The Top 100 Leaders in History

Originally posted by Red4tribe   What do you think of adding William the Silent? The father of the Netherlands? He led the Dutch provinces together for 20 years against the Spanish, protecting them from Religious persecution until his assasination in 1584.

Yes, William the Silent is a very good addition to the list.  I went ahead and added him and Prince Maurice of Nassau.  William ranks 25th in my initial evaluation, and could be higher.  Maurice came in at 87th.

Originally posted by konstantinl Surprised the lack of prominent Greeks. No Pericles? No Alcibiades? No Themistocles? Themistocles should DEFINITELY be on the list of great leaders in my opinion, and the other two are worthy of consideration also.

I was very surprised, also, about the lack of Greeks in my initial evaluation of the best leaders.  To be honest, though, I haven't researched Greece's leaders yet....I was working on Genoa (and going alphabetically) when I stopped working on this much last summer, so almost ready for Greece.  I had done Athens, so Themistocles was already rated; he came out at #140.  I will reevaluate and make sure of my rating of him.

Originally posted by Penelope King Gustavus The Great of Sweden. Single handedly responsible for the "Golden Age of Sweden" which also earned him the epithet "The Golden King". During his reign, Sweden rose from the status as a mere regional power to one of the most powerful countries in europe.

Gustav II Adolph added.  He comes in only 44th, because he simply used the structure built by Gustav I--he did not build the country, per se, simply put it in motion.  (Is that right?)

Originally posted by Count Belisarius What about Joan of Arc?

#122

Originally posted by Al Jassas Hello to you all   About the leaders, here are some notes that need to be taken about the Arabs:   1- Al-Saffah: He doesn't deserve to be on the list, he was just a puppet for his uncles, brother and henchmen. Abu Jaafar Al-Mansur should be on the list, he is the one who really founded the dynasty and stengthened it by ending all external and internal threats and he also built Baghdad and started the translation movement.   2-Saladin: He also doesn't deserve to be on the list either. His legacy was limited to a part of the world and was not lasting, unless you count the Mamelukes.   3-Khalid Ibn Al-Walid: He was a military genious but that is it.   AL-Jassas

Al-Saffah off the list (well, to #319), and Mansur on at #50.  I don't know the history of the Abbasids that well!

I think I disagree with you on Saladin, though it is not my area of expertise.  He took a totally disjointed collection of tribes, peoples, etc. and welded an effective "empire" able to halt the crusaders and other threats, for some 75 years.  I don't see how I can rate him any differently, really...  It's just the way the formula works for him.

I dropped Khalid's impact rating from 3 to 2, since you seem to feel his impact on what the Arabs accomplished was rather secondary.  That drops him from 16th out of the top 100 (yes, the algorithm is a little hyper sensitive to impact percentage--essentially, "3" means 60% of the credit belongs to him; "2" means 40%).

Originally posted by Zagros Jahan Ara - took Khorramshahr back from the marauding  - internationally funded and equipped  - Arab horde of Saddam Hussain.  Think about the odds, it was literally Jahan Ara vs the world and Jahan Ara won.

I've never heard of Jahan Ara....  Any more information?

Originally posted by Penelope Peter III the Great of Aragon. He was one of the greatest of medieval Aragonese monarchs.

He is the highest ranked leader of Aragon, but still only #246--right behind #245 Edward III and right ahead of #247 Eisenhower. 

My friends and I do "leadership rankings" on the basis of influence on subsequent history-- which is more or less the only semi-objective criterion that people from different cultures/backgrounds can agree on-- something along the lines of what Michael H. Hart did with his own famous list.

That being said-- even though influence can be destructive as well as constructive, I still sense that overall, influence rankings won't have mega-villains anywhere near the top, for the simple reason that it's much harder to create something (a new administration, a scientific or artistic advance), and thus to establish an innovative and durable legacy and institutions, than to just be a mass-killer.  That's why history's big killers, like Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Lord Lytton (the British administrator whose policies helped bring about the mega-famines in India late 19th-century), Pol Pot-- I just don't see them having a big impact long-term.  Even Genghis Khan, who did after all, establish what would become the world's biggest-ever empire (under Kublai Khan)-- he had some institutional accomplishments, like the first "pony express" and stable roads that helped communications across Eurasia, plus the Mughals (with an enormous impact on Indian history) were descended from the Mongols and their historical example. 

But most of what Genghis and his successors did was to take a wrecking ball to other, established and culturally advanced civilizations (like China and Baghdad), who ultimately defeated and mostly assimilated the Mongols culturally by the 13th and 14th centuries.  Genghis's influence is limited simply because the Mongols, while militarily strong, left comparatively little in terms of lasting cultural, political and administrative institutions.  That's one of the reasons why the only durable Mongol state is a rather small (geographically large but small in population and economy) country in northeastern Asia.

