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Imperator Invictus
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Topic: Michael Harts ranking of the 100 Most Influential people Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 13:42 |
I can't seem to remember a discussion about this, which I think is an interesting topic nontheless. One thing that is very apparant is that religious figures dominate the list (implying that they were the most influential group of people). Next comes innovaters and scientists, and then political figures. The highest ranked political/military figures does not come until #17 (Qin Shi Huang), followed by Caesar Augustus at #18. This view would be consistent with "the pen is mightier than the sword"
Agree or Disagree?
The following list, an "annotated" version of Hart's with religious affiliation inserted comes from http://www.adherents.com/adh_influ.html
Rank |
Name |
Religious Affiliation |
Influence |
1 |
Muhammad |
Islam |
Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia; Hart recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be controversial, but felt that, from a secular historian's perspective, this was the correct choice because Muhammad is the only man to have been both a founder of a major world religion and a major military/political leader. More |
2 |
Isaac Newton |
Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism, i.e., Athanasianism; believed in the Arianism of the Primitive Church) |
physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion |
3 |
Jesus Christ * |
Judaism; Christianity |
founder of Christianity |
4 |
Buddha |
Hinduism; Buddhism |
founder of Buddhism |
5 |
Confucius |
Confucianism |
founder of Confucianism |
6 |
St. Paul |
Judaism; Christianity |
proselytizer of Christianity |
7 |
Ts'ai Lun |
Chinese traditional religion |
inventor of paper |
8 |
Johann Gutenberg |
Catholic |
developed movable type; printed Bibles |
9 |
Christopher Columbus |
Catholic |
explorer; led Europe to Americas |
10 |
Albert Einstein |
Jewish |
physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics |
11 |
Louis Pasteur |
Catholic |
scientist; pasteurization |
12 |
Galileo Galilei |
Catholic |
astronomer; accurately described heliocentric solar system |
13 |
Aristotle |
Platonism / Greek philosophy |
influential Greek philosopher |
14 |
Euclid |
Platonism / Greek philosophy |
mathematician; Euclidian geometry |
15 |
Moses |
Judaism |
major prophet of Judaism |
16 |
Charles Darwin |
Anglican (nominal) |
biologist; described Darwinian evolution, which had theological impact on many religions |
17 |
Shih Huang Ti |
Chinese traditional religion |
Chinese emperor |
18 |
Augustus Caesar |
Roman state paganism |
ruler |
19 |
Nicolaus Copernicus |
Catholic (priest) |
astronomer; taught heliocentricity |
20 |
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier |
Catholic |
father of modern chemistry; philosopher; economist |
21 |
Constantine the Great |
Roman state paganism; Christianity |
Roman emperor who completely legalized Christianity, leading to its status as state religion. Called the First Council of Nicaea which produced the Nicene Creed (which rejected Arianism and established Athanasianism (Trinitarianism) as "official doctrine") |
22 |
James Watt |
nonreligious |
developed steam engine |
23 |
Michael Faraday |
Sandemanian |
physicist; chemist; discovery of magneto-electricity |
24 |
James Clerk Maxwell |
Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist |
physicist; electromagnetic spectrum |
25 |
Martin Luther |
Catholic; Lutheran |
founder of Protestantism and Lutheranism |
26 |
George Washington |
Episcopalian; Deist |
first president of United States |
27 |
Karl Marx |
Jewish; Lutheran; Atheist; Marxism/Communism |
