During the 19th and 20th centuries, the French colonial empire one of the largest in the world, behind the British Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Spanish Empire; it extended over of land at its height in the 1920s and 1930s. The French colonial empire was the second largest empire in the 17th century and the second largest empire in 1929 after Spain and Britain respectively. Including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 13,018,575 km² (5,020,000 sq. miles) in 1929, which is 8.7% of the Earth's total land area. In terms of population however, France and her colonial empire totaled only 110 million inhabitants on the eve of World War II, compared to 330 million for British India alone.