12月2日
Maps of the 9 "Great Nations"
The "Great Nations" series
chose 9 nations. Only nations in the modern world were selected (i.e.
after 1500s). This is significant, because, as the narrative said, the
year 1500 defines the first time that different disparate parts of the
world finally met and compete (and conflict) with each other.
Before
that, China was the center of its part of the world, so the Chinese
empire (and the Roman, Persia, Alexander, Mongolia, Ottoman Empires)
did not count. The subtle message is also that, in this new order China
should not be thinking about restoring its old hegemony, because that
hegemony only extended to a small part of the world, i.e. NE Asia; as a
result, the future objective for China is not to dominate the world,
but become a major player like (the average of) what (
the "three really qualified great nations") Britain, Holland and USA is playing today.
- Some Chinese commentator complained why the Qing empire was not included
in the "Great Nations". After all, Qing still had over 1/4 of the
world's GDP until mid-1800s. Qing was also a very effectively managed
empire in terms of direct control. I think the key word is the the term
"modern". The series was very adamant in stating that Britain was the
FIRST modern nations in the world after Glorious Revolution, and Qing
was definitely not a "modern" nation in this sense. The 3 nations
preceded Britains all made contact with the whole earth (including Asia
and the New World), while Qing was a local empire not different than
Han or Persia of 2000 years ago.
Here are the extent of these empires at their apogee.
A few point worth noting
- According
to the series, cultural influence is important, so these colonial
empires, even though largely disintegrated by now, still maintain
cultural influences to the areas they once occupied
- The
influence (and contribution) to the world is one of the most important
measure for a Great Nation given by the series, many of them (e.g. USA)
influenced the world much more that what the map below paints
- France
was hailed as a nation that influenced the war much more than the hard
power it projected (i.e. despite its total failure in all the major
wars it participated, including the Napolean wars. However, the program
acknowledged Napolean for spreading the spirits of French revolution
across the European continent, and in its emphasis on rule of law, the
Napolean Code)
1)
Portuguese Empire (Brazil became much larger later)

2)
Spanish Empire (only the red areas)

3)
Dutch Empire
(Dutch was hailed for its business achievement, i.e. expanded basically
without the use of force (it was noted that Dutch ships did not have
guns and were therefore much lighter and cost effective than the
Spanish or British ships). The subtext is that Dutch basically was
competing under the modern rule of globalization competition .)

4)
British Empire
5)
French Empire
6)
German Empire (Colonial empire shown, short term occupation in WWI and WWII not counted)

7)
Japanese Empire (areas outside red/pink are short-lived occupation in WWII and should not be counted)

8)
Soviet Empire (Only red areas, includes satellite states)

9)
American Empire
(This is post Spanish-American war map, does not include NATO sphere of
influence or Okinawa after WWII, or occupied Afghanistan and Iraq)

10)
Other colonial empires in wiki.