founder of Marxism, Marxist Communism |
28 |
Orville and Wilbur Wright |
United Brethren |
inventors of airplane |
29 |
Genghis Khan |
Mongolian shamanism |
Mongol conqueror |
30 |
Adam Smith |
Liberal Protestant |
economist; expositor of capitalism; religious philosopher |
31 |
Edward de Vere a.k.a. "William Shakespeare" |
Catholic; Anglican |
literature; also wrote 6 volumes about philosophy and religion |
32 |
John Dalton |
Quaker |
chemist; physicist; atomic theory; law of partial pressures (Dalton's law) |
33 |
Alexander the Great |
Greek state paganism |
conqueror |
34 |
Napoleon Bonaparte |
Catholic (nominal) |
French conqueror |
35 |
Thomas Edison |
Congregationalist; agnostic |
inventor of light bulb, phonograph, etc. |
36 |
Antony van Leeuwenhoek |
Calvinist |
microscopes; studied microscopic life |
37 |
William T.G. Morton |
?? |
pioneer in anesthesiology |
38 |
Guglielmo Marconi |
Catholic and Anglican |
inventor of radio |
39 |
Adolf Hitler |
born into but later rejected Catholicism; allegedly a proponent of Germanic Neo-Paganism; Nazism * |
conqueror; led Axis Powers in WWII |
40 |
Plato |
Platonism / Greek philosophy |
founder of Platonism |
41 |
Oliver Cromwell |
Puritan (Protestant) |
British political and military leader |
42 |
Alexander Graham Bell |
Unitarian/Universalist |
inventor of telephone * |
43 |
Alexander Fleming |
Catholic |
penicillin; advances in bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy |
44 |
John Locke |
raised Puritan (Anglican); Liberal Christian |
philosopher and liberal theologian |
45 |
Ludwig van Beethoven |
Catholic |
composer |
46 |
Werner Heisenberg |
* |
discovered the principle of uncertainty |
47 |
Louis Daguerre |
?? |
an inventor/pioneer of photography |
48 |
Simon Bolivar |
Catholic (nominal); Atheist |
National hero of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia |
49 |
Rene Descartes |
Catholic |
Rationalist philosopher and mathematician |
50 |
Michelangelo |
Catholic |
painter; sculptor; architect |
51 |
Pope Urban II |
Catholic |
called for First Crusade |
52 |
'Umar ibn al-Khattab |
Islam |
Second Caliph; expanded Muslim empire |
53 |
Asoka |
Buddhism |
king of India who converted to and spread Buddhism |
54 |
St. Augustine |
Christianity |
Early Christian theologian |
55 |
William Harvey |
Anglican (nominal) |
described the circulation of blood; wrote Essays on the Generation of Animals, the basis for modern embryology |
56 |
Ernest Rutherford |
?? |
physicist; pioneer of subatomic physics |
57 |
John Calvin |
Protestant; Calvinism |
Protestant reformer; founder of Calvinism |
58 |
Gregor Mendel |
Catholic (monk) |
Mendelian genetics |
59 |
Max Planck |
Protestant |
physicist; thermodynamics |
60 |
Joseph Lister |
Quaker |
principal discoverer of antiseptics which greatly reduced surgical mortality |
61 |
Nikolaus August Otto |
?? |
built first four-stroke internal combustion engine |
62 |
Francisco Pizarro |
Catholic |
Spanish conqueror in South America; defeated Incas |
63 |
Hernando Cortes |
Catholic |
conquered Mexico for Spain; through war and introduction of new diseases he largely destroyed Aztec civilization |
64 |
Thomas Jefferson |
Episcopalian; Deist |
3rd president of United States |
65 |
Queen Isabella I |
Catholic |
Spanish ruler |
66 |
Joseph Stalin |
Russian Orthodox; Atheist; Marxism |
revolutionary and ruler of USSR |
67 |
Julius Caesar |
Roman state paganism |
Roman emperor |
68 |
William the Conqueror |
Catholic |
laid foundation of modern England |
69 |
Sigmund Freud |
Jewish (non-practicing); Atheist; Freudian Freudian psychology/psychoanalysis |
founder of Freudian school of psychology; psychoanalysis |
70 |
Edward Jenner |
Anglican |
discoverer of the vaccination for smallpox |
71 |