In comparison, people like Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Constantine, St. Paul, Qin Shi Huang Di (founder of the Chinese state as a unified political entity), Muhammad all created extremely durable and influential institutions, that still have an enormous impact across the world today.  It's not that they were altar boys by any means-- most of them were involved in some bitter conflicts of their own, and Alexander in particular was involved in sanguinary conquests.  But all of them are influential for the cultural and administrative legacies they provided, and this constructive tendency also means that, while they often lived in war-torn and brutal periods, they (for their times) also demonstrated an unusual degree of moral consideration and tolerance. 

Alexander for example, could have gone scorched-earth on the Persian lands (Aristotle himself said the Persians were barbarians), but he came to greatly respect the Persian civilization and even to partially identify himself and his soldiers with the Persian element.  That's why the crucial Hellenistic civilization came about.  Even as the Near East came under the Greek cultural sway, Persian and other Eastern influences remained strong, which is a big part of why so many of us in the West today are members of a religion founded in the East (Christianity)-- in a region conquered by Alexander and brought into the Hellenic world, thence into the Roman and Byzantine Empires.   Alexander was also an explorer, and many pillars of modern civilization got their start because East and West had that great (and largely unparalleled) exchange as Alexander moved his armies and administrators throughout what was then "the civilized world."

Constantine abolished slavery even as he brought Christianity to prominence (though he himself was more tolerant in general of various religions than many of his successors were), and Augustus, despite his own bloody path to power, introduced humane laws (again, for their time) which helped to stitch together the Roman Empire as a unified polity with the character of a nation.  Qin Shi Huangdi was a tough leader, but he also introduced an administrative system and unifying factors (such as a code of writing, weights and measures, coinage, even road diameters) that have persisted to the present day 2,000 years later-- the reason that China is really the only ancient power to remain intact as a political/administrative state, not just a cultural sphere, today.

IOW, the most influential leaders became so in part because they had a moral, constructive element that actually created something innovative, a durable institution that lasted. 




Edited by Sintergeorge - 06-Dec-2008 at 23:08

I'm part-British, so as far as national leaders go this (and the USA one) are maybe the only ones I'm much interested in:

Originally posted by DSMyers1 Here's my attempt at British/English/Saxon Leaders 1. Queen Elizabeth I 2. King Alfred the Great 3. Robert Clive 4. William Pitt the elder 5. Winston Churchill 6. Sir Francis Drake 7. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough 8. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington  9. Oliver Cromwell  10. Edward III Again, this is comparing the trajectory of the nation before to after. I'm not British, so make sure and have your own list of the top 10 leaders of the British.

That's very interesting.  A pretty good list IMHO and I'd probably agree with most choices-- with a couple very big exceptions.  First of all, here's my list FWIW:

1. William the Conqueror (yeah, I know, technically not British but he had a bigger impact than anyone else)
2. King Alfred the Great
3. William Pitt the Elder
4. Oliver Cromwell
5. Robert Clive
6. King Henry VII
7. King Henry V
8. King Henry II
9. Queen Elizabeth I
10. Sir Winston Churchill
(Some caveats-- figures like Lord Nelson, Wellington, Drake I considered to be more military than political figures so I didn't consider them for this list.  Also, some figures such as Sir Isaac Newton-- who actually had some political leadership, as an important Parliamentary member and an instrumental figure in the Glorious Revolution-- were more influential than all 10 of the above, but I didn't consider them since their main influence was for other reasons.)

If you take these caveats in mind, my list is actually pretty close to yours overall-- except at the top.  I was a little surprised to see QEI at the top of your list-- they do these rankings on British radio and newspaper periodically, and QEI is never that high.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Queen Elizabeth I and she's one of my favorite historical figures (I'm a Renaissance Faire geek, I'll happily admit it here.)  It's just that as far as influence, Elizabeth didn't really have that much, certainly not compared to other rulers-- especially as far as innovations and durable institutions go.

As far as what became the British Empire, Elizabeth I basically didn't contribute much to that at all (in its expansion or its founding).  The first permanent English settlements started during the Stuart period (in 1607, with the Jamestown settlement under James I) and from there grew at a glacial pace in North America.  It really wasn't until British victory in the Seven Years' War against France in 1763 (and even more so after Napoleon's defeat), that anything resembling the powerful British Empire that we recognize of the 1800's, comes into focus.  Granted, Elizabeth did make settlement attempts with the Roanoke Colony and Gilbert's expedition to Newfoundland, but these both failed.  They did contribute something as far as exploration goes-- the problem is, Elizabeth's grandfather (King Henry VII) had already gotten that started with the John Cabot expedition in 1497, which explored Newfoundland and Labrador, made the first English land claim overseas and started an intermittent fishing settlement there (for cod).  As far as colonization goes, it really wasn't until 1607 that much of anything happened to build on that foundation-- despite the fact that Elizabeth was in power for over 40 years.

As for why not much happened during that intervening period, this gets to the second point of why Elizabeth probably shouldn't be ranked so high in terms of influence. 

