Under Parthian and Sassanian Iranian empires, scholars concentrated on exchanging knowledge and inventions by the countries around them – India, China, and the Roman Empire, when it is thought to be expanded over the other countries.

In the 6th century BC the kingdom of Lydia almost expanded to the whole of Asia Minor, until it became a satrapy of the Persian Empire.

Byzantine control was challenged by Arab raids starting in the 7th century ( see Byzantine – Arab Wars ), but in the 9th and 10th century a resurgent Byzantine Empire regained its lost territories and even expanded beyond its traditional borders, into Armenia and Syria ( ancient Aram ).

Augustus dramatically enlarged the Empire, annexing Egypt, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Raetia, expanded possessions in Africa, expanded into Germania, and completed the conquest of Hispania.

Writers Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri have together in their books ( Empire & Multitude ) expanded on this idea of a disunified multitude: humans coming together for shared causes, but lacking the complete sameness of the notion of ' the people '.

Berlin became the capital of the German Empire in 1871 and expanded rapidly in the following years.

The British Empire expanded in this time to include colonies, protectorates, and Dominions throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia.

The Ottoman Empire further expanded in the 16th century to include most of Slavonia, western Bosnia and Lika.

While the number of cardinals was small from the times of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance, and frequently smaller than the number of recognized churches entitled to a cardinal priest, in the 16th century the College expanded markedly.

In the Roman Empire, citizenship expanded from small scale communities to the entire empire.

In AD 40, Caligula expanded the Roman Empire into Mauretania and made a significant attempt at expanding into Britannia – even challenging Neptune in his campaign.

The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century ; it was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire and the fifth largest in Europe.

As Emperor, Domitian strengthened the economy by revaluing the Roman coinage, expanded the border defenses of the Empire, and initiated a massive building program to restore the damaged city of Rome.

The conquest of Britain continued under the command of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who expanded the Roman Empire as far as Caledonia, or modern day Scotland.

From their original homelands in Scandinavia and far northern Europe Germanic tribes expanded throughout northern and western Europe in the middle period of classical antiquity, and southern Europe in late antiquity, conquering Celtic and other peoples and forming in 800 the Holy Roman Empire, the first German Empire.

As Germanic tribes conquered western Europe, Slavic peoples gradually expanded their control over eastern Europe and northern Eurasia, and in the form of the Romanov Empire extended that control to the Pacific forming a common border with the Qing Empire.

Ahmad Shah Durrani, who commanded 4, 000 Abdali Afghans under Nader Shah, asserted Pashtun rule in 1747 and further expanded his new Afghan Empire.

In the late 14th century, the Songhai gradually gained independence from the Mali Empire and expanded, ultimately subsuming the entire eastern portion of the Mali Empire.

The Empire was expanded into India's central and southern regions by the emperors Chandragupta and Bindusara, but it excluded a small portion of unexplored tribal and forested regions near Kalinga ( modern Orissa ), till it was conquered by Ashoka.

Disraeli, who expanded the Empire to protect British interests abroad, cultivated the image of himself ( and the Conservative Party ) as " Imperialist ", making grand gestures such as conferring the title " Empress of India " on Queen Victoria in 1876.

By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland in Europe to Alaska in North America.

After 1180 BC, the Hittite empire disintegrated into several independent " Neo-Hittite " states, subsequent to losing much territory to the Middle Assyrian Empire and being finally overrun by the Phrygians, another Indo-European people who are believed to have migrated from The Balkans.

The Anatolian beyliks were in turn absorbed into the rising Ottoman Empire during the 15th century.

After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, diversifying into a number of descendant cursives.

* 1810 – Napoleon I annexes two departments of the Kingdom of Westphalia into the French Empire.

* 1834 – Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force.

This machine was used to calculate a way into the " Eleven Day Empire ".

In French-speaking areas of the former Empire, the word aquis evolved into the modern Aix.

According to Arab tradition, the ensuing war pushed Ghana over the edge, ending the kingdom's position as a commercial and military power by 1100, as it collapsed into tribal groups and chieftaincies, some of which later assimilated into the Almoravids while others founded the Mali Empire.

His loss of the empire's few remaining territories in Anatolia made the Ottoman Turks posed to expand into Europe as did its lack of strength following his reign to prevent the formation of the Serbian Empire.

However, as Andronikos ' rule went on, the Emperor became increasingly paranoid and violent – in September 1185, Andronikos ordered the execution of all prisoners, exiles and their families for collusion with the invaders – and the Byzantine Empire descended into a terror state.

When the Roman Empire turned Christian during the following century, this imagery came to be used in a more metaphysical sense, and removed legal impediments to the development and public use of the Anno Domini dating system, which came into general use during the reign of Charlemagne.

These people may have assisted the Scythians when King Darius the Great led a Persian invasion into what is now Southern Russia to punish the Scythians for their raids into the Achaemenid Empire.

With additions, changes and new construction, the fort remained in use by the Army into the waning days of the Western Roman Empire, possibly the mid-5th century.

Over the last half of the 20th century, historical and archaeological research has increasingly supported the theory that the remnants of the Celtic Boii were absorbed into the Roman Empire and later intermingled with other Germanic peoples who chose to stay ( or were stationed by the Romans ) in the area.

The eastern Boians on the Danube were incorporated into the Roman Empire in 8 AD.

There were two more nominal bishops, but on the petition of the latter of these, the electoral prince John George, the secularisation of the bishopric was undertaken and finally accomplished, in spite of legal proceedings to reassert the imperial immediacy of the prince-bishopric within the Empire and so to likewise preserve the diocese, which dragged on into the seventeenth century.

It was normal Roman practice to allow allied kingdoms their independence only for the lifetime of their client king, who would agree to leave his kingdom to Rome in his will — the provinces of Bithynia and Galatia, for example, were incorporated into the Empire in just this way.

Even before the Ionian Revolt, Darius had begun to expand the Empire into Europe, subjugating Thrace, and forcing Macedon to become allied to Persia.

The agreement effectively divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire outside the Arabian peninsula into areas of future British and French control or influence.

The Serbian and Greek armies repulsed the Bulgarian offensive and counter-attacked into Bulgaria, while Romania and the Ottoman Empire also attacked Bulgaria and gained ( or regained ) territory.

The German Empire, in turn, under the " Drang nach Osten " policy, aspired to turn the Ottoman Empire into its own de facto colony, and thus supported its integrity.