire, with the Suez Crisis in 1956 – often cited as one of the end points of the British Empire.

We’re not quite done with Egypt and its imperial ironies yet – as finally modern Egypt echoed the imperial heights of its ancient New Kingdom with the short-lived United Arab Republic, when it formed a sovereign union with Syria from 1958 to 1961.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

Carthaginian dependencies and protectorates through the Punic Wars (public domain image – Wikipedia “Ancient Carthage”)

 

(8) PHOENICIAN & PUNIC EMPIRES

 

The Phoenicians rose to prominence among the Canaanites after the Bronze Age Collapse as the thalassocracy par excellence to dominate the Mediterranean and to influence classical Western civilization.

They earn special mention as with one notable exception they weren’t really an empire. Indeed, they weren’t even really a single ‘nationality’ or state, but an agglomeration of city-states like Sumer before them, located on the Levantine coast (mostly in modern Lebanon) – with the most prominent being Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos.

Of these, Tyre rose to become the richest and most powerful, famed for its purple dye that became synonymous with imperial chic – particularly through its use by the Roman emperor. Under its ruling priest Ithobaal from 887 to 856 BC, it even took a shot at expanding its territory to other Phoenician states, coming the closest the Phoenicians ever did to a unitary territorial state.

So if the Phoenicians didn’t really have an empire or even a single state, why the special mention at all?

Well, firstly there remains the history of Phoenician maritime and mercantile power, indeed the sole such power in the region for several centuries – arguably the precursor of what might be styled as economic neo-imperialism.

Interestingly, they combined maritime power with proto-industrialism. Like the Greek city-states which rose in parallel with them, they had few natural resources – apart from the lumber (or cedar) for which they were famed – so they specialized in craft, construction, and manufacture, for which they were also famed in contemporary literary works from the Bible to Homer.

With that maritime and mercantile power came cultural influence, best known of which is the oldest verified alphabet, but the full extent of their influence on classical Western civilization is still being discovered – for example, the “orientalization” of “Greek cultural and artistic conventions”.

However, “as a mercantile power concentrated along a narrow coastal strip of land, the Phoenicians lacked the size and population to support a large military”, and hence “increasingly fell under the sway of foreign rules” from “neighboring empires – except for their colonies, which brings me to my next point…

Secondly, there was the history Phoenician colonization, overlapping and in rivalry with classical Greek colonization – similarly founding colonies and trading posts, mostly of limited size but of impressive range throughout the Mediterranean coastline. The Greeks may have eclipsed them in the eastern Mediterranean, but the Phoenicians continued to predominate in the western Mediterranean, not least one colony founded by Tyre known to history as Carthage. Which brings me to my third point…

Thirdly, there was that one notable exception to the Phoenicians not really being an empire and that was the empire of the Phoenician colony that effectively took over the other colonies in the western Mediterranean and eclipsed the original Phoenician city-states, even Tyre as the city-state that founded it – Carthage and its Carthaginian or Punic empire.

Like the power that rivalled and ultimately destroyed it as the predominant power in the western Mediterranean – Rome – Carthage was an imperial republic. Before it lost out to the Rome that it mirrored as a republic – as it also mirrored the maritime and mercantile power of the original Phoenician city states – Carthage gradually expanding its economic and political hegemony across the western Mediterranean through a network of “colonies, vassal states and satellite states” that “controlled the largest territory in the region”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Athens and its Delian League vs Sparta and its Peloponnesian League at the outset of the Peloponnesian War – map by Marysas (from E Levy) for Wikipedia “Delian League” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

(9) GREEK – ATHENIAN EMPIRE & SPARTAN HEGEMONY

 

Athenian empire vs Spartan hegemony.

We usually (and correctly) think of the Roman Empire as the imperial template in Western culture, but this can mislead us into overlooking the Greek imperial template in Western culture. No – I’m not talking the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great, although that too was influential, but the classical Greek city states, particularly the opposing Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony of the Peloponnesian War.

Of course, similarly to the archetypal city-states of Sumerian civilization, their imperialism was on a small scale – city states ruling other city states or their colonies.

And it tended not to call itself a formal empire as such. Indeed, in this it was a remarkably far-reaching imperial template, not so much for imperialism but neo-imperialism. Where the Roman imperial template set the model for imperialism from the fall of the western empire through to the European maritime empires, the Greek imperial template set the model for neo-imperialism from the European maritime empires onwards.

The Athenian empire evolved from the Delian League, an alliance of Greek cities led by Athens against Persia after the Greek-Persian Wars, based on Athenian naval supremacy and named (in modern historiography) after the sacred island of Delos, “where congresses were held in the temple and where the treasury stood until, in a symbolic gesture, Pericles moved it to Athens in 454 BC”.

That last part of moving the Delian treasury to Athens marked the point where the heavy-handed control by Athens of the Delian League evolved into an Athenian empire, where Athens began to use the League’s funds for its own purposes and there were conflicts with or outright rebellions by less powerful League members.

