I made list of countries that could've been classified as superpowers throughout history

>ERE
>Not a superpower

>Eastern ROMAN Empire
>Greek
>WE

Even modern day superpowers (i.e. USA) can be challenged by other nations, thats not part of what makes a nation a superpower. And the ancient civilizations were superpowers considering their technological capabilities and contemporary size of the civilized world.

> Greek-speaking country based around Aegean
> Not Greek

>Alexander the Great's empire
>couple decades lasting empire that held together only because of one man and fell apart immediately after his death
It had world-wide impact in the long run, but the political entity itself doesn't deserve the title of a superpower

>Constantinople
>Anatolia
>Based Roman territories since time immemorial

>Greek

But the Diadochi do.

Only the Hwans and the Finns can be considered one.

No, it can't, we're not only talking about a nation challenging another nation, but beating that nation as well. Just because one nation is superior to the rest doesn't make that nation a "superpower". "Superpower" implies complete dominance over other nations.

The US was a superpower immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, today they're can barely be considered a superpower.

That's just wrong as countries like Spain, France and UK projected their power a lot.

Doesn't matter really how long it lasted, at it's height no nation could challenge him. Alexander's Empire was more of a superpower than the Achaemenid's ever were considering there was no threat to the existence of the said Empire.

Well, that's why I said "with the exception of the colonial powers" who could bully every nation to their will.

There was never, at any point in history, a nation, that could claim dominance over all other nations. Superpowers are about being the strongest one around. If it would be about being the dominant one, the title would be "United Earth"

>Rome stops at 400 AD
>Sassanids included up to 500AD, when they weren't conquered by Muslims until the mid 7th century

Aside from the Franks, there was not a single country that was able to go toe to toe with the Muslims like the later Roman Empire.

Mongols raped Muslims.

Xiongnu/Huns would've raped if the muslims existed back then.

A more accurate transfer of history would be the paradigm phasing of

Minoan/Crete - up to eruption of thera
Mycenaean/Greece - up to phyric defeat
Roman/Italy - up to Charlemagnes crowning
Carolingian/France - up to Frederick Barbarossas crowning
Holy Roman/ German - up to waterloo
Anglo/England - continue to at least the next nuclear bombings/indefnitely

To me these are the only superpowers, that you can only have one at one time and their is distinct succession.

clovis crowning sorry* 509ad

Any country before Britain was a regional power.

The only 3 states in history that have been able to project their power over any corner of the globe in any region at will were the British Empire, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

Are you inferring that there wasn't a majority population of Greeks in those areas?

>not including Macedonia in 300 BC

Does Alexander the Great ring a bell

What a retarded list.

Byzantine empire was the pre-eminent Mediterranean, Balkan and Near Eastern superpower from 500's-900's and again remained a regional-superpower until 1204.

Arguably it was more powerful than the Ummayads/Abbasids and Charlemagne's short lived empire, as it was able to outlive both, and influence the second.

>Mongolia
>>Mongol Empire - 1200 - 1300 AD
Mongolia today is not where the Mongol empire originated, it was merely one of many captured territories.

>H
>R
>S
Not holy, not Roman, not superpower.

>Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid - 600 - 900 AD
>Saudi Arabia
Triggered.
Those caliphates were ruled from the Mashriq cities of Baghdad, Kufa, Damascus, Cairo etc not the Saudi shithole

It goes
>regional power
>great power
>super power
>world power (there can only be 1)
Also this list has a large WUZ element to it, so TL;DR KYS FAG
>America 1900-2000
KYS with a fistful of frag grenades

>mongols aren't mongols
Historic Mongolia is even part of china now, but yeah most of those people will be jurchen not mongol

Being the pre-eminent Mediterranean power doesn't qualify you for superpower status: byzantine power was never on a global scale, even by the standards of the time

If we define "superpower" as a nation with the ability to project power around the globe, there've only been three superpowers: Great Britain, the original superpower, the Soviet Union and the United States, the last superpower still standing.