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen |
?? |
discovered X-rays |
72 |
Johann Sebastian Bach |
Lutheran; Catholic |
composer |
73 |
Lao Tzu |
Taoism |
founder of Taoism |
74 |
Voltaire |
raised in Jansenism; later Deist |
writer and philosopher; wrote Candide |
75 |
Johannes Kepler |
Lutheran |
astronomer; planetary motions |
76 |
Enrico Fermi |
Catholic |
initiated the atomic age; father of atom bomb |
77 |
Leonhard Euler |
Calvinist |
physicist; mathematician; differential and integral calculus and algebra |
78 |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
born Protestant; converted as a teen to Catholic; later Deist |
French deistic philosopher and author |
79 |
Nicoli Machiavelli |
Catholic |
wrote The Prince (influential political treatise) |
80 |
Thomas Malthus |
Anglican (cleric) |
economist; wrote Essay on the Principle of Population |
81 |
John F. Kennedy |
Catholic |
president of United States |
82 |
Gregory Pincus |
Jewish |
endocrinologist; developed birth-control pill |
83 |
Mani |
Manicheanism |
founder of Manicheanism, once a world religion which rivaled Christianity in strength |
84 |
Lenin |
Russian Orthodox; Atheist; Marxism/Communism [more] |
Russian ruler |
85 |
Sui Wen Ti |
Chinese traditional religion |
unified China |
86 |
Vasco da Gama |
Catholic |
navigator; discovered route from Europe to India around Cape Hood |
87 |
Cyrus the Great |
Zoroastrianism |
founder of Persian empire |
88 |
Peter the Great |
Russian Orthodox |
forged Russia into a great European nation |
89 |
Mao Zedong |
Atheist; Communism; Maoism |
founder of Maoism, Chinese form of Communism |
90 |
Francis Bacon |
Anglican |
philosopher; delineated inductive scientific method |
91 |
Henry Ford |
Protestant |
developed automobile; achievement in manufacturing and assembly |
92 |
Mencius |
Confucianism |
philosopher; founder of a school of Confucianism |
93 |
Zoroaster |
Zoroastrianism |
founder of Zoroastrianism |
94 |
Queen Elizabeth I |
Anglican |
British monarch; restored Church of England to power after Queen Mary |
95 |
Mikhail Gorbachev |
Russian Orthodox |
Russian premier who helped end Communism in USSR |
96 |
Menes |
Egyptian paganism |
unified Upper and Lower Egypt |
97 |
Charlemagne |
Catholic |
Holy Roman Empire created with his baptism in 800 AD |
98 |
Homer |
Greek paganism |
epic poet |
99 |
Justinian I |
Catholic |
Roman emperor; reconquered Mediterranean empire; accelerated Catholic-Monophysite schism |
100 |
Mahavira |
Hinduism; Jainism |
founder of Jainism |
RU |
St. Thomas Aquinas |
Catholic |
influential early Christian philosopher |
RU |
Archimedes |
Greek philosophy |
father of experimental science |
RU |
Charles Babbage |
?? |
mathematician and inventor of forerunner of computer |
RU |
Cheops |
Egyptian paganism |
Egyptian ruler; builder of Great Pyramid |
RU |
Marie Curie |
Catholic; nonreligious |
physicist; radioactivity |
RU |
Benjamin Franklin |
Presbyterian; Deist |
American politician and inventor |
RU |
Mohandas Gandhi |
Hinduism; influenced by Jainism (mother was a Jain) |
Indian leader and Hindu religious reformer |
RU |
Abraham Lincoln |
Regular Baptist (childhood); later ambiguous - Deist, general theist or a very personalized Christianity |
16th president of U.S.; led during Civil War |
RU |
Ferdinand Magellan |
Catholic |
navigator; named Pacific Ocean; first circumnavigation of globe |
RU |
Leonardo da Vinci |
Catholic |
artist; inventor | RU = Runner Up (order is alphabetical)
Another work that could be compared to the previous is one by Lt Col Lanning, who wrote a book on the top 100 most influential military leaders. Obviously there are significant differences. In general, I find Hart's (who is a historian) list of military leaders to be more plausible.