Essentially members of the League were given a choice of either offering armed forces or paying taxes into the treasury. Most states chose the tax, which now doubled up as leaving them effectively disarmed while paying taxes or tribute to Athens. In the words of the classical historian Thucydides, ” it was correspondingly easy” for Athens “to reduce any that tried to leave the confederacy” – that is, crush members that tried to revolt or secede.

Thucydides dramatized just how heavy-handed Athens could be in the famous Melian Dialogue, often invoked by the so-called school of realism in international relations for its maxim that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must”. Thucydides put that maxim in the mouths of his imagined Athenian emissaries when giving their ultimatum to the neutral island of Melos – surrender and join the League, paying tribute to Athens, or be destroyed.

One might well see the template from this Athenian “empire” or Delian League for the style or techniques of modern neo-imperialism or European maritime empire – even more so when one recalls that the Athenian state was democratic, in the style of so-called democratic empires, “a political state which conducts its internal affairs democratically but externally its policies have a striking resemblance to imperial rule”.

Interestingly, American democracy initially echoed classical Athenian democracy, in that both were also slave-owning societies and excluded women from politics.

Its opposing counterpart, Sparta, was authoritarian at heart but was also shy of formal empire with its Spartan hegemony. Particularly after its victory in the Peloponnesian War, it too could prove equally heavy-handed – establishing many of the pro-Spartan foreign governments throughout the Aegean and also establishing many Spartan garrisons.

Just as I tend to see the Peloponnesian War between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta underlying the grand ideological conflict in Western civilization, so too I am tempted to see the Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony resembling the rival United States and Soviet Union in the Cold War, except with victory reversed.

However, there was a deeper template, from which the Athenian empire and Spartan hegemony arose in part, and that was the long history of classical Greek colonization, a precursor of subsequent settler colonialism.

Essentially, Greek cities founded other cities on a prolific scale throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea coastlines, except in the western Mediterranean where they came up against the Phoenicians and their colonies (in what would become Carthage and its territories), from 750 to 550 BC.

The Greek cities or colonies often became strong city states in their own right, independent of their founding city or cities and often even rivalling them in influence – as in Sicily and southern Italy, to the extent that the Romans called the area Magna Graecia or Great Greece.

I am not familiar enough with the history of Greek colonization to comment on the extent that it was imperial in terms of displacing or dominating any inhabitants in the area of their colonies. However, it certainly had an impact that is occasionally characterized as cultural imperialism – Greek cities spread Greek culture.

However, I would go further – that Western civilization as a whole is effectively a Greek colony.

An analogy that is commonly drawn in modern history is to cast the British and their empire as the Greeks to the Romans of the United States, albeit American imperialism might be styled as closer to that of the Delian League (and its original democratic polity as closer to that of Athens).

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Extent of Attila’s empire based on a map from Empires and Barbarians: The Birth of Europe by Peter Heather 2010 – map by Slovenski Volk for Wikipedia “Huns” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

(10) HUNNIC EMPIRE

 

A classic nomadic empire founded by horse blitzkrieg of mounted nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes that should be ranked as the fourth great empire of late antiquity and menacing the other three – Persian Empire as well as eastern and western Roman empires – in turn.

(Although I tend to agree with the observation of Youtuber Tominus Maximus that the Huns generally hated the eastern Roman empire but liked the western Roman empire. Well, you know, until they didn’t.)

However, despite its classic status and notoriety, the Hunnic Empire remains somewhat nebulous because like most nomadic empires, they preferred riding to writing – so we are mostly reliant on what other people wrote about them.

Apparently according to tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River. Their origins remain uncertain, other than broadly sweeping across central Asia – with some theories resembling an extent almost as wide as the Mongols, particularly those theories linking them to the Xongniu and other nomadic peoples that menaced China, often stylized as Huns, such as in the Disney version of Mulan.

They are also often linked to other nomadic tribes, sometimes also stylized as Huns, that menaced the Persian Empire and even India. It’s not helped by the tendency, as with the Scythians, to identify or name nomadic tribes across Eurasia as Huns – both before and after the classical Hunnic Empire.

Classical sources have them suddenly appear in Europe or west of the Volga from 370 AD – where they triggered the Migration Period or at least the westward movement of Goths into the Roman Empire and bringing about the latter’s fall.

By 430 AD, they had “established a vast but short-lived empire on the Danubian frontier of the Roman Empire” – with various Germanic or other tribes “either under Hunnic hegemony or fleeing from it”. The Hunnic empire largely crystallized around the charismatic leadership of the most notorious Hun, Attila – and rapidly disintegrated after his death.

Under Attila, the Huns won not just peak empire but also the historical infamy of being extremely barbaric and ruthless towards their adversaries. Although I have to admit Attila being identified as the Scourge of God earns him badass points.

From their empire, the Huns raided the more robust eastern Roman Empire, invading the Balkans and threatening the capital Constantinople, with little to stop them until the emperor opted for the pragmatic policy of paying tribute for peace.

The Huns then invaded the western Roman Empire in 451, with Attila claiming the sister of the western Roman emperor as his bride and half the empire as his dowry – with some fairness, as she had swiped right on him in preference to her betrothal to a Roman senator.