The term superpower was first used during World War II and originally referred only to the three great powers of the 19th/20th century [1]. One might retrospectively take into consideration the states you named, but the Han, the Roman Empire and the like only operated on a regional level relative to the scale of the globe. Accordingly, they weren't superpowers in the same sense as the UK, the US or the Soviets. Using "superpower" liberally may also lead to a confusion of the term, and there's no urgent reason for calling the empires of the past anything more than mere great powers. Therefore, keeping the original distinction seems prudent.
[1] Fox, William T. R, "The Superpowers: The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union — Their Responsibility for Peace" (Harcourt, Brace a. Company, 1944)

>Achaemenids, Sasanids - 500 BC - 500 AD
>that one millenia gap

poor persia :(

Yeah because Egypt did. You can't be serious.

>he thinks global power is just a big blob
The Byzantines resisted succesfully against the so proclaimed super powered Arabs and also had part in the forming of states like Russia.

Also mentioning the Sassanids but not mentioning the Byzantines who not only lasted longer than thembut faced them on many wars is completely ignorant.

epic list bro. haha just like pdx

what did he mean by this?

>faced them on many wars
I don't think being a little bitch and paying someone off so they don't attack you classifies as a war.

Why aren't you including the Arsacid/Parthians for Iran? Or the Safavid/Afrashid Empires if you did the the Ottomans?

Also why does the US cap at 2000 AD when its still the preeminent military power in the world and the de facto head of a Western hegemony to this day?

>wanting to prevent war in the eastern frontier so you can focus on retaking former Roman lands is being a bitch
also tell us what happened to the Sassanids in the end, faggot. I'll wait

he meant that the Austrian Empire (and then later the Austro-Hungarian Empire), was one of the strongest and most notible superpowers of the late 19th century

>Moving goalposts faster than Anatolian borders
Biyzantaboos need to die

I's say Egypt became a major power around 1450-1150 bc

>superpowers
The UK, the USA and Russia are the only countries that have been historically worthy of this category and honestly none are now worthy. MAYBE one could consider adding France but even in Napoleons prime he was essentially confined to the continent. It is difficult to consider a nation a superpower when it can not exert sufficient pressure on its western or eastern neighbour.
China may become one but that stand to be seen.

While a lot of these countries have been historically very powerful, owing to the limitations of their time period, they're all effectively regional powers.
Mongolia is a possible exception to this (being the largest contiguous empire ever) but desu they're not even a civilisation. The plague washed over Eurasia too, proliferating like wildfire and killing millions before ebbing rapidly, is Yersinia pestis a superpower?

>destroyed the last Vestige of Rome
>conquered half of MENA
>pushed Europe to the brink of destruction

I say they are least a world power

Technically you can start with the Medes in 680 BC and ends with the fall of the Achaemenids in 330 BC. In the lull between Alexander the Seleucids you then get the Arsacid dynasty/Parthians coming back in 250 BC and the end of the Sassanid/Persians in 651 AD.

Pretty damn good run.

Byzies won most of the wars, including the last one, the Byzies just had a lot more to lose

Parthian and Safavid were regional powers at best.

Vietnam resisted the Americans but their not a superpower are they? My point is that the concept superpower is incoherent in a world where a countries sphere of influence is limited to the immediate surrounding area: in this case the black sea and eastern Mediterranean. This a also undermines the basis for the countries the byzantine resisted being called superpowers

I think you forgot about Spain.

>he forgot Finland and Korea
Lol fucking pleb

Alice Lyman Miller defines a superpower as "a country that has the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes, in more than one region of the globe at a time, and so may plausibly attain the status of global hegemony."

As such, it is impossible for any pre-USA country to be a superpower. The technology did not allow it before the 20th and 21st centuries.

Regional power at best

Now you're just listing great powers. May as well throw the Ottomans and Afsharids in there as well.

Vietnam is an unfair comparison considering that the Byzantines were already a powerful state that could sustain themselves unlike Vietnam which was a gigantic jungle. Not to mention that Americans could've won if they kept fighting but they pulled out because the war was pointless and not worth the men and money spent unlike the Arabs which were much more motivated from their conquests thanks to Jihad being an integral part of their religion.

Also talking about superpowers before the 19th century is pointless considering that there weren't any states that would have a complete influence over the world, with the exception of certain Europeans, but even then they couldn't take over some other non-European entities until later on.

>United States of America
>>USA - 1900 - 2000 AD
I don't think you could classify the US as a superpower until 1945

No Persia or Portugal?

>Ancient Egypt
Stopped reading there