1. George Washington 2. Napoleon I 3. Alexander the Great 4. Genghis Khan 5. Julius Caesar 6. Gustavus Adolphus 7. Francisco Pizarro 8. Charlemagne (Charles the Great) 9. Hernado Cortes 10. Cyrus the Great 11. Frederick the Great (Frederick II of Prussia) 12. Simon Bolivar 13. William the Conqueror 14. Adolf Hitler 15. Attila the Hun 16. George Catlett Marshall 17. Peter the Great 18. Dwight David Eisenhower 19. Oliver Cromwell 20. Douglas MacArthur 21. Karl von Clausewitz 22. Arthur Wellesley (First Duke of Wellington) 23. Sun Tzu 24. Hermann-Maurice, Comte de Saxe 25. Tamerlane 26. Antoine Henri Jomini 27. Eugene of Savoy 28. Fernandez Gonzalo de Cordoba 29. Sebastien Le Pestre de Vauban 30. Hannibal 31. John Churchill (Duke of Marlborough) 32. Winfield Scott 33. Ulysses Simpson Grant 34. Scipio Africanus 35. Horatio Nelson 36. John Frederick Charles Fuller 37. Henri de La Tour dAuvergne de Turenne 38. Alfred Thayer Mahan 39. Helmuth Karl Bernhard Von Moltke 40. Vo Nguyen Giap 41. John Joseph Pershing 42. Maurice of Nassau 43. Joan of Arc 44. Alan Francis Broke (Alanbrooke) 45. Jean Baptiste Vacquette de Gribeauval 46. Omar Nelson Bradley 47. Ralph Abercromby 48. Mao Zedong 49. H. Normal Schwarzkopf 50. Alexander Vasilevich Suvorov 51. Louis Alexandre Berthier 52. Jose de San Martin 53. Giuseppe Garibaldi 54. Ivan Stepanovich Konev 55. Suleiman I 56. Colin Campbell 57. Samuel (Sam) Houston 58. Richard I (the Lion-Hearted) 59. Shaka 60. Robert Edward Lee 61. Chester William Nimitz 62. Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher 63. Bernard Law Montgomery 64. Carl Gustav Emil von Mannerheim 65. H.H. (Hap) Arnold 66. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) 67. John Arbuhnot Fisher 68. Heihachiro Togo 69. Moshe Dayan 70. Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov 71. Ferdinand Foch 72. Edward I 73. Selim I 74. Giulio Douhet 75. Heinz Guderian 76. Lin Piao 77. Isoroku Yamamoto 78. Harold Rupert Alexander 79. Erwin Rommel 80. Lennat Torstensson 81. Saddam Hussein 82. Fidel Castro 83. Horatio Herbert Kitchener 84. Tito 85. Karl Doenitz 86. Kim Il Sung 87. David Glasgow Farragut 88. Garnet Joseph Wolseley 89. Chiang Kai-shek 90. Frederick Sleigh Roberts 91. Saladin 92. George Dewey 93. Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Conde 94. Kurt Student 95. George S. Patton 96. Michel Ney 97. Charles XII 98. Thomas Cochrane 99. Johan Tserclaes von Tilly 100. Edmund Henry H. Allenby
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Temujin
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 15:04 |
Originally posted by Imperator Invictus
1. George Washington |
most ridiculous ever!
2. Napoleon I 3. Alexander the Great 4. Genghis Khan 5. Julius Caesar |
quite agree with that, maybe not with the order and one could argue about Caesars actual military abilites but overall this would be the standard top 3.
second most ridiculous ever!
21. Karl von Clausewitz
23. Sun Tzu
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totally overrated, just because they wrote some miltiary manuals that are popular today doesn't makes them great, this is especially true for Clausewitz who hasn't got many actual fighting experience at all
didn't bother to look at the following numbers
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Kalevipoeg
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 15:10 |
A pretty pointless ranking and impossible to put into correct order in reality. Fun to loot at, but nothing more
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There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge...
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Winterhaze13
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 15:28 |
Both lists are fine, but the problem is with George Washington. Outside America he is a nobody and he certainly isn't the greatest general ever. No historian thinks that. His early military career was unspectacular and his successes were often more appropriately credited to someone else. Also, he did not even have a big part in achieving American Independence. He had little imput on the constitution, in fact Jefferson should be ranked ahead of him in terms of influence.
