China does it ever couple hundred years, the Roman Empire by its end in the 1400s had been effectively reorganized dozens of times and could hardly be considered the same state, Britain and France more or less collapsed to their core territories by the 60s, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires imploded economically before being picked apart by the Dutch and newly independent colonies. I could go on but those are the big ones where the empires in question had notable territory loss or effectively reorganized in totality, there’s a couple smaller examples like with Sweden becoming Insular or how Islam transitioned from an imperial institution in a lot of ways into a religious one, but those examples rarely are as impressive or went on for centuries without any real turning points.
That’s so many more than I expected! I really thought op was referencing one specific event rather than something that has happened so many times throughout history.
China does it ever couple hundred years, the Roman Empire by its end in the 1400s had been effectively reorganized dozens of times and could hardly be considered the same state, Britain and France more or less collapsed to their core territories by the 60s, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires imploded economically before being picked apart by the Dutch and newly independent colonies. I could go on but those are the big ones where the empires in question had notable territory loss or effectively reorganized in totality, there’s a couple smaller examples like with Sweden becoming Insular or how Islam transitioned from an imperial institution in a lot of ways into a religious one, but those examples rarely are as impressive or went on for centuries without any real turning points.
That’s so many more than I expected! I really thought op was referencing one specific event rather than something that has happened so many times throughout history.