[olavk]

Not that unique actually. Many (perhaps most) countries in Europe have some period in the past when they were much more powerful than they are now.

[commandar]

There's a reason why a huge portion of the population in the western hemisphere speaks Spanish.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

And why quite a bit of Africa speaks French...

[sliverstorm]

Perhaps not truly unique, but two things about the British Empire perhaps make it sting a little more:

1) It ended more recently than other European empires.

2) "The sun never sets on the British Empire". It was huge.

[eternauta3k]

2 was also true of Spain at some point.

[tokenadult]

Plenty of countries in Asia too.

[pavel_lishin]

Russia happens to be in both, and it definitely suffers from this nostalgia.

[Retric]

Seems to me if anywhere Mogolia would probably suffer the most from this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mongol_Empire_map.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire

[sliverstorm]

Except it ended 700 years ago, not less than 100.