this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Most empires last about 250 years so this is fitting
Rome lasted a thousand years, and has become a benchmark for nationalist regimes that imagine they're ushering in a new golden age (right before they run out of money and attack Poland). NSDAP was notorious about aspiring to a thousand-year reich which they obviously did not achieve.
The US is making similar golden age noises.
Checking Wikipedia, the British empire was ~450 years, so I'd be interested in examples of ~250 year reigns.
Not true. Byzantium lasted a thousand years. The Roman empire lasted no more than 500.
As for the rest, well, fuck fascists.
If you add the Roman Republic too its another 500, but I digress.
We were talking about empires.
Britain still exists as a polity, but the British Empire no longer does, so we say the British Empire lasted such-and-such number of years, because it's already a thing of the past.
If we're talking about how long political systems last, it's going to get very abstract if we count different political systems as one just because they had the same capital (and sometimes not even that), or the same imperial core, or the same ethno-culturo-linguistic citizenry (or rather, first-class citizenry).
It gets increasingly difficult to define continuity if we start claiming the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire were actually the same political entity.
I get that. I only mention it because what people think of as Ancient Rome should include the Republic too, but if you want to be strict about defining only the time it was an empire then that’s fine. America often gets referred to as an empire but it technically isn’t one in the original meaning of the word, however it’s probably the closest it’s ever been to being one today.
Basically this:
Only I'm not sure if that's referring to Rome or the US...