Personal Empires

[Aznavour]

Not sure if this counts as a proper historical phenomenon with a name that eludes me —if it even has a name—, but I did notice that while normal empires built over the span of generations by determined colonialists oppressing and exploiting whole nations, there also exists the cases of men building polities that exists as empires of sorts but crash upon either their deaths or a concerted military effort against them.

The methodology through which such Personal Empires are acquired is often a combination of inheritance and conquest, the most famous examples being Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander and Charles V, though smaller and lesser known examples do exists, from Harsha of Kannauj in India and Theodoric the Great (who unified Gothic Crowns*)to condottieri in the vein of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Mastino Scaligeri and Cesare Borgia who tried and failed to consolidate great domains in Northern Italy.

And of course, men like Charles of Anjou with their weird and unsustainable collection of properties.
*

But what other men could have accomplished this feat of uniting such separate peoples and crowns under their very temporary yoke, either through conquest, marriage or inheritance, that did not do so IRL?

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

Hoche is kind of the obvious one--there's a TL close to ours where he doesn't die of TB and takes Napoleon's place as the gifted young military officer who rolls his artillery piece up to the Directory with a polite request.

Can't say a lot of others come to mind. Andrew Jackson, maybe, in a world where the US falls apart after foundation? Or a Tukhachevsky born about 200-300 years earlier.

 

[Thande]

19th century African history has a fair few (@Gary Oswald passim), we usually don't think of them that way because pre-colonial Africa doesn't usually have nation-state borders on that we can point at and say "look, this is different from that".

Obviously there's Ungarn-Sternberg and a few lesser-known ones in the Russian Civil War.

 

[Gary Oswald]

The North Sea empires were often this by the nature of Norse inheritance so I could easily imagine more successful Harald Hardradas or Magnus Barefoots doing similar one king empires.

Later on Louis of France or Richard of Cornwall as wannabe crown collectors.

Like Thande mentions a bunch of this type emerged in 19th century Africa. Samori Ture almost certainly would have gone down in history as one of the greatest conquerors of all time had not the French arrived with machine guns.

 

[Neoteros]

If Charlemagne and Irene had married and had had a single (surviving, at least) child, such an Eastern Roman/Frankish Empire would've lasted only one generation, if said child would've had more than one heir - Byzantine and Frankish inheritance laws combined wouldn't have allowed for the survival of such a domain.

However, such a temporary union might've had long term consequences, due to the inevitable cultural exchanges, and the fact that people will be looking back at the brief revival of an united Eastern/Western Roman Empire (at least, that's how it would be perceived, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary) as something to try again.

Had the Toyotomi invasion of Korea succeeded, I can't see such a realm surviving in the long term, even though Japan itself might've seen a prolonged period of Toyotomi rule, the consequences of which, I don't know - feudal Japan isn't exactly something I know a lot about.

 

[TR1996]

If Charlemagne and Irene had married and had had a single (surviving, at least) child, such an Eastern Roman/Frankish Empire would've lasted only one generation, if said child would've had more than one heir - Byzantine and Frankish inheritance laws combined wouldn't have allowed for the survival of such a domain.

However, such a temporary union might've had long term consequences, due to the inevitable cultural exchanges, and the fact that people will be looking back at the brief revival of an united Eastern/Western Roman Empire (at least, that's how it would be perceived, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary) as something to try again.

I'd be pretty sceptical of such a kid even being able to hold it together for a single lifetime.

 

[napoleon IV]

Hoche is kind of the obvious one--there's a TL close to ours where he doesn't die of TB and takes Napoleon's place as the gifted young military officer who rolls his artillery piece up to the Directory with a polite request.

Can't say a lot of others come to mind. Andrew Jackson, maybe, in a world where the US falls apart after foundation? Or a Tukhachevsky born about 200-300 years earlier.

I think the reason it's difficult to think of potential ones is that a lot of the guys we're talking about are people who were killed/overthrown early in their careers, and therefore didn't leave much of a mark on history. Genghis Khan the world conqueror is a big deal, Genghis Khan if he got killed in some war with other Mongol tribes in 1190 would be lucky to even get a Wikipedia stub.

