What If The British Empire Still Existed Today?

What If The British Empire Still Existed Today?

Here’s a uselessly amusing idea to wrap your head around: What if history’s largest empire, the British Empire, still existed today? What would it look like? How many countries would it include? How many people? What would they look like? Would the Sun really never set?

Real Life Lore examines a reunited British Empire and came up with some numbers to quantify the make believe kingdom:

  • It would be made up of 64 countries with a population of 2.634 billion people.
  • Its lands would take up a quarter of the Earth’s land area and could fill up 94 per cent of the Moon.
  • It wouldn’t pass the US in military spending, but it would have the largest military on the planet.
  • Only five per cent of the population would be white.
  • The population would be poor even though it would have the world’s second biggest economy.

There’s more interesting tidbits about the empire in the video below. It’s also rather fun (if you have, like, nothing else to do) to compare this new British Empire with modern versions of the Roman Empire and the Mongol Empire too.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.