THE POWER ATLAS
Who ruled the world, year by year.
A single index of national power, computed for every state from 1500 to today and ranked against its contemporaries. Drag the slider and watch the tiers shift: Britain alone atop the 19th century, the crowded great-power table of 1900, the US and USSR splitting the Cold War world, and the present day.
Part of The Time MachineThe headline hegemony-aware index.
Superpower
1
Great Power
1
Middle Power
10
Regional
15
Minor
209
Power share of world power, the major players
1500 – 2026The recognition gap, 2026
who the world under- or over-ratesUnder-recognised
Punching above its mass
Hegemony-aware CINC v6 + Maddison 2023 + reach; 1500-1815 benchmark-interpolated (Maddison benchmarks + curated military/reach overlays incl. Napoleonic keyframes, wide error bars); 1816-1859 sovereign non-CINC states (Qing, Japan, Persia, fading Maratha/Mughal) glide-injected into the CINC pool; 1990-2026 blended into the country score (exact 2026). LATENT = material mass; RECOGNIZED = spending + productive economy + reach + curated status (P5 seat, nuclear, Concert recognition, bloc leadership).Tiers are relative to each year’s leader. Latent and recognised sub-indices are computed from 1816; the Power lens runs from 1500 on benchmark-interpolated estimates with wide error bars.