Edited by Winterhaze13
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
-- Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)
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Komnenos
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 15:35 |
Not a bad list, but the ranking itself rather reflects the personal prejudices of the author than anything else. Would be interesting to see what criteria he applied.
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[IMG]http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i137/komnenos/crosses1.jpg">
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Winterhaze13
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 15:36 |
Actually, the last list on military leaders is bad too. They have most of the right people but they are in the wrong places. According to one source the best military leaders are Alexander, Hannibal, Genghis Khan and Napoleon. Hitler was not a military leader and Charlemagne wasn't very good either. In fact, at Roncesvalles he probably deserves the most criticism for the defeat.
Edited by Winterhaze13
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
-- Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)
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Mosquito
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 15:36 |
I agree with Kalevipoeg.
I would add that many of those names shouldnt be really on the list.
Take for example brothers Wright who invented airplane. Did they change history? No!. Many people were working on this problem and it was only matter of time (the same year, year later or 2 years later) and even some kind of race who will invent the airplane first. So really they didnt influenced the world because airplane would have been invented anyway.
For me, people who infulenced the world are those who somehow changed history or changed the way in which people think. Therefore Mohammad, Jesus Christ, Nicholo Machiavelli or Napoleon were influential but brothers Wright, Leonardo da Vinci, Bethoven, Bach were not.
After consideration im not sure if Napoleon was influential. After his defeat everything came back to the old order so he didnt really change the world. The ideas of revolution which spread in Europe werent invented by Napoleon and would spread even without him. Maybe the fact that he helped spread them really fast made him influential.
Edited by Mosquito
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Winterhaze13
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 15:40 |
No, Napoleon definately changed history by spreading enlightenment or revolutionary ideas around Europe. It was Napoleon who created the first modern state equiped with a bureaucracy and national army. In fact Italian and German nationalism was largely influenced by him.
Edited by Winterhaze13
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
-- Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)
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Mosquito
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 15:55 |
Originally posted by Winterhaze13
No, Napoleon definately changed history by spreading enlightenment or revolutionary ideas around Europe. It was Napoleon who created the first modern state equiped with a bureaucracy and national army. In fact Italian and German nationalism was largely influenced by him. |
Actually French republic before Napoleon had both bureaucracy and national army. Sooner or later others would follow this example. The question is if Napoleon really make those things happend earlier or not.
In fact, because of Napoleon's defeat most of continent came back to what was before and it was the spring of the nations in 1848 which changed the history. Can you say that without Napoleon there would be no spring of the nations?
Edited by Mosquito
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Winterhaze13
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:02 |
Originally posted by Mosquito
Originally posted by Winterhaze13
No, Napoleon definately changed history by spreading enlightenment or revolutionary ideas around Europe. It was Napoleon who created the first modern state equiped with a bureaucracy and national army. In fact Italian and German nationalism was largely influenced by him. |
Actually French republic before Napoleon had both bureaucracy and national army. Sooner or later others would follow this example. The question is if Napoleon really make those things happend earlier or not.
In fact, because of Napoleon's defeat most of continent came back to what was before and it was the spring of the nations in 1848 which changed the history. Can you say that without Napoleon there would be no spring of the nations?
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Well, without Napoleon France would have been invaded in 1794 by the Great powers and the Bourbon dynasty reinstated. Without him revolutionary ideas would not have spread because the revolution would have been defeated. And yes there was something resembling a bureaucracy before Napoleon but it was him who developed it greater. And he created bureaucracies in places he conquered including Piedmont-Sardinia which would unite Italy into a single state.
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
-- Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)
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mark1100
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:04 |
wrong! it was Heinrich Gbel
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poirot
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:08 |
I am going to first comment on the second list, about military leaders.
1. George Washington ??????????
This is very American-centric. Did George Washington ever command more than 10000 men in a single battle? Ranking Washington among the top 100 would be fine, but as the first, ahead of military geniuses such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon? I agree that George Washington is both overrated as a military commander and a founding father. Washington was more important to the American Revolution symbolically.
