I say Empire in air quotes because the history of the Holy Roman Empire and the way it operated is incredibly complicated, and calling it an empire is actually fairly controversial, and so is calling it Roman.

And so is calling it wholly so.

If you're curious about a little imperial backstory, I encourage you to go check out Wonder Wise video about the subject after this one, since we're doing a collab on it anyway, what would the world look like if the Holy Roman Empire was, for whatever reason, resurrected today?

If the Empire's borders were recreated at the height of the historical imperial territory in 11 55 then the empire would encompass practically all of modern day Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, while also occupying territory taken from Belgium, France, Italy, Croatia, Poland and Russia, territory from 13 total countries.

Figuring out where the capital city of this empire would be is pretty difficult, since the historic empire never actually had one and was usually just based on where the current emperor was residing.

If the old government of the empire came back into modern day, it would mean that the emperor would be an elected office.

Maybe the citizens would elect this person or a group like the Electoral College would.

But either way, the 10 biggest cities in the empire would be mostly concentrated in Germany and Italy, with the top five biggest being Munich, Hamburg, Vienna, Rome and Berlin.

The population of the modern empire would be approximately 215 million people, which is fascinating when you consider what the population of the empire was just a few centuries ago.

In 16 18, before the 30 Years War, the empire was home to just 21 million people, and true, the territory then was smaller than in my modern example.

But 21 million people is only about a quarter of modern Germany's population alone.

In 16 48 after the 30 years war, the empire's population shrink to just 16 million, meaning that in 30 years of war, nearly one out of every four people died.

Imagine a similar disaster happening today, and even further.

The largest city 400 years ago in 1600 wasn't even in the top five today.

Prog Prague's population then was just 100,000 people in Vienna's was only 50,000.

Vienna today has nearly two million, so the numbers of people living inside the imperial borders has definitely grown in the century since.

But what about the demographics of that population?

It's probably changed a little, but it's still dominated by the Germans and the Italians.

Here's the empire's modern ethnic diversity, where you can clearly see the percentage of Germans, Italians and French.

And then here's the linguistic diversity for you to compare that to, which looks pretty similar, with the German, Italian and French languages being unsurprisingly the most spoken.

While those air probably pretty similar to how they used to be, the religious composition of the modern empire is certainly radically different.

Christians.

Onley make up 58% of the modern empires.

Territory split between 45% Catholics and 13% Protestants.

Non religious people and atheists make up the next largest bloc at a massive 33% of the population, while Muslims make up what is certainly another large increase from hundreds of years ago at 3% of the current population.

The modern Holy Roman Empire would also have an enormous economy with a nominal GDP of $9.232 trillion mostly going toe wealthy areas like Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and northern Italy.

This makes the empire the third largest economy in the world, beating out Japan but staying just behind China.

This huge economy and population also means the imperial military would be quite formidable, with a budget of $109 billion in an active force of 694,000 soldiers with an additional million in reserves.

That's the world's sixth largest standing army, ahead of South Korea and the third largest budget.

But that budget is only about half of what the current European Union combined spent on defense.

About $200 billion Overall, the Holy Roman Empire in the modern world would be an absolute powerhouse.

It would dominate European politics, and with an economy close in size to China's in a population larger than Russia, it could have aspirations of achieving global superpower status.

Like I mentioned near the beginning of this video, if you're curious to learn more about the origins and history of the entire historical Holy Roman Empire.

I encourage you to go check out my friend Wonder Wise video on that subject.

Next.

Thanks for watching, and I'll see you later on this week for the regularly uploaded real life lower video next.