 However, there the Huns encountered the general Flavius Aetius, often hailed as “the last of the Romans”. Ironically, Aetius had effectively risen to power by relying on the Huns – with whom he had previously been a court hostage – as his allies. Now he had to face off against his former allies as Attila invaded Gaul, drawing on the waning resources of an increasingly vestigial empire to field one of its last major military operations in alliance with the Visigoths and its other Germanic allies – and won, defeating the Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

Or not, as historians dispute how conclusive a victory it was. Attila and the Huns withdrew from Gaul, only to invade Italy the following year – and there was little Aetius could do to stop them there, except for the Pope to ask Attila nicely if he would leave without sacking Rome.

Surprisingly, it worked. Attila left Italy – albeit probably more for lack of supplies or expectations of tribute as well as an eastern Roman campaign against the Huns in their homeland. He died the following year, aborting his plans for further campaigns against either empire – as with the Mongols, Europe was saved from invasion by a fortunately timed death (from Attila partying too hard celebrating his latest wedding to his hot new bride).

The Huns took one last shot at the eastern Roman Empire under one of Attila’s sons in 469, vanishing from history with their defeat.

 However, much about the Hunnic Empire remains mysterious, even the empire’s full territorial extent – some maps tentatively suggest their empire extended to the Baltic, but we just don’t know. Similarly, we can only speculate on why Attila agreed to leave Italy, setting aside papal mojo. We only have glimpses of fascinating aspects of the Huns such as their practice of cranial deformation, with their subsequent appearance no doubt adding to their fearsome reputation.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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The Republic of Venice with its Domini de Terraferma and Stato da Mar – its main territories in Italy and overseas by Ariel196 for Wikipedia “Venice” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(11) VENETIAN EMPIRE (697 – 1797)

 

Technically the Venetian Republic – La Serenissima or the Most Serene Republic of Venice – it was another imperial republic in the style of Rome, indeed with quite the few parallels between them.

Of course, the world had moved on from the days that an Italian city-state could dominate the peninsula and then the Mediterranean (and beyond) in the style of Rome, but Venice took a damn good swing at it, punching remarkably above its weight.

The parallels with Rome extend to a similarly legendary founding – the Republic dated its founding back to 697 AD (hence my starting date for the Venetian Empire), albeit predated by Venice itself reputed to have been settled by refugees from the Huns and Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire seeking the safety of its islands.

The Republic was founded as the Duchy of Venetia within the eastern Roman Empire’s Exarchate of Ravenna – its leader’s title of Doge originating from the Latin for dux (or duke) as an imperial provincial title. It became increasingly independent as the exarchate crumbled, until effectively achieving de facto independence because of an agreement between the Holy Roman Empire and the eastern Roman Empire.

Its independence corresponded with its rise as imperial republic in its own right. Venice relied on the tried-and-true methods of a smaller state – particularly city and island states – to punch above its weight, namely naval power fuelled by wealth from maritime trade, as well as cunning and sharp practice in diplomacy. That wealth was also fuelled by its art, craft and manufacture – historian Geoffrey Blainey’s observation that Venice was like the Silicon Valley of its time, in things like glassmaking, has always stuck in my mind.

Indeed, while it resembled Rome’s classical (and imperial) republic, it also followed the classical Greek model of a maritime colonial empire with a focus on its naval power and trade, while in many ways pre-empting the European colonial – and neocolonial – empires of which it was a predecessor.

And like all empires, even maritime or mercantile ones, it was in the business of territorial expansion – “During its history it annexed a large part of north-east Italy, Istria, Dalmatia, the coasts of present-day Montenegro and Albania as well as numerous islands in the Adriatic and eastern Ionian seas. At the height of its expansion, between the 13th and 16th centuries, it also governed the Peloponnese, Crete and Cyprus, most of the Greek islands, as well as several cities and ports in the Mediterranean”.

Of course, its rise as imperial republic caused it to come into conflict with rival Italian city-states, notably Genoa, but also the eastern Roman empire. Venice had a weird love-hate symbiotic-parasitic relationship with the eastern Roman Empire – evolving from an imperial province and vassal in the empire’s reconquest of Italy, to ally and close associate of the empire effectively as its navy and trading house, and ultimately to rival and perfidious adversary in the Fourth Crusade.

In some ways, that symbiosis involved Venice as almost the inversion of Constantinople – the heart of a mercantile empire which waxed and rose, sucking from the blood of the latter as it waned and fell. Although ironically, Venice found its fortune to be little more symbiotic with Constantinople than it would have liked after all – as the rival declining eastern Roman empire was replaced by the new rival rising Ottoman Empire.

Even then, its remarkable to think that Venice as a city-state held its own going toe-to-toe with the Ottoman superpower for four centuries or so of Ottoman-Venetian Wars (that commenced even before the fall of Constantinople), albeit inevitably losing territory to the Ottomans.

The rise of the Ottoman Empire also indirectly prompted one of the primary factors behind the decline (and fall) of the Venetian Republic and the Mediterranean in general – the decline of Mediterranean trade relative to the Atlantic as the latter opened in the European Age of Discovery and conquest of the Americas. Even so, the Venetian Republic endured until 1797 when it finally fell to the French under Napoleon.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Map of the Carolingian in 814 AD – Wikipedia “Holy Roman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(12) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE (800 / 962 – 1806 AD)

 

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

The thousand year Reich, subsequently styled as the First Reich – which means I’ve featured all three Reichs in my special mentions.