People often mention the Spanish Armada's defeat-- the problem is, the Armada was just a battle, not a war, and in fact it was one of the early battles (and not a decisive one) in a really long war that lasted until 1604, which Spain basically won, not England.  There were more than a half-dozen naval battles in the Spain-England war of the late 16th century, and Spain won nearly all of those naval battles after the Armada (plus most of the land battles too)-- the Azores (X2), the Drake expedition to Panama (both Drake and Hawkins were killed, in fact that's one of the biggest naval disasters ever in English/British history), the Drake-led invasion of Portugal in 1589.  The Spaniards even successfully invaded western England in 1595 IIRC, some Spanish commander (Amesquito? Amesquita? can't quite recall the spelling) landed and burned down much of the region around Penzance, stole some supplies and then took off.  That has hasn't happened very often since 1066.  Plus, Spain basically shut down all the privateers after about 1591 or so (the famous fanned convoy of the galleons), and Spain boosted their gold/silver shipments after the Armada about three-fold, while increasing their stranglehold over the Atlantic sailing lanes.  (Spain IOW basically accomplished most of its war aims, even though the Netherlands did continue to slip free.  The Spaniards weren't trying to conquer England with the Armada-- heck, they couldn't even control Holland, where they had a land connection and a big army already in place, plus legal backing from dynastic law and support of other Hapsburgs.  They chiefly wanted the English out of the Spanish colonies, to stop the privateering and especially out of the Netherlands.  For the most part, Spain succeeded on these.)

That's actually why Elizabeth wasn't involved in founding the first permanent English settlements, and why Roanoke in particular failed (the Roanoke colonists were starved of crucial supplies)-- the English were defeated pretty severely in that Spain-England War and just lacked the naval power to sustain settlements while Spain controlled the seas.  (Spain maintained that control until the 30 Years' War-- the Dutch broke Spanish sea power, not the English, at the Downs Battle, while the French demolished Spanish land power at Rocroi.) 

It wasn't just England's defeat in that Spain-England War though-- it was Elizabeth who lost England's last territorial claim on the Continent (at Calais) in 1563-1564 when French troops defeated the English.  Plus, Elizabeth's policy in Ireland was a fiasco-- it angered the Irish so much that they launched the Hugh O'Neill rebellion in 1594 that lasted for over nine years, devastated the Irish countryside when Mountjoy went scorched-earth (proportionally more Irish died in the 1590's famine than the potato famine), and utterly bankrupted the English treasury, which is how Ireland became the "sink of the English treasury."  (Elizabeth's debt when James I took the throne in 1603 was even worse than Mary I had, plus the English crown had sold off much of its collateral-- a big reason for Charles I's troubles later.)

On the plus side I guess, Elizabeth was a patron of the arts of course-- though I'm cautious about ascribing "influence" to a leader simply because they had great artists, writers, musicians and so forth in their reign, unless they did something fundamental to enable it (such as bringing about a hard-won peace, or an economic transformation allowing for the arts to flourish).  Bacon, Shakespeare, Marlowe were undoubtedly impressive-- but how much did Elizabeth have to do with this?  It was Henry VII, Elizabeth's grandfather, who brought unity and stability (not to mention fiscal solvency, the only Tudor to do that) to the English crown.  And Henry VIII had begun the tradition of English monarchs both patronizing the arts (and getting results) while participating in them themselves.  Spain was having its own period of literary brilliance at the same time (with Cervantes in particular), but Philip III isn't generally credited for this, and rightfully so IMHO.  Same with the rulers of the various German or Austrian states when Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Goethe, Schiller and the others were doing their thing.  Same for France and Pasteur.  Even though the English playwrights were writing during the "Elizabethan period," I'm just as skeptical about assigning influence for that as I'd be about giving James I credit for the accomplishments of Jacobin authors and musicians, or Victoria credit for the Victorian authors.

Elizabeth did do a lot to buttress the English navy (with John Hawkins as the shipbuilder in charge), but once again-- she wasn't foundational in this, her father Henry VIII was.  It was Henry VIII who began the technological innovations and the long-range guns (not to mention the sheer number of warships) that made him "the father of the Royal Navy."  (Even before Henry VIII, Henry VII had made some important improvements, while beginning the merchant marine, but Henry VIII was the key innovator here.)

The one area where Elizabeth really was important, was in instituting the Anglican reforms (with something like a compromise between the Protestants and the Catholics) that held the Church of England together.  This is why I've still ranked Elizabeth I #9 on here-- even though she didn't begin these reforms, she did a good job of making sure the country didn't fall too much into radicalism on the religious issue, and this probably helped to protect England from becoming enmeshed in religious wars as France did.

Again, I have to emphasize that I personally find Elizabeth to be a fascinating and attractive historical figure in many ways-- it's just as far as influence on her part, I don't really see it. 

