[Urbane Guerrilla]

Unless you're counting Han Chinese policy of annexing buffer states around the Han center of China -- to make up mainland China -- I can't think of a single surviving example. The Soviet Union was the other one, and look what a fistful of states are there now.

What is the foundation of our dominance? It's entirely that we are good at trade, mutually beneficial transaction, large scale or small. That's the only thing we've ever done with consistency or persistence. Unlike Charlemagne, we regard warfare as an aberrant crisis and not the regular state of affairs.