2. Napoleon I 3. Alexander the Great 4. Genghis Khan
I agree with Temujin here, for we have three true military geniuses. Although the specialities were artillery, infantry, and cavalry, respectively. Well deserved rank.
7. Francisco Pizarro ??????????
9. Hernado Cortes ??????????
What? For manipulating and cheating on poor Native Americans? Number seven?
I think that Tamerlane, Hannibal, Saladin, and Patton shoud move up many ranks.
Although I think Simon Bolivar well deserves his rank at 12.
This is where I disagree with Temujin: Sun Tzu did command armies, and never lost a battle. He was not only a military philosopher but also an actual general. His rank should go up much higher than 23.
I also think that Eisenhower and McArthur are overrated (I like Patton better!) Eisenhower was more natural as a politician, not a military leader, and MacArthur lost Phillippines (horrendiously) in WII and seriously miscalculated in Korea. Therefore, I would put Patton ahead of his two contemporaries.
I do not quite agree with the following rankings:
48. Mao Zedong and 76. Lin Piao
Mao Zedong never lifted a rifle, while Lin Piao commanded the PLA.
14. Adolf Hitler and 79. Erwin Rommel
Granted, Hitler did conquer most of the European mainland, but his inability to listen to better trained officers such as Rommel led in part to his ultimate demise.
81. Saddam Hussein
We must think twice after the Second Persian Gulf War!
And where are Baybars and Subutai???
Edited by poirot
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AAAAAAAAAA
"The crisis of yesterday is the joke of tomorrow.� ~ HG Wells
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Mosquito
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:09 |
Originally posted by Winterhaze13
Well, without Napoleon France would have been invaded in 1794 by the Great powers and the Bourbon dynasty reinstated. Without him revolutionary ideas would not have spread because the revolution would have been defeated. And yes there was something resembling a bureaucracy before Napoleon but it was him who developed it greater. And he created bureaucracies in places he conquered including Piedmont-Sardinia which would unite Italy into a single state.
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France had many good generals, if not Napoleon others could defend it. Even if France would have been defeated the ideas of revolution would spread. Who knows, maybe if not Napoleon and Holy Alliance which was created because of him, the ideas of revolution would result in spring of the nations long before 1848.
And noone else but Napoleon was the guy who has murdered revolution and made many nations on continent hostile towards revolutionary ideas.
Edited by Mosquito
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Laelius
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:24 |
For those of you who have a problem with Washington let me ask you this. How would history be different if Washington had not been the Commander in Chief of the American Colonies? What if it were instead a lesser man such as an Oliver Cromwell? The fact that he resigned his commission peacefully says a great deal about his character and ensured allowed the survival of the fledgling American democracy.
If you wish for me to spell it out for you then let me ask you this, would the Liberal revolts of Europe in the mid 19th century have happened if Washington appoints himself king? Would the French revolution have occurred?
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Mosquito
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:25 |
Originally posted by poirot
I am going to first comment on the second list, about military leaders.
1. George Washington ??????????
This is very American-centric. Did George Washington ever command more than 10000 men in a single battle? Ranking Washington among the top 100 would be fine, but as the first, ahead of military geniuses such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon? I agree that George Washington is both overrated as a military commander and a founding father. Washington was more important to the American Revolution symbolically.
2. Napoleon I 3. Alexander the Great 4. Genghis Khan
I agree with Temujin here, for we have three true military geniuses. Although the specialities were artillery, infantry, and cavalry, respectively. Well deserved rank.
7. Francisco Pizarro ??????????
9. Hernado Cortes ??????????
What? For manipulating and cheating on poor Native Americans? Number seven?
I think that Tamerlane, Hannibal, Saladin, and Patton shoud move up many ranks.
Although I think Simon Bolivar well deserves his rank at 12.
This is where I disagree with Temujin: Sun Tzu did command armies, and never lost a battle. He was not only a military philosopher but also an actual general. His rank should go up much higher than 23.