The truth is, when you take a cold and analytical look at the record, Queen Elizabeth I was probably one of England's least successful military leaders.  She lost Calais (and English Continental possessions) permanently.  England under her was basically defeated by Spain, and this has had a tremendous historical impact-- since Spain consolidated its sea power and naval strength in the Atlantic, the Spaniards were able to rapidly advance their colonization and more or less keep the English out.  (That's why it was another 150 years, in 1763, before the English really became much of a big naval power and were able to ramp up their own colonization.)  The whole map of the Western Hemisphere is the way it is today because the English couldn't break Spanish sea power in the late 1500's, even though they came tantalizingly close-- if Drake had just done a couple things differently in that invasion of Portugal (and gotten artillery support, which Elizabeth was withholding due to concerns about expenses), and/or been more successful in Panama (a disastrous intelligence failure on the part of the Elizabethan government), then the Spanish would have suffered a severe loss in naval power.  But Latin America grew so large basically because Spain prevailed there.  (Heck, the Spaniards went all the way up into what's now the US Southwest-- California, Texas, Arizona et al. were never within the British Empire, the USA acquired them in the Mexican War, long after the United States had become independent and that's in part why they still have such a Latin cultural flavor today.)

There was nothing at all that made "Latin America" inevitable, and England seriously coveted the rich lands in the Americas that Spain was administering and colonizing.  In fact, England/Britain made several more attempts to conquer them, for example the British invasion under Beresford/Auchmuty/Whitelocke to conquer the heart of Spanish South America in 1806-1807 and colonize them (defeated by Pueyreddin and Liniers), as well as British attempts to seize Spanish Caribbean possessions.  (Mostly unsuccessful, except for Jamaica, which did become British under Cromwell's rule.)  What's now South America and Latin America in general could easily have become part of the English/British Empire.  But Britain was totally unsuccessful in this, and it's largely because Elizabeth's navies, truthfully, performed quite poorly against Spain from 1589 onwards.

In other realms, Elizabeth really wasn't much of an innovator-- and not just in the lack of colonization, but also in terms of the governmental and social institutions of the English state, despite being in power for almost 45 years.  (IIRC Hart made the same point.)  So much as I love Renaissance Faires and Elizabethan pageants, I just don't see any way to rank her higher than around #9 in terms of influence.

The rest of the list, I'll just go through quickly since I've focused so much on the top:

1. William the Conqueror-- gave the reasons in my previous post
2. Alfred the Great-- agree with you totally on ranking him highly: The first leader under whom the fractious and dispersed Germanic tribes in Britain unified within something like a nation.  Saved England from total conquest and possibly ethnic displacement by Guthrun's forces (a far greater threat than the Normans later on, who were mostly just a few thousand members of the aristocracy).  Personally brought about a massive flourishing in the arts and culture on a par with Charlemagne (one of the few cases when a leader really can be credited as being foundational in stimulating a great period in the arts).  Early naval defenses and fortifications.  To the extent that there's a "founder of England," Alfred's as close as they come.
3. William Pitt the Elder-- titanic influence on modern world, it was he, George II and Frederick the Great who led the Anglo-Prussian alliance into victory during the Seven Years' War, i.e. one of the first true world wars.  It's thanks to Pitt that North America became predominantly a region of British sway rather than the French, and it was he who launched the major explorations of Australia/New Zealand and India, while instituting political authority there.  The closest Britain has to a single "founder of the British Empire," and the figure most responsible (outside of Lord Nelson himself) for Britain's sea power and importance in the subsequent century, and for starting so many other English-speaking countries.
4. Oliver Cromwell-- England took a very different path from absolutist Spain and France largely due to Cromwell, and he was a major factor in building up England's naval power to compete with the Dutch (even though the Netherlands was still the main sea power after defeating the British in the 2nd and 3rd Anglo-Dutch Wars).  Even after the Restoration, Cromwell's institutions limited royal power so that Parliament was an acknowledged "co-ruler" with the king, and eventually superior to royal authority itself.  The closest precedent within England itself (along with the Glorious Revolution in 1688) to the drive to limit royal power which contributed to the American Revolution.
5. Robert Clive-- probably same reason as you have him up there so high, given his seminal role in starting the British Empire in India, and because it wasn't inevitable.  England actually controlled only about half of what's now India even at the Empire's peak.  (The other half was either independent of foreign rule, under Indian princelings, or it was under Portuguese or French control in various enclaves.)  So without Clive, India in the late 18th and 19th centuries could have evolved quite differently.  Clive was an interesting guy also, beset by his own personal demons, but he was remarkably effective as a military figure and an administrator.
6. King Henry VII-- this poor guy always seems to get short shrift, but he was probably the most influential of the Tudors (aside from founding the dynasty itself).  He was the only one to build up and hand off a solvent English treasury, and he started the English merchant marine, the basis for the East India Company and its Russian and other counterparts, so important for spreading English power abroad.  Henry VII began the English naval revitalization (with which his son is most identified), boosted the wool trade-- benefiting from work already done from Richard III, who was a more capable leader than he's often been portrayed-- and he was the one who began the period of English naval exploration and land claims (sponsoring John Cabot and the English claim and fishing settlement in Newfoundland) in 1497.  Henry VII was following in the footsteps of Portugal and Spain, but he was the first person to successfully launch English overseas exploration and settlement, and (until the Jamestown settlement in 1607) the last one as well.
7. King Henry V-- although England ultimately did lose its French possessions, it was under Henry V that England really gelled as a distinct nation, from nobles to commoners, and not just because of Agincourt.  Henry V was the first ruler since William the Conqueror to demand that English be the language of the royal court, of pleadings in law courts and of administration instead of French (and Latin), which had been the case since William the Conqueror in 1066.  He was not only a popular ruler but an able administrator, and the first person since Alfred the Great to really unify England as a nation.
8. King Henry II-- mainly because he introduced the common law, one of the most durable institutions in England and its colonies from 1607.
9. Elizabeth I-- helping to stabilize England with the Anglican reforms and avoid religious warfare as was plaguing France.
10. Winston Churchill-- sorta like FDR, a central figure of the 20th century who nonetheless, I suspect, won't be that pivotal a figure a century from now.  Churchill's military record is actually mixed-- he was the one chiefly responsible for the Gallipoli fiasco and the draining guerrilla war by Iraqi rebels against British forces in Iraq in the early 1920's (the United Kingdom was soon expelled), and of course the disaster of Singapore permanently damaged British prestige and administrative authority in SE Asia, which could never be re-established.  Churchill was actually an intense British imperialist who wanted to retain the British Empire-- he bitterly opposed the dissolution that Attlee and others undertook after 1945.  Also, Russia (as well as China in the East) was the member of the Allies that did the most fighting in the war.  Still, Churchill was an important war leader and participated with FDR in helping to establish seminal postwar institutions.  A lesser-known aspect of his influence: Churchill was the chief instigator for the removal of Muhammad Mossadekh (the democratically-elected leader of Iran) in 1953-1954, since he was worried that Mossadekh might nationalize Iranian oil supplies and deprive the British of billions.  (John Foster Dulles carried out Churchill's intentions here.)  Iran was actually on its way to being a more-or-less democratic state-- Churchill's decision to oust him was, therefore, the fundamental factor in the Iranian Revolution, and many of our current troubles in the Middle East.

