Atlas  ·  Educational Resource  ·  2,200 Years

Empires, Colonies & Religion

The three pillars of expansion that have redrawn the world for two thousand years military conquest, settlement and extraction, and the spread of belief.

Atlas Why It Happened Jewish Settlements Atlas ↗ The Memorial Project
0Years of Documented Colonial Rule
0Major Imperial Powers
0Estimated Indigenous Deaths (Modern Era)
0Africans Trafficked Across the Atlantic

Grade 9–12  ·  Educational Resource  ·  200 BCE – 2026 CE

Empire. Colony. Religion.

For two thousand years, the world has been redrawn by three forces working in tandem. Rome marched in, Romans settled, Roman gods followed. The Caliphates conquered, Arab garrisons settled, Islam was preached. Spain conquered, encomenderos settled, Catholicism was imposed. This atlas tracks all three pillars and where any of them failed to take.

The Three Pillars of Expansion

How conquest, settlement, and belief moved together

⚔
Empire
Conquest · Tribute · Strategic Geography
Military conquest and political domination. From Rome's Egyptian grain tribute to Britain's Hong Kong; chartered companies, viceroyalties, protectorates, mandates. The pillar that draws the borders.
⌂
Colony
Settlement · Plantation · Extraction
Settlers replace, displace, or enslave the people already there. The Americas, Australia, Algeria, South Africa, Hawai'i. ~12.5 million Africans trafficked to plantations; entire indigenous worlds erased. The pillar that fills the borders.
✧
Religion
Conversion · Identity · Erasure
Belief travelled with the army. Catholic Christianity across Iberian America; Protestant in the British and Dutch worlds; Islam from the Atlantic to Indonesia; Soviet atheism across Central Asia. The slowest pillar and often the deepest.

How It Played Out

Eight specific patterns visible on the map

01
Tribute & Taxation
From Rome's Egyptian grain ships to Mughal land revenue, the earliest empires extracted wealth without settlement. Conquer, tax, leave the locals in place.
02
Forced Conversion
Catholic Spain in the Americas, the Arab Caliphates from Spain to Sindh, Belgian missionaries in the Congo religion was both motive and tool of conquest.
03
Settler Replacement
The Americas, Australia, Algeria, South Africa, Hawai'i colonies built by displacing the people already there. The bloodiest pattern.
04
Plantation Slavery
~12.5 million Africans trafficked across the Atlantic, 4.9 million to Brazil alone. Sugar, coffee, cotton built on stolen labour.
05
Trade Monopolies
The Dutch VOC and English East India Company chartered corporations with armies. Modern multinationals' deepest ancestors.
06
Industrial Extraction
Rubber, ivory, copper, oil. The 19th-century Scramble for Africa carved a continent for raw materials in 30 years (1880–1910).
07
Strategic Geography
Hong Kong for the China trade, Suez for the route to India, Gibraltar for the Mediterranean empires fought over chokepoints.
08
Decolonisation
From Haiti 1804 to Namibia 1990, the long unwinding most of it after 1945, much of it violent, none of it complete.
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The Atlas

Empires & Colonies Across 2,200 Years

Drag the slider to travel through time. Click any country with a marker to open its full history. Use the filters to narrow by status, ruler, or region.

Region:
Religion:
Ruler:
1885 CE Scramble for Africa
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Independent
Tributary
Protectorate
Direct Rule
Settler Colony
Occupied
Post-colonial

Global Patterns

Religion & Ruler Population Coverage Across Time

Aggregate population under each religion and each colonial / imperial power, summed across all 30 territories in the atlas. Drag the timeline above; the cursor here moves with you.

Religion Imposed Population over Time
Religion:
Zoom:
Ruling Power Population over Time
Ruler:
Zoom:
Territory
Population Over Time
Religion Transitions

Significance

At

At a Glance

Cultural Heritage Before vs. Today

Learn More (curated, non-Wikipedia)

Full Timeline click to expand
⊕

Empire. Colony. Religion.

Three pillars, intertwined for two thousand years. The borders they drew, the populations they moved, and the beliefs they carried still shape every conflict, every diaspora, every constitution that came after.

A project of The Memorial Project · Sources: Cambridge History of European Migration, Slave Voyages Database, Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, Stora's Algeria 1830–2000, Wikipedia / Encyclopaedia Britannica, peer-reviewed historical demography (Cook & Borah, Maddison Project). Population numbers are conservative central estimates of published ranges.

Further reading: