Oddbean

It was probably the least cruel, but still cruel, colonial empire of the time. I find it funny that the success of their expansion often came from failing to mimic the strategies of other empires of the time. Like they tried to use the Spanish strategies used in South America and it lost them 2 colonies pretty quickly immediately. Wahunsunacock was not having any of it.

If you want to create an effective long-lasting empire you need to be capable of committing acts of great good and great cruelty. Of course, neither should be done without reason. Also, I would never say that they failed to mimic strategies of other empires. More like showing recognition of the faults of those empires and choosing not to repeat.

Well, they attempted to copy the Spanish Empires strategy of setting up meetings with the chieftains and abducting them. They would then be tortured relentlessly until the tribe submitted all their wealth. Britain tried this, amongst others, and Wahunsunacock didn't fall for it. Smith went back to plead for carpenters instead of soldiers, but it took so long that the entire colony perished. Poor Jamestown. If the strategy worked for one empire but not another, I would call the attempt a failure. Learning from those failures is what allowed newer trade focused strategies to emerge.

I can't argue with that. But, mistakes were made on both sides. The high level of cultural intolerance and misunderstanding led to increasingly frequent periods of conflict. The First Anglo-Powhatan War for instance. The point I'm trying to make is that it wasn't just the Brits fault.

I'm going to vote for the Alexandrine Empire. Brought distant cultures into contact, created new and vigorous ones, and imploded in no more than a generation. All empires should do that. The imperial equivalent of dying a hero before seeing yourself become the villain.

It was a tough question really because they're all fundamentally bad and what does great mean in the context. My shakey reasoning was Size, duration, sophistication (calendar, astral knowledge), sports, architecture, and many joined freely... These inspite of its time. The other guys answer was better tbh

Hmm... I'm tempted to go with the relatively peaceful expansion (huge) but I think ima going with the knowledge (perspective) surrounding the calandar. If we're to believe the accepted interpretation of the times (I don't), the frame of reference the must have had means they embody a massive step in human development. Their influence must have been profound on their neighbours. Their influence ended up spanning the Incas and Aztecs.

Those are good reasons. They did make an impressive calender. Its also pretty cool they were one of the first civilizations to build millenia surviving structures: mayan pyramids. Its always cool how many cultures simultaneously discovered the durability of the triangle all around the same time. I'll have to look into the Mayans more. 👍

Sounds like it could be an interprative problem. One tracks the orbit of electrons around an atom, while the other tracks the orbit of planets around a star. One of these is less affected by tiny changes in spacetime by gravity. An atomic clock in space vs on earth will appear to desync eventually, but they are both 100% accurate if the machines correctly record orbit. While an atomic clock will be perfectly correct, it doesn't track time at the same scale as our calenders attempt to.

No votes for the current Rothschild Banking empire that shadow controls the British/American empire of the last 200+ years? It's arguably the biggest by % and on an absolute scale blows everything out of the water. Also the leaders have avoided the public eye which could be a first ever.