Finally-- ah, what the heck, I'll quickly put my Top 10 French leaders here too.  I'm on shakier ground in terms of historical background here, so curious about folks' comments.

1. Napoleon
2. Charles Martel (oh, my, to think of how history would have changed...)
3. Clovis (he was the founder of the Frankish kingdom itself, and the reason that it-- and Europe in general-- became Catholic rather than Arian Christian up until Martin Luther's 95 Theses.  Like Martel, a major figure in Europe, not just in France.)
4. Charlemagne
5. King Louis XIV
6. Joan of Arc (the English were basically in control and the French demoralized-- I don't see the English getting ousted, and their Burgundian allies subdued, without Joan's courage and leadership)
7. King Philip Augustus (Philippe Auguste-- conquered Normandy and Anjou from King John, created the French state we more or less recognize today)
8. Catherine de Medici (she was the regent during the formative mid-16th century for France and its painful religious transitions, also a major figure in instigating the French period of exploration)
9. Napoleon III (responsible for modernizing and industrializing France with the French rail and building projects, first President of the French Republic, major imperial forays into North Africa)
10. Charles de Gaulle (more or less the father of the modern French republic, took France out of NATO)


Edited by Sintergeorge - 07-Dec-2008 at 08:20

Originally posted by Sintergeorge all of us no matter what our Western country, have drawn heavily from the cultural and administrative legacy of Augustus, Constantine and Alexander.

Sorry, but while your list of leaders is admirably comprehensive, one of these things does not belong here. Alexander’s cultural and administrative legacy is practically non-existent. He did nothing to improve on the social and administrative structure of the Persian Empire, nor did he do anything to ensure the stability of the state he created.

I don’t mean to dump on Alexander, who was certainly one of history’s greatest conquerors. But I find that, because of his status as a romantic hero, he is often made out to have been many things he wasn’t. For instance:

Originally posted by Sintergeorge Alexander for example, could have gone scorched-earth on the Persian lands (Aristotle himself said the Persians were barbarians), but he came to greatly respect the Persian civilization and even to partially identify himself and his soldiers with the Persian element. That's why the crucial Hellenistic civilization came about.

I’m not sure you can credit Alexander for allowing Persian civilization to continue existing. Cultures always mixed after conquests, this case was not exceptional.

Having defeated the Persian armies, Alexander recognized that the Persian Empire’s infrastructure worked well, so he left it alone. This shouldn’t be surprising, since he had no appropriate system to replace it with anyway. It’s equally unsurprising that Alexander developed an appreciation of Persian culture, seeing as that the wealth and majesty of Persia was what drew him to attack it in the first place.

To suggest that everything that happened to the peoples of the Persian Empire after Alexander’s conquest was because of Alexander is to ignore the fact that he was one in a long series of imperial adventurers in that region, picking up where the Persians had left off and inheriting the benefits of their experience. Basically, you’re falling into the trap of thinking about Alexander’s empire and the successor states only in terms of their relationship to Greek history. The peoples conquered by Alexander weren't passive receptacles waiting for him to tell them how to order their societies going forward.

