When was the time when your country (or its legal predecessor) was at its geographically greatest extent and vice versa, at its smallest? What is the timespan between both?

5 comments

1. In 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was formed, and in those years, at least until 1866, the country was at its smallest extension, since a few important territories were still missing.

   The largest extension was reached after the treaties following the First World War, when Italy got a few of the territories agreed in the Pact of London with France and the United Kingdom.

   So, the time span is about 60 years, more or less, in both cases Italy was still a kingdom, but economically and socially it changed a lot, especially after the liberal reformation under Giolitti’s governments.

2. For Bavaria, it would be the years 952 to 976. The Bavarian duke not only ruled the Austrian March and the duchy Carinthia, but also the March of Verona. Much of Istria, Trieste and a part of Northern Italy belonged to it. Bavaria with access to the sea, hell yeah.

3. Not entirely sure but it’s probably:

   Smallest: 1291, just after being founded. Originally there where only 3 cantos that signed a loose alliance, slowly over time more and more cantons joined the alliance and the alliance also became ever closer, transforming from an alliance of independent countries to a single country made from more or less independent parts (German Staatenbund -> Bundesstaat). AFAIK no part ever left the alliance because it wanted to, though some areas were forced to leave/taken away, see below.

   Biggest: shortly before Napoleon invaded. After the Napoleonic chaos was over some of the Swiss cantons lost some territory, eg. Canton Grisons lost the Valtellina (German: Veltlin) which is now part of Italy.

4. In Europe during the time of the Habsburg Netherlands in the 16th century. With colonies however in the early 20th century when the whole of Indonesia, plus Suriname and 6 Caribbean islands were under Dutch control.

   Smallest in the time of the Batavian Republic during the Napoleonic Wars. As a French puppet we lost most of our colonies to the Brits and some of our European territory to the French

5. This is actually a more difficult question to answer than you’d expect. If you include all of Britain’s colonial possessions then it would be sometime in the 20s/30s when the UK got hold of most of Germany’s African possessions and several Ottoman mandates, and then progressively lost each of them starting with India in 1947 and Ghana in 1957 until around the early 80s, with HK the last territory to be given up in 1997. However, none of these places were considered integral parts of the UK, unlike France’s colonial possessions, and also included a number of ‘Dominions’ where powers were considerably devolved. As far as I know, only Ireland was considered an integral part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, starting with the Act of Union in 1800. So under that definition I guess the UK was at its largest extent between 1800 and 1922. On the other hand, the Norman Kings of England also ruled over much of Northern and Western France until the Late Middle Ages, so I don’t know whether that also counts.

   As for smallest, probably during the Heptarchy period in the early Middle Ages after the Romans left and the Anglo-Saxons came and established lots of little kingdoms, of which Wessex in the South-West became the most powerful. Before the Romans came, England was divided up among numerous Celtic tribes of which we know little apart from what the Romans told us about them.

   In terms of political and military power, we peaked some time in the 19th and early 20th century before the Yalta conference and then the Suez Crisis finally saw the UK definitively losing its world superpower status. In terms of economic power, we peaked just before the 2008 recession. Cultural and social power is more difficult to say, many of our former White dominions still looked heavily towards their former colonial masters even after their independence, and only really started forging their own completely separate identities in the 70s/80s.