The Empire is Dead... Long Live the Empire!

Empires have profound transformative political effects, sometimes long after their deaths.

Here are some maps on the political legacy of these empires:

The Austro-Hungarian Empire lasted for centuries, until it was dislocated post-World War I. But remarkably you'd still be able to find its borders with modern electoral results. Take Romania's 2014 parliamentary election with red and blue being Romania's nominal left and right

More generally, the Austrian empire has left its mark all across around in modern-day Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia and Italy, who all had large parts of their country under Austro-Hungarian rule.

The German Empire has also left its marks on Polish politics, with former German territories more centrist/liberal than the Polish average. Here's the map of the German map overlaid on top of the 2007 election for example

It also works for 2020:

Going a further east it's very interesting to see that the borders of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth (which lasted until 1793) were still very much visible in recent elections, take the 2010 election with the former Polish-Lithuanian territories siding with Tymoshenko.

The Romans also left their marks in Germany. The territory of Germania (briefly in the 1st century) overlaps nearly perfectly with the 20th century FDR, the 19th century Confederation of the Rhine and 9th century East Francia (the Eastern part of Charlemagne's empire)

Speaking of Charlemagne, it's staggering to see how similar his empire was at its peak (in green, light green is for vassal-states) to the original map of the EU with its 6 founding members.

While some of these overlaps may well be coincidental, it's worth thinking about how long-lasting institutions like Empires, even when they're long gone, continue to shape a people's mindset. Legends, traditions, laws, customs and economic ties tend to survive political decline.

Will be posting more of these threads going forward, so If you're interested, stay tuned!