Comment by lostlogin

> The closest analogy I can come up with is England in the 1600s and early 1700s.

I like your point, but that it a hell of an analogy. 1600 is when they formed the East India company, which was basically a state sponsored bunch of pirates, looting the wider world with its hundreds of thousands of soldiers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company