Originally posted by Sintergeorge Even as the Near East came under the Greek cultural sway, Persian and other Eastern influences remained strong, which is a big part of why so many of us in the West today are members of a religion founded in the East (Christianity)-- in a region conquered by Alexander and brought into the Hellenic world, thence into the Roman and Byzantine Empires. Alexander was also an explorer, and many pillars of modern civilization got their start because East and West had that great (and largely unparalleled) exchange as Alexander moved his armies and administrators throughout what was then "the civilized world."

All of the above is a very big stretch. Trade between Greek peoples and many of the nations in the Persian Empire predated Alexander, and the greatest flowerings of Hellenism came after his death. As for Christianity, Rome and Byzantium, unless you’re arguing that Alexander worked to foster these things, I’m not sure how you can say they were testaments to his leadership.

I also have to say that your evaluation of Genghis Khan's leadership shows something of a double-standard:

Originally posted by Sintergeorge But most of what Genghis and his successors did was to take a wrecking ball to other, established and culturally advanced civilizations (like China and Baghdad), who ultimately defeated and mostly assimilated the Mongols culturally by the 13th and 14th centuries. Genghis's influence is limited simply because the Mongols, while militarily strong, left comparatively little in terms of lasting cultural, political and administrative institutions. That's one of the reasons why the only durable Mongol state is a rather small (geographically large but small in population and economy) country in northeastern Asia.

Much the same can be said of Alexander. In my view, Alexander and Genghis Khan were very close equivalents to each other. If anything, the state Genghis created was more stable and longer lasting than Alexander’s, and he was a far more responsible leader. One could also ague that his empire was more influential in world history – particularly through its role in facilitating the transfer of technology between different parts of the world.

Further, while it’s true that the Mongols would gradually be absorbed into the local populations they conquered, the same is very much true of the Macedonians – to paraphrase you, that’s one of the reasons why the only durable Macedonian state is a rather small country in Southeastern Europe.

Originally posted by Sintergeorge His bureaucratic state was at the heart of northwest Europe, and it spread into France (after Normandy got conquered by France in the 1200's), and was also imitated by authorities in other Norman kingdoms and even outside of them. William IOW was a key figure in what would later become European imperial expansion.

William is the other leader on your list that doesn’t seem to make the cut. You’ll have to explain to me what great reforms William was responsible for, or how it was that he inspired other leaders of his time.

Both your list and the discussion you've provided on this are fascinating, DSMyers, and I thank you for helping to promote it like this.  It's a rare chance to actually delve into analytical history rather than just fact-citation, and I find that in discussing this topic with my own friends and students, it's the kind of thing that gets them thinking!  I checked your revised list, and overall, I think it's outstanding-- I'd agree with most of the placements, and even for those in which I'd differ, for the most part the changes wouldn't be too much.

I'll just list a couple of the placements in your list where I really would introduce some major changes.

Just as a quick caveat, to elaborate on my criteria a bit-- I do two things to "semi-objectivize" this process a bit.  The first, is that I have discussions on this with people from other countries and cultures who have a different national background and a different historical perspective.  (And again, we make sure to focus on actual objective influence of a figure, not on how likable or subjectively appealing they are.)  This is valuable, because it helps provide a somewhat quantifiable sense of the true international reach of certain historical figures as opposed to others who are more national (or confined to a particular civilizational subgrouping)-- and thus figures who've had a truly global, as opposed to national or regional, influence.  I've had this kind of discussion with Latin Americans, various Europeans, even South and East Asians to get a broad gauge of this.

In the process, I've found that Muhammad, Augustus Caesar, Constantine the Great and Alexander (and Umar ibn al-Khattab) all rank very, very highly on everybody's list, no matter what the country or culture.  The middle 3, obviously, were fundamental for all of Western civilization, while Muhammad and Umar introduced a crucial cultural force that was in no way inevitable, into one of the major cultural forces of modern society.  George Washington also ranks highly-- even though he was responsible for founding the USA in particular, the revolution in Constitutionalism, which he brought about, is of vast international consequence and changed the world.  Qin Shi Huangdi also ranks very, very highly on everyone's list once folks find out who he is, simply because his achievement in statecraft is unparalleled-- he unified and founded and ancient and now re-emerging modern superpower that has held intact as a continuous political entity for over 2,000 years, assimilating even Mongol and Manchu conquerors.  (Genghis Khan is just somewhat behind, though still high.)  This is more or less consistent with these figures' rankings on other famous lists, such as Michael H. Hart's and the millennium lists that were cropping up around 2000 (including A&E's, which was laughably foolish in its bottom half but had a decent top half-- that part being assembled more by professional historians).