I also think that Eisenhower and McArthur are overrated (I like Patton better!) Eisenhower was more natural as a politician, not a military leader, and MacArthur lost Phillippines (horrendiously) in WII and seriously miscalculated in Korea. Therefore, I would put Patton ahead of his two contemporaries.
I do not quite agree with the following rankings:
48. Mao Zedong and 76. Lin Piao
Mao Zedong never lifted a rifle, while Lin Piao commanded the PLA.
14. Adolf Hitler and 79. Erwin Rommel
Granted, Hitler did conquer most of the European mainland, but his inability to listen to better trained officers such as Rommel led in part to his ultimate demise.
81. Saddam Hussein
We must think twice after the Second Persian Gulf War!
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I dont want to be too much polish-centric but were dozens of better generals only in Poland (what about the rest of central and eastern Europe). Take for example John Charles Chodkiewicz (pol. Jan Karol Chodkiewicz) who defeated 12000 or 14000 Swedes having just 4000 men (not to mention his other victories like Weissenstein vs Swedes, Kokenhausen vs Swedes, Chocim vs Ottomans where also was outnumbered by the enemy but victorious suffering minimal casualties) or Zolkiewski who won at Klushin having 7000 men against 35000-40000 russians and swedes or Sobieski.
Edited by Mosquito
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Winterhaze13
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:26 |
It's rediculous to assume that something like that would eventually occur. That's like saying if Franz Ferdinand wasn't killed by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo someone else would have killed him somewhere else. It's just not logical. And besides France was losing the war against Austria and Prussia in 1793. Napoleon added to the revolution more then he took away and even Wellington who practically ruled France after the Battle of Waterloo admitted that he had been good for France.
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
-- Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)
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Winterhaze13
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:28 |
Originally posted by Laelius
For those of you who have a problem with Washington let me ask you this. How would history be different if Washington had not been the Commander in Chief of the American Colonies? What if it were instead a lesser man such as an Oliver Cromwell? The fact that he resigned his commission peacefully says a great deal about his character and ensured allowed the survival of the fledgling American democracy.
If you wish for me to spell it out for you then let me ask you this, would the Liberal revolts of Europe in the mid 19th century have happened if Washington appoints himself king? Would the French revolution have occurred? |
The American Revolution was not the main event that influenced the French Revolution. The enlightenment thinkers, the disenfranchisement with the monarchy, Ancient Greece and Britain's Glorious Revolution probably did more to influence France and Europe then George Washington.
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
-- Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)
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Mosquito
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:30 |
Originally posted by Laelius
For those of you who have a problem with Washington let me ask you this. How would history be different if Washington had not been the Commander in Chief of the American Colonies? What if it were instead a lesser man such as an Oliver Cromwell? The fact that he resigned his commission peacefully says a great deal about his character and ensured allowed the survival of the fledgling American democracy.
If you wish for me to spell it out for you then let me ask you this, would the Liberal revolts of Europe in the mid 19th century have happened if Washington appoints himself king? Would the French revolution have occurred? |
Actually you hit the point. US revolution highly influenced history in Europe.
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Mosquito
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:34 |
Originally posted by Winterhaze13
It's rediculous to assume that something like that would eventually occur. That's like saying if Franz Ferdinand wasn't killed by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo someone else would have killed him somewhere else. It's just not logical. And besides France was losing the war against Austria and Prussia in 1793. Napoleon added to the revolution more then he took away and even Wellington who practically ruled France after the Battle of Waterloo admitted that he had been good for France.
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Do you belive that without assasination of Ferdinand the WW1 wouldnt happend? Everything was going toward war, the only question was when and how.
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poirot
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Posted: 07-Jun-2005 at 16:34 |
The most influential founding father was Thomas Jefferson. Washington served mostly as a symbol, a figurehead. I admire Washington for his rectitude and honour, but not his military genius. As to military exploits, ranking him above Napoleon woud be preposterous.
Edited by poirot
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AAAAAAAAAA
"The crisis of yesterday is the joke of tomorrow.� ~ HG Wells
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