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What is an Empire? By Dennis RM Campbell There are as many definitions of empire as there have been empires, but some pretty familiar elements appear in most of them. It starts with working on our "control issues". 940L 2 What is an Empire? Dennis RM Campbell All shapes and sizes We generally think of empires as being really big. The British Empire controlled nearly 14 million square miles, about 24% of the entire world! But that example, from 1920 CE, is a little too recent to really get an idea of the 4,300 years of empire the world has experienced. The Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia (2330-2200 BCE) controlled only 30,000 square miles when it began, an area roughly the size of South Carolina. Most likely, its control never extended much further than that. Yet, it was a historically significant empire. As we will see, empires are more accurately measured by power and wealth than by square miles. Developing a definition What exactly is an empire? To put it simply, an empire is a political system in which a powerful central state controls weaker peripheral (outer) states. There is no single recipe for making an empire, but the main.