 

[heraclius]

Many of the personal empires created have been in a fluid politico-military situation where the bonds of loyalty to one particular state or dynasty, and even the boundaries of states, constantly changed and there was no overwhelming loyalty to a long-term, 'fixed' state or elite - which gave the Middle East and parts of South and Central Asia a head start in this. An area without clear geographical boundaries that a new empire would have difficulty crossing to take over rivals or punish rebels, and with a number of highly mobile and restive tribes (often pastoral) who could be defeated and taken over by a charismatic leader and incorporated into his army, aided this too -hence the fluid situation in Central and NE Asia and the quick and vast expansion by the Mongols. Once one leader or tribal army was on a winning streak, then others would join it either for self-preservation or to get a share of the loot - and the leader had to keep winning to keep up momentum and scare off opposition. To a lesser extent and usually based on an infantry army, this applies to non-forested and non-mountain areas of Africa too - eg the Sahel , though we don't know much about how certain empires suddenly sprang up there from Ghana (on the R Niger not in the modern country) and Mali in the early medieval period through Songhai - and a surpirse Moroccan incursion into W Africa in the later C16th -to the ephemeral and non-ephemeral mobile Sahel empires of the early modern era, eg the Sokoto Calpihate (largely a personal empire by Usuman Dan Fodio?). On a smaller, infantry basis, the Zulus (esp Shaka's expansionism) or the Ndebele under Lobenguela .

In the Middle East/ South Asia area, many empires seem to have been erected based on a personal army built up in the border-fluid Iranian/ Afghan/ Transoxiania region, eg from Cyrus the Great (a small royal state in W Persia turning into a huge empire as far as the Aegean and the Oxus, once Media had joined in a personal union and the riches of Iraq been seized) to Timur to T''s descendant Babur (originally king of Kabul, where he is buried, but defeated there and ending up in N India as the latest in a long line of incursions via the Punjab from the Iranian/ Afghan region). Timur , like Genghis Khan, won a series of battles and terrorised opposition; Babur won one major battle that destroyed a previously existing state, ie the sultanate of Delhi, at Paniput in 1526 and if he had not d aged 47 could have gone on to overrun all of N India as his successors did . (Conversely, his son Humayun nearly lost the whole new empire to Sher Shah so the state was not that secure by 1542.) The 'new personal empires' of Europe tend to arise as a result of a minor and ambitious ruler either seizing or inheriting/marrying into a larger state - eg William I from Normandy taking over England and dominating Wales and Scotland, or the Papacy helping Charles of Anjou to get Naples / Sicily in 1266 in order to get rid of the Hohenstaufen. Charles V was lucky in inheriting huge states from both his parents (one dead, one replaced as allegedly 'insane') and from his grandfather, and struck it lucky with Central and S America due to Cortez and Pizarro; he did not do much in the military way himself and was held back by the Ottomans and the N African states when he did. Arguably the Ottoman state was 'created' , at least as a major power, by several hugely talented men, eg Bayezid I, Mehmed II and Selim I - but they created it on the basis of an existing small state and dynasty. A rival 'new state' based on an extant dynasty was the Safavid empire of Ismail Safavi though he lost his Iraqi lands to Selim at Chaldiran in 1524. Other , shorter lived personal empires include that of Nadir Shah in Iran in th 1740s (a mini-Timur?) and Ranjit Singh (based on a existing army and small state , like Alexander's) in the Punjab and Indus areas.

 

[Warthog]

Ndebele under Lobenguela

Ndebele state in what's now Zimbabwe was founded by Mzilikazi. Not really a case of expansion, others joining etc. Two attempts at conquest/ settlement, with some who were conquered or affiliated to the first unsuccessful state, going with Mzilikazi to Zim after defeat of the first state

 

[SinghSong]

Reckon one of the most recent historical examples of this (i.e, a personal empire, whereby an entirely new state came into existence with no historical, ethnic or cultural precedent, solely due to the unification efforts and territorial acquisitions of one individual) was James Brooke's Sarawak. After that though, there aren't too many, if any, examples of personal empires which received international recognition as independent states; Muhammed 'al-Mahdi's Mahdist State, in Sudan, was certainly a personal empire as well, but without international recognition from other nations, so are the personal fiefdoms of practically every warlord that's ever existed.