Or as Voltaire famously quipped – neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.

The Holy Roman Empire had some substance to it, but also embodied an idea – or worse, a snub by Pope Leo III to the eastern Roman Empire and its empress Irene by crowning Charlemagne as Roman emperor, in Rome no less, in what must surely rank as a medieval meme.

Of course, underlying that idea was the enduring influence or template of the western Roman Empire, a legacy which many in the European kingdoms or nations subsequent to it sought to revive, even at the expense of the eastern Roman Empire.

That idea had some force to it under Charlemagne, who had achieved the largest unified polity in western Europe since the Roman Empire – although his empire should more accurately be styled as the Frankish Empire- but it soon fell apart after it was divided between his sons.

From that division, Germany emerged as a separate realm from the Frankish Empire, largely from the eastern Frankish empire, and it was from Germany that the Holy Roman Empire truly arose. Historians tend to distinguish the Frankish Empire from the Holy Roman Empire proper, with Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962, even if that cuts down that thousand year Reich (from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800) to a mere 844 years.

Again, the idea had some force to it under Otto and his successors, even if it oscillated between that idea as reflected in its title as Roman Empire and the reality as reflected in its title as Empire or Kingdom of the Germans. It was still a snub to the eastern Roman empire, who were deeply insulted by the Pope crowning Roman Emperors – although in fairness, “the Pope was the only one of these people who actually lived in Rome itself” so “it could be argued he was the most entitled to decide who was Emperor of the Romans”.

The actual term Holy Roman Empire began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich or Frederick Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later, and under him, the idea had some teeth to it (as well as transforming him into a legendary figure) and continued to do so until his grandson Friedrich II, who attempted to run an Italian-German empire from Sicily.

That reflected the internal struggles within the Empire – with German nobles, with Italian cities or communes, and above all, with the Papacy. “The Empire and the Papacy, both competing for secular and religious power over all Christendom without the means to enforce it, essentially destroyed each other’s credibility. This was not helped by a fairly consistent policy of Emperors to neglect the basis of their power in Germany to grasp at its shadow in Italy – because in order for a German king to become Emperor, he had to go to Italy and be crowned by the pope”.

From there, the empire that had originated as a meme essentially devolved back into one – falling into irrelevancy or worse, the joke of an empire “that mostly clung to life because the ruler of Austria wanted to call himself an emperor and the rest of Europe was willing to humor him”. As Marx quipped, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

And above all, it was incredibly convoluted, both in history and structure – an emperor elected by powerful regional lords and clergy, in an empire that went from 300 to 1800 “sovereign kingdoms, duchies, free cities, and other entities”.

Hence Voltaire’s famous quip about it – and Napoleon doing away with the whole dog’s breakfast of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Map of the Teutonic Order around 1300 by Marco Zanoli for Wikipedia “Military order (religious society)” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(13) TEUTONIC KNIGHTS (1190 -1810)

 

It’s time to splash out with some wilder entries, as I usually do in my special mentions – although this entry is not as wild as you might think.

Yes – it’s pretty wild to think of a religious order, even one founded as a military society during the Crusades, as an empire. The Teutonic Knights or Teutonic Order was founded as the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem.

But perhaps not that wild – after all, the Crusaders and their states or military orders served as precursors of European imperialism, as for example with the Reconquista leading directly into the Spanish Conquest of the Americas.

And the Teutonic Knights were arguably the most imperial of military orders, even carving out their own state – the State of the Teutonic Order – in the Baltic during the Northern Crusades. Although let’s not get too much in the past tense as the Teutonic Order still exists, albeit purely religious since 1810 after the military order was disbanded by Napoleon.

Also, I’m on a roll with German imperialism – I’ve managed to include all three German empires (from First to Third Reich) in my special mentions, so this is a bonus round for the imperialism of this definitively German military order, reflected in its very name. That’s pretty much it for German imperialism, except for a few weird African or American colonial ventures by German states prior to modern Germany (Brandenburg-Prussia, Augsburg, and so on).

Anyway, “after Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East”, the Order moved to Transylvania, where it got the taste for blood as an empire (heh) – attempting to build their own state before the Pope and the King of Hungary intervened to boot them out.

If at first you don’t succeed – try, try again. Which the Order did in Prussia as well as the present-day Baltic states, creating the aforementioned State of the Teutonic Order during the Northern Crusades (merging with the Livonian Brothers of the Sword)

From there, the Teutonic Knights “initiated numerous campaigns against its Christian neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic…and they also became a naval power in the Baltic Sea” but waned in power after being decisively defeated by a Polish-Lithuanian army at the Battle of Grunwald.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(14) EAST INDIA COMPANY (1600 – 1874)

 

It’s strange to think that most of the heavy lifting of the British Empire in India was done not by the British Crown or government, but by a company – indeed, to the extent that the British Empire in India was effectively that company. But what a company!

