Who Ruled Europe? Every Year, 750 BC to Today

Who ruled Europe? This map shows every state and empire in Europe every year from 750 BC to 2024, with the 10 largest by the land they held INSIDE Europe on the board. Greek city-states and the Etruscans start the story; by 500 BC the Scythians hold 0.64 million km² of the steppe. Rome peaks under Trajan in 117 with 2.63 million km² inside Europe. Charlemagne's empire reaches 1.28 million km² in 800, Kievan Rus' leads around 1000, the Golden Horde in 1300 (1.98 million km²), then Muscovy and the Russian Empire, which holds 4.88 million km² of Europe in 1812. In 2024 Russia is #1 with 3.67 million km², ahead of Ukraine (0.57 million) and France (0.55 million). The #1 changes hands 35 times. IMPORTANT Europe here = west of the Urals, the Ural River, the Caspian, the Kuma–Manych line and the Bosporus; Iceland and the Mediterranean islands included, Anatolia and the Caucasus not. Only the part of an empire inside that line counts (the Russian Empire = European Russia; the British Empire = the British Isles). Areas are the borders as reconstructed by the Cliopatria project: they include claimed and loosely controlled land, and other historians draw some borders differently. Cliopatria draws borders at "frame years"; between them the map holds. Flags appear on the board only. Most ancient and medieval empires had no flag in the modern sense: they show a widely used modern reconstruction or, where none exists, a simple emblem in their map colour. DATA Borders and areas: Cliopatria v0.2.1, Seshat Global History Databank. Bennett, J. S., Mutch, E., Tollefson, A., Chalstrey, E. et al. "Cliopatria - A geospatial database of world-wide political entities from 3400BCE to 2024CE", Scientific Data 12, 247 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04... . Data: https://github.com/Seshat-Global-Hist... (Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.13363120). Licence: CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... . Changes: alliance/vassal rows dropped, borders simplified and re-projected, clipped to the coastline, members coloured as one empire, and each area measured INSIDE the region (cells sized on the sphere). Base map: Natural Earth (public domain). Flags on the board: Wikimedia Commons contributors (public domain, CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA). Ancient empires show modern reconstructions; empires with no known flag show a RankVerse emblem in their map colour. Full flag credits in the pinned comment. CHAPTERS 0:00 Who ruled Europe? 0:07 750 BC: Greek city-states and the Etruscans 1:07 500 BC: the Scythians 2:46 146 BC: Rome destroys Corinth and Carthage 3:58 117: Rome at its largest 5:13 395: the Roman Empire splits 5:40 476: the fall of the West 7:21 800: Charlemagne 8:11 962: the Holy Roman Empire 8:21 1000: Kievan Rus' 9:28 1242: the Golden Horde 10:27 1453: Constantinople falls 10:57 1547: Ivan IV, Tsar of Russia 11:54 1721: the Russian Empire 12:26 1812: Napoleon invades Russia 13:08 1922: the Soviet Union 13:33 1991: the Soviet Union breaks up 13:45 2024 Which empire surprised you? Tell me in the comments. #History #Maps #DataVisualization