OTOH-- Richelieu, Churchill and especially Queen Elizabeth I rank much, much lower in general, on everyone's list when we do these discussions, which I'll get into a bit more below.  (As I'll explain, my first lists with these figures looked a lot like yours, until people with more expertise on them and their periods gave me a sharp correction!)

The second technique I use is to try to imagine historians doing these evaluations 500 years from now.  This is obviously imperfect, except as a tool to kind of pry us away from being too "blinded" by recent historical events, producing institutions that, in fact, may not be all so durable.  It's one of the reasons why Muhammad, Augustus, Washington, Constantine, Qin Shi Huangdi and others rank so highly-- they were fundamentally innovators who introduced durable institutions, and all except Washington are ancient figures with a powerful international impact in what they innovated, so much so that they're still very relevant today.

Again, just want to emphasize that your list is great overall, well thought-out and in general quite well-informed and thought-provoking, and I could make a good argument for the vast majority of your placements. 

The following would be my suggestions for the few major changes, to help iron out anything that might raise too many eyebrows:

1. Queen Elizabeth I should be moved way, way down-- probably no higher than #90 or so.  I mention this one first because I've personally gotten burned badly on this when trying to draw up these lists in the past myself, and for reasons that I had to learn the hard way, from others pointing out my mistakes and confusions about the late Tudor period.  As I mentioned I'm a Renaissance Faire devotee, and in prior discussions on these historical rankings with people from various countries, I also used to try and argue for putting Elizabeth somewhere high up there as you did.  I got shot down every single time by people more knowledgeable than myself (which wound up damaging the credibility of my entire list), and I eventually realized that 1. I didn't understand the late 16th century nearly as well as I thought I did and 2. I simply could not make a single coherent argument for durable, fundamental institutions that Elizabeth innovated-- or even for her being that successful a ruler. 

As I detailed in the post above, Elizabeth not only did not found the British Empire-- she had almost nothing to do with it, despite 45 years on the throne.  This was what I didn't realize, until an Australian friend of mine-- followed by others-- spelled it out for me in detail: Henry VII planted the first seed of the British Empire with the 1497 Cabot Expeditions, land claims and fishing grounds in Newfoundland.  And then it wasn't until 1607-- during James I's reign, not Elizabeth I's-- that the first permanent English settlement got going at Jamestown, which is the closest we have to a start for the British Empire (and a very slow one at that, since it wasn't until 1763 that things really picked up in this regard).  This was obviously an important institution (certainly in our recent history at least), but Elizabeth herself contributed very little to founding it. 

And the main reason for this fact, is that Elizabeth was overall, spectacularly unsuccessful in a military sense-- in fact, one of the least successful English/British leaders from a purely military standpoint-- which is the second lesson that I learned the hard way, when quite a few people pointed it out to me.  I used to bring up the Spanish Armada and talk about the way Elizabeth had laid the foundations for English and British sea power with the royal navy (or so I had thought), but some people who actually know about this topic (naval experts and otherwise) corrected me to an extent that it was almost embarrassing how badly I messed up the facts. 

I always used to think that Spanish sea power was broken by the Spanish Armada, with England ruling the seas afterward.  Turns out, it was totally the opposite: The Armada in 1588 turned out to be only a temporary setback for Spain, and the Spaniards utterly demolished the English in about a half-dozen naval battles afterward: In the Drake expedition in 1589 to Portugal, the Azores in 1591 and 1597, Amesquita's successful invasion of western English shores in 1595, and especially in the utter demolition by the Spaniards of the Drake-Hawkins expedition to Central America in 1595, among others up to the conclusion of Elizabeth's reign in 1603.  (This last one-- the Drake-Hawkins expedition in 1595, in which both were killed in the endeavor-- was, in fact, probably the worst naval defeat that the English/British ever suffered: you can find pretty good Web and published references on the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604 for more detail.)

So as it turns out, England was badly weakened and damaged as Spain got the upper hand in the war in the 1590's, Spain essentially ended the privateers attacking the Spanish fleets, and the Spaniards in fact increased their silver/gold shipments tremendously-- by 3-4 fold-- while consolidating and extending their New World Empire.  And Spain had a chokehold on the Atlantic ocean that more or less bottled up the English, which is specifically *why* Elizabeth was unable to start what would become the British Empire-- England had been far too battered navally by Spanish successes, and Spain would control the seas for another 50 years, until the Dutch crushed them at the Downs around 1640 (while the French took them down in land battles).  In fact, it was only because James I made peace with Spain in 1604-- and pretty much accepted Spanish demands-- that James was able to start the Jamestown colony at all in 1607.  (As far as founding the Royal Navy itself, Henry VIII got that rolling-- and as far as what QEI added to it, again, ultimately the navy's performance was quite poor against Spain, losing almost every battle after 1588.)

On top of this, again in part because the war against Spain became so disastrous for Elizabeth in the 1590's, the English treasury sank deeply into debt, plus the crown sold off most of its collateral, which weakened the throne in the years hence.  And all of this had occurred in the context of QEI losing English possessions in France permanently, and getting stuck in a nearly decade-long and disastrous quagmire in Ireland, "the sink of the English treasury," which continued until James I took the throne.