That is of course the East India Company – the British East India Company that is, not the Dutch East India Company or one of the other prolific East India Companies established in Europe (Danish, Portuguese, Genoese, French, Swedish and Austrian).

At its peak, the British East India Company was the largest company in the world and accounted for half the trade in the world.

So yes, you might say, that’s big – reflecting that they started with a Crown charter giving them a monopoly on English trade east of Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan – but it was just a company doing company things like trade, wasn’t it?

Well, for the East India Company, company things included having its own armed forces, including its own navy – the Bombay Marine – and three ‘presidency’ armies – the Bengal Army, the Madras Army and the Bombay Army – “totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time”.

They also included that the company “eventually came to rule large areas of present day Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions”, either directly or indirectly through “princely states tied to it by treaty”.

That was particularly so after the Battle of Plassey – the Anglicized form of Palashi or Polashi – when the Company, under the leadership of the famous Robert Clive or “Clive of India”, won against the Nawab of Bengal and the Nawab’s French allies in 1757.

However that all fell apart literally a century later, with the Indian or Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-1858, named for the sepoys that were the mainstay of the East India Company’s power – “locally raised, mostly Muslim, western trained and equipped soldiers that changed warfare in present day South Asia…a few thousand company sepoys, time and again, took on vastly superior Mughal forces numerically and came out victorious”.

Following this rebellion, the British Crown effectively took over the East India Company in India (by the Government of India Act 1858) – “assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies” – although the company survived as a financial shadow of its former self until it was formally dissolved (by the East India Stock Redemption Act 1874).

The Company also had its hand in Asia beyond the Indian subcontinent, not least competing with the Dutch for spice from Indonesia – and trading opium to China, prompting the Opium Wars.

“Wait – it’s all companies?”

“Always has been.”

As I said, it is strange to think of a company as the vanguard of British imperialism in India, but it might be observed how often that was the case in Western imperialism – and indeed, some might observe even more so for Western neo-imperialism. United Fruit and banana republics, anyone?

But yes – it was deeply ingrained in the DNA of European or Western imperialism that much of it was effectively private entrepreneurial rather than public governmental. That is, it was done by private individuals – including literal privateers or pirates – and corporations or organizations, albeit typically under government charters.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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The Ethiopian Empire in 1952 by Amde Michael – Wikipedia “Ethiopian Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(15) ETHIOPIAN EMPIRE (1270 – 1974)

 

“By the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Elect of God”

Iron like a Lion in Zion!

Special mention shout-out for the empires of sub-Saharan Africa – of which there are a plethora from which to choose.

The Ethiopian Empire may not seem an obvious first choice – with the Mali Empire, under Mansu Musa, reputed to be the richest man in history, and the Songhai Empire, vying for the wealthiest and largest empires in Africa respectively.

However, the Ethiopian Empire was the longest lasting empire in Africa, enduring seven centuries from the Middle Ages in 1270(!) to the Cold War, with its messianic emperor Haile Selassie one of the last reigning emperors in history, deposed in 1974(!!) by communist revolution. Ethiopia was one of the last countries in the world to have the title for emperor as its head of state, along with Iran and Japan (as well as another empire we’ll mention later in these special mentions) – which left Japan as the only such nation after the 1970s.

Well longest-lasting apart from its enigmatic predecessor, the kingdom of Aksum, which is said to have lasted eight centuries from 100 AD to 900 AD and was styled as one of the great powers of antiquity.

Back to the Ethiopian Empire, sometimes styled as Abyssinia, it has a history that is almost literally the stuff of legend and literally the stuff of religion – starting with its imperial dynasty known as the Solomonic Dynasty, claiming descent from the last Aksumuite king and ultimately the Biblical duo of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba themselves, tracing Sheba to Ethiopia.

With that Biblical pedigree, it remained staunchly committed to its ancient form of Christianity, despite being surrounded by hostile forces in the Horn of Africa, often identified as the source of the European legend of the mysterious non-European Christian monarch Prester John.

It’s odd to think of Ethiopian crusades against Islamic armies to become the dominant power of the Horn of Africa but that’s effectively what happened – and not too far in time from European crusades.

It’s also odd to think of Ethiopia in decline after that then warding off Islamic invasions, firstly with the help of the Portuguese – and then on their own against the Ottomans. It lost its Red Sea coast to the Ottomans – but then had its golden age, before falling into its own version of a shogunate.

It’s again odd to think of the Ethiopian Empire as an imperial participant in the Scramble for Africa but it was – an expansionist power like the Zulus earlier, expanding into the modern borders of Ethiopia and defeating a rival European power, the Italians pushing down from Eritrea in the Battle of Adwa in 1896, but making it stick unlike the Zulus and preserving their independence, the only African nation to do so (apart from Liberia).

Of course, the Italians famously took another swing at it under Mussolini and won in a strange throwback to the Scramble for Africa, occupying Ethiopia until being defeated there by the British in the Second World War, which saw Emperor Haile Selassie return from exile.

Finally, it’s odd to see its last emperor – the same Haile Selassie – again become the stuff of legend and religion, as he was hailed as a literally messianic figure, the returned Messiah of the Bible, by the Rastafarian religious movement and reggae, hence the quotes opening this entry. To play on an old gag, they saw the God-Emperor of Mankind – and he was black.

