Very cool. Interesting way to show.

Alternative title: Countries with really bad acne.

what what!! Statute of Westminster (1931) !!!

The latter half of the 20th century was not good for Empires, Evil or otherwise.

No offense to Canada, but land area is not the best indicator of empire strength and influence. GDP would be good, or even population would be better.

It would be interesting to see the American Empire brought into this illustration.

>> ^therealblankman:
It would be interesting to see the American Empire brought into this illustration.


Wouldn't that just be a globe?

I'm not an expert or anything, but wouldn't the american empire be a series of warts growing off all the other empires - representing land in the americas owned by the various empires displayed here, and eventually splitting off and combining into one, diminishing the other empire's size and creating a new one? And then remaining the same size to our present time?

Or what land masses have america invaded and held onto since formation? I didn't even see some nature of american bubble appear at all, as i was totally expecting. Or was that 'empire' formed before this timeline?

Better yet, let's have an australian aborigine bubble and show a british wart leaving the larger british bubble (via a kick from a warty leg), marching in shackles up to the aborigine one and swallowing it whole. Then the warts that would eventually form america can form, split, attach themselves to the native american bubble and eat it like a plague, slowly taking more and more of the bubble's surface area until, victorious, the last of the native american bubble is devoured, and all the colours mix together to form a new colour which calls itself america.

>> ^rychan:
No offense to Canada, but land area is not the best indicator of empire strength and influence. GDP would be good, or even population would be better.


Agreed, but on the other hand, it is one dimension of potentially interesting information. I took a high-level computer graphics course when I was going to university, and we spent some time talking about how difficult it is to add more dimensions of data to a visualization without making it more convoluted.

We studied one example of a chart by a French historian named Charles Minard showing Napoleon's march to Moscow that successfully included many dimensions of data while being fairly easily understood at a glance, with more information represented in details. Basically it is map with line width representing Napoleon's troop strength over time (420,000 march in, 10,000 leave) and color coded for initial advance versus retreat. It also shows the date and daily temperatures to link the effect of deaths from exposure. Academics will gush on an on about this work, calling it "the best statistical graphic ever drawn" etc. It is actually pretty cool, and watching this visualization made me wonder what a modern Minard would have done with animated computer graphics and this data. Then again, I am a nerd.

If that didn't all sound so very boring, you can check out the graph I am talking about in English here, and then perhaps a larger original version in French with better details here. The wikipedia article on the French Invasion of Russia also references the chart.

America is the large black area depicted behind the colored circles.

>> ^dannym3141:
I didn't even see some nature of american bubble appear at all, as i was totally expecting. Or was that 'empire' formed before this timeline?

The video starts in 1800. The Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776.

The British Commonwealth effectively kept the British empire intact without all the hassle of day to day running of the individual countries. You could say it's a cooperative... but as i understand it commonwealth states answer to the queen and pay taxes to Britain?

I like the part where Spain pooped out Cuba.

[insert witty remark about 'soft bodies' here.]