Until of course the less poetically named Derg, essentially a military junta, decided he was not the Messiah but just a very naughty boy – and chose the religion of Marxist-Leninism instead.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(16) AZTEC & INCA EMPIRES

 

The preeminent empires of pre-Columbian America, although sadly best known to history (and myself) as foils to the Spanish Empire – albeit because of defeats unparalleled in history for just how few Spanish forces conquered such populous empires in so short a span of time.

I have more knowledge of the Aztec Empire prior to the Spanish Conquest – if only for the lurid horror stories of its imperial religion of human sacrifice on a scale unprecedented in the region, or anywhere else for that matter. However, the nature and extent of Aztec human sacrifice is often disputed as historical propaganda – as indeed is the so-called Black Legend of anti-Spanish history when it comes to the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire – with some fairness on both sides.

The Inca Empire was the largest empire in pre-Colombian America, almost ten times larger than the Aztec Empire and perhaps two or three times as populous but not as brutal. The size of the Inca Empire is quite striking for an empire predominantly in mountainous highlands – “one of the greatest imperial states in human history” created and maintained “without the use of the wheel, draft animals, knowledge of iron or steel, or even a system of writing”. Or largely without money or markets apparently, like Star Trek but without the post-scarcity. Also one without the more characteristic grain cultivation of other agricultural states – instead cultivating potatoes.

Which makes its defeat even more striking than that of the Aztecs, particularly as the Spanish leader Francisco Pizarro started with about a third of the forces of his counterpart Cortes against the Aztecs – a mere 168 soldiers – and was over 60 years of age at the time. Now that’s how to spend your retirement years!

Although Pizarro was perhaps luckier in his timing with a civil war of succession to the Inca imperial throne – as well as capturing and holding the reigning Inca ruler hostage.

Of course, the primary factor for the fall of both empires was the disease or diseases spread ahead of the Spanish who brought them – and which ravaged the native American populations who had no acquired resistance to them. While that would seem to be the greatest scale for the role disease has played in the fall of empires, disease has played a recurring role in the decline or fall of other empires, including the Roman Empire – as is the subject of Plagues and Peoples by historian William H. McNeill.

I have less knowledge of the Inca Empire prior to Spanish Conquest, although that seems apt as it’s an empire that has a quality of mystery or at least mystique to it. That includes the legendary “lost cities of the Incas” to which they retreated as a vestigial empire – the neo-Inca state – as well as “periodic attempts by indigenous leaders to expel the Spanish colonists and re-create the Inca Empire until the late 18th century”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(17) COMANCHE EMPIRE & LAKOTA AMERICA

 

Yes, yes – they are literally book titles by Pekka Hämäläinen, specialist historian of native North Americans but arguably also empires as historical ideas or at least arguments, although I think that overstates both.

Of the two, the Comanche are the clearer imperial candidate. The Comanche tribal nation occupied territory – known to history as Comancheria – in New Mexico, west Texas and surrounding areas. The argument is that Comancheria, at the peak of its power from the 1750s to the 1850s, comprised an empire or form of imperialism while on the periphery of Spanish, Mexican and American power as well as avoiding the diseases that ravaged other native American tribes.

The game-changer was horses, as it was for the Eurasian nomadic tribes or empires before them, which increased their hunting range for buffalo and mobility for military power.

Eventually disease caught up with them and power of other nations, particularly the United States, moved closer to overwhelm them

The Comanche were not an isolated example as other native American tribes, such as the Lakota in the Great Plains, were able to adapt to the literal use of horsepower to similar effect of the Eurasian nomadic tribes or empires.

It is tempting to imagine a counterfactual where such tribes or tribal confederations swept across the North American plains like latter-day Mongols, but even with their adaptation to horses they were too little and too late in the face of the growing industrial power and population of the United States.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

Coronation of Bokassa – by way of fair use as it appears to be one of the few images or only image (by unknown photographer) to depict his coronation (with its Napoleonic inspiration), also referenced as such in J.M. Roberts The Triumph of the West

 

(18) CENTRAL AFRICAN EMPIRE (1976-1979)

 

History’s most ridiculous empire.

Also the last empire in Africa, subsequent to the fall of the Ethiopian Empire – and indeed the penultimate country in the world to have a head of state with the title of Emperor, leaving Japan as the last country standing with an Emperor.

The Central African Empire was achieved by the simple expedient of President Bokassa, military dictator of the Central African Republic, declaring himself Emperor and the republic an empire from 4 December 1976 to 21 September 1979.

Sadly, as head of state, he was able to conscript his hapless citizens in his imperial delusions. Also his state’s treasury, as he blew the equivalent of $20 million, a third of the country’s government income, on his coronation ceremony – modelled, like his imperial regalia and regime, on that of Napoleon Bonaparte.

His self-proclaimed empires relied on people playing along with it – not so much his own nation which had little choice about it, but the nation that had actually ruled it as an empire, France. Although that was primarily French President Giscard d’Estaing, who was bafflingly chummy with Bokassa. Of course, that may have had something to do with the diamonds and other gifts Bokassa gave him, ultimately resulting in scandal and election loss for Giscard d’Estaing.

Bokassa proved too embarrassing even for France when school riots led to massacres of civilians, prompting France to withdraw support and Bokassa cosied up to Gaddafi’s Libya instead – France then overthrew Bokassa in what has been called France’s last colonial expedition, Operation Barracuda.

Similarly, there were French and Napoleonic connections to two close runners-up for history’s most ridiculous empires, in the Americas in the nineteenth century rather than Africa in the twentieth – the short-lived Mexican and Haitian Empires.

There are actually two Mexican Empires – the First and Second Mexican Empire. The first is not so ridiculous, although it was short-lived and unique among former Spanish colonies winning independence – a brief monarchy from 1821 to 1823 after Mexico won its war of independence with the Spanish Empire, prompted by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain.

The second occurred from 1864 to 1867 when another Napoleon took another swing at it – this time by Napoleon’s less talented nephew, Napoleon III, who intervened in Mexico (in the Second French Intervention in Mexico) to install a puppet emperor.

These Mexican Empires echoed the earlier Haitian Empires – the first Haitian Empire, briefly created from 1804 to 1806 in its war on independence against Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, and the second from 1849 to 1859, with yet another President inspired by Napoleon declaring himself an emperor. Although at least the Second Haitian Empire did something imperial, invading the Dominican Republic – which had declared independence from Haiti in 1844 – in unsuccessful attempts to reconquer it.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Emperor Norton in full dress uniform and military regalia, his hand on the hilt of a ceremonial sabre, 1875

 

(19) EMPIRE OF JOSHUA NORTON (1859-1880)

 

Emperor Norton I – Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.

Joshua Norton – the man who essentially memed himself into being the first and last Emperor of the United States.

No – he’s not fictional but a real historical figure, albeit somewhat obscure these days but one of San Francisco’s most prominent citizens in the nineteenth century and has fascinated me since I first read about him (in the Illuminatus Trilogy).

And his empire…was not entirely fictional either. Sure – the consensus seems to be that he had a complete mental breakdown after he lost his fortune from commodities trading and real estate speculation, which had elevated him to one of San Francisco’s richest citizens, from being financially ruined by a deal gone bad.

And so he declared himself emperor of the United States by imperial proclamation in a letter to the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin newspaper in 1859 – which they published because they thought it was funny. Which it was.

How did the city of San Francisco receive it? That’s the funniest thing – they played along. Restaurants and businesses accepted his self-issued imperial currency, effectively providing their services free of charge in return for being able to proclaim his imperial patronage, as he went about his “duty” inspecting the city. The city did a thriving trade in souvenirs from his eccentric celebrity – even donating him a new imperial uniform to replace his old one, given to him by army officers.

At one point, an overzealous police officer arrested him to commit him for involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. What followed was a massive uproar from the public and newspapers – “let him be emperor if he wants to be” was the public outcry. One paper wrote “that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line”.

The Police Chief ordered him released, with a formal apology – which Emperor Norton graciously accepted by way of an imperial pardon for the officer – and thereafter police officers saluted him in the street.

He also used his imperial powers for good. One story told of him was that he had stopped a violently anti-Chinese race riot by interposing himself between the rioters and the hapless Chinese, praying the Lord’s Prayer. The story went that the rioters were so ashamed or embarrassed that they dispersed – and thereafter the residents of Chinatown were among his most loyal subjects.

After a “reign” of 21 years, he collapsed and died on the street. Despite legends of a hidden imperial fortune, he died in complete poverty – but one of the city’s clubs donated a fund for a casket and funeral procession, which was reported to have lined the streets with thousands of the city’s citizens.

I can only hope that my own breakdowns are accompanied by such imperial delusions of grandeur, published and received so warmly. Of course, it helped that Norton carried himself with a sense of genteel grace and nobility, more than a century removed from the city’s contemporary itinerant street figures – and that he lived modestly within his imperial means donated to him rather than some grift.

One of my favorite adaptations of Joshua Norton was in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman – where Dream gives Norton his imperial dream to ward off Despair and Desire. And as it turns out, Delirium, who observes to Dream “He’s not one of mine, is he? His madness keeps him sane”. Death is similarly charmed by him, telling him that out of all the kings and queens she had met (and she has met all of them), he is the one she liked best.

And to end on a personal note, when I visited Los Angeles and San Francisco, I gave myself a quest in each city, with my quest for the latter to seek out the tomb of Emperor Norton.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

 

(20) HOLLYWOOD & PLAYBOY

 

If the Capitol, Pentagon, or White House represents the American empire’s Augustus, then Hollywood is its Virgil. Or some might say, its Caligula or Nero. Or some even more wild voices might say, a decadent American empire all of itself, at odds with the Republic – Hollywood Babylon.

Or the point where the frontier became film, from the American West to the western, that archetype of American film which one might argue that all American films still are at heart. Or where the West became the road, where all roads lead to the road movie.

We might be at the wildest of my wild tier or bottom of my empire iceberg here but aren’t we just talking about the apex of American cultural imperialism or “soft power”? Well yes, but that doesn’t mean Hollywood can’t rank special mention as empire.

Of course, my preceding special mention for Joshua Norton might outrank this one as the wildest tier or bottom of my empire iceberg but perhaps that he made his imperial proclamation from San Francisco demonstrates a consistent Californian or West Coast exuberance when it comes to American empire – or empires.

I’m joking and I’m serious. After all, if a religious military order like the Teutonic Knights or even more so a company like the East India Company can each rank special mention in my top empires, why not the American entertainment industry for which Hollywood is a geographical focus and metonym? And outside Washington DC, the only other metonym of American influence or power as evocative as Hollywood is Wall Street (except perhaps for Silicon Valley, also on the West Coast and indeed in California).

Hollywood may not have the military and political control over territory as the Teutonic Knights, although it has often been the Homer of the Pentagon’s Iliad or overseas odysseys – but there does seem to be a certain metaphorical parallel between crusading military orders carving out their empire in the converted eastern frontier of Europe with American studios doing the same in their settled western frontier.

The better comparison might be with the East India Company – perhaps not quite to the extent of the latter’s monopoly in world trade (or the latter’s military force), but at least a similar dominance of the world entertainment industry and popular culture. Hollywood was fortunate in that its rise overlapped that of the United States to global dominance in the twentieth century.

That prompts a segue to the second part of this entry – Playboy as empire.

Yes – again I’m joking and serious. In jest, I strive to reserve my final special mention for some kinky entry where the subject permits – and I believe this fulfills my obligation.

In seriousness, like Hollywood – with which there is considerable overlap, at least in its magazine interviews, celebrity pictorial features, and guest list at the iconic Playboy Mansion – Playboy is a metonym for the American adult entertainment industry in general.

Some might argue that is essentially synonymous with Hollywood, particularly those who describe the latter as Hollywood Babylon – it even shared much the same Californian geographical focus, most famously San Fernando Valley. I’ve read that American predominance in the world adult entertainment industry is – or at least was – even more pronounced than that of Hollywood for the general entertainment industry, such that it might even rank (or have ranked) as the American East India Company in terms of monopoly and share of world trade. I don’t know how true or accurate that is but if so, it should be a source of patriotic pride – USA! USA! USA!

Setting aside that metonym for the adult entertainment industry in general, there’s something to be said for the corporate holdings of Playboy itself as an empire. Of course, you could say that of many companies or corporations, drawing parallels with empires in financial, economic and even cultural spheres. Indeed, McDonalds or Coca Cola would perhaps be the iconic archetypes, particularly as the symbolic vanguards of American influence or power, the contemporary equivalent of gunboat diplomacy.

But there’s something to be said of the American adult entertainment industry in general and Playboy in particular, as the global vanguard or dare I say it, missionary position, of American sexual liberalism – and libertinism, the American Sexual Revolution.

Also, I can’t help but identify parallels with the rise and fall of the Playboy magazine with the Roman empire, with Hugh Hefner as its founding Augustus – and its Tiberius, albeit in the Mansion rather than Capri and with bunnies instead of minnows.

Of course, that may be because I was raised on Playboy as much as Rome in my youth – literally, if covertly on my part, as my father had the entire collection of Playboy magazines, until my mother descended on them like the Vandals.

That last seems something of a microcosm for the fall of Playboy as print magazine (and clubs) – echoing the fall of the western empire in that, a little like the eastern empire, the Playboy corporate brand and holdings have survived the fall of the magazine, not least as a cultural icon. I believe that much like the Holy Roman Empire and various states claiming succession from the Roman Empire, some international versions of the magazine are still ongoing in print.

Dare I jest that Playboy will always be my Holy Roman Empire? Or like the Last of the Romans, I still hold to the Playboy lifestyle and Playboy philosophy – nay, the Playboy religion, my bacchae and golden ass, my holy grail of adventurous bed and questing beast, so much so I made pilgrimage to the Playboy Mansion when I visited Los Angeles.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

EMPIRES: TOP 10 (SPECIAL MENTION) – TIER LIST

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) EUROPEAN EMPIRES

(2) RUSSIAN & SOVIET EMPIRES

(3) AMERICAN EMPIRE

(4) JAPANESE EMPIRE

(5) NAZI EMPIRE

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(7) MESOPOTAMIAN – AKKADIAN, ASSYRIAN & BABYLONIAN EMPIRES

(8) EGYPTIAN EMPIRE

(9) PHOENICIAN & PUNIC EMPIRES

(10) GREEK – ATHENIAN EMPIRE & SPARTAN HEGEMONY

(11) HUNNIC EMPIRE

(12) VENETIAN EMPIRE

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(13) TEUTONIC KNIGHTS

(14) EAST INDIA COMPANY

(15) AFRICA – ETHIOPIAN EMPIRE

(16) AMERICAS – AZTEC & INCA EMPIRES

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(17) COMANCHE EMPIRE & LAKOTA AMERICA

(18) CENTRAL AFRICAN EMPIRE

(19) EMPIRE OF JOSHUA NORTON

(20) HOLLYWOOD & PLAYBOY