IOW, when you tally things up, not only did Elizabeth not start the British Empire, fail with colonization and thus fail to lay down durable international institutions-- Elizabethan England was actually a wreck by the conclusion of her reign, with its navy devastated, Spain consolidating its chokehold on the Atlantic, *and* deeply in debt with the crown's collateral severely depleted.  IOW a mixed record at best, and certainly not an influential one.  Interestingly, in my experience with this discussion, it's mostly historians from Britain, Australia and Canada who've been insistent on pointing this out (they all rank Elizabeth much, much lower on lists of England/Britain alone), while history-minded folks from other countries just don't consider Elizabeth on the level of other modern European figures as Napoleon or Queen Isabella (who's around #50 in the list I ultimately drew up after corrections-- Isabella, despite the not-so-positive impact of the Spanish Inquisition on world history, was more militarily successful and actually did succeed in founding an overseas empire while laying down permanent international institutions, which Elizabeth was unable to do). 

Hart actually ranked Elizabeth at around #96 for these sorts of reasons, and most lists (of world history and British-specific history) tend to do the same. 

So I'd suggest that Queen Elizabeth I is maybe one of the rankings to revise the most substantially downward on your list, if for no other reason than the current placement brings the whole list into question-- as it did for me in the past, when I used to do draw up these lists, (initially) rank QEI highly, then have the credibility of the entire list jeopardized (not to mention my own basic historical knowledge called into question) when others laid out the above facts for me in detail.

2. Alfred the Great at #10, one can definitely make a good case for, and IMHO that's an inspired choice.  (Probably William the Conqueror in a similar ballpark-- both he and Alfred were more or less influential in establishing what became the state system in northwestern Europe.)  As for Churchill-- I put him a little higher than Elizabeth, but not in the #30-40 range (probably #60-70).  This is partly out of caution at ranking recent historical figures too highly, but also because I've also been shot down in my attempts to put him high up there, if not quite as embarrassingly as I've been burned with an unjustifiably high QEI ranking.  Churchill was a pivotal 20th century figure of course-- but WWII was an extremely complex matter, and it's hard to know how it's going to be regarded a century from now.  (While it was the biggest war in terms of scale, it wasn't like e.g. Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs, the Qin unification, or the American Revolution-- which created entirely new nations and cultural spheres, though the postwar institutions are certainly important.)  Also, as far as roles played in WWII, Russians will always give you grief if you put Churchill up so high there-- plus there's Churchill's disastrous failure in Gallipoli that Australians always gave me grief about (and certainly doesn't say much for his influence).

Furthermore-- Britain emerged in pretty terrible shape after WWII as well, since the British saw their own empire collapse and their power stripped away (and sometimes violently-- British colonies in Cyprus, Kenya, Palestine, Aden and the Suez all collapsed in the wake of violent insurrections against British rule, more like the French in Algeria and quite unlike the case in India, not to mention the ongoing bloodshed in N. Ireland).  Churchill very much wanted to maintain the Empire even well into and after WWII, so that particular turn of events, which destroyed the British Empire, was if anything the opposite of the influence Churchill was trying to have on the world.  So overall, I still think Churchill will stay an important figure a century from now, just not in the league of the really fundamental (and usually ancient) institution-builders.  And as far as British figures, I'd certainly put both Henry VII and William Pitt the Elder above him without hesitation.  Henry VII started English exploration and the merchant marine, while giving England the solvent treasury that enabled it to become a seafaring power (and to initiate its own literary Renaissance) in the first place.  William Pitt is the closest Britain has to the founder of the British Empire-- it was his leadership and British victory over France in the Seven Years' War that enabled Britain to become a truly global power.

(Just as an unrelated aside, it's not only Russians and Aussies who gave me grief about Churchill, in their cases mostly on the "amount of influence" front-- I've had Indian history buffs come close to strangling me for praising Churchill for quite different reasons.  I honestly know very little about this particular part of history, but for at least many Indians, they hate Churchill as much as Poles hate Uncle Joe Stalin-- Churchill apparently despised the Indian people, or so a couple old colleagues related to me, and they hold him responsible for a deadly famine in India during the 1940's.  I know about the "Lytton famines" in the late 1800's, far less about the 1940's one, so I tend to shy away from arguing with them.) 

3. Replace Genghis and Zhu with Qin ShiHuangdi at the #5 or 6 spot.  I'd still place both of them highly (maybe in the #12-18 range or so), but not at ShiHuangdi's level in the Top 10.  This is pretty much borne out by every conversation with Chinese and Asian historians I've had, as well as some Western historians who are more into Asian history.  The Asians in particular, place Confucius in the Top 5. (We're naturally not considering him because he was mostly a philosopher, but in Asia in particular, they also give him the "leadership" label from his administrative duties, which did inform his philosophy).  Aside from Confucius though, it's definitely Qin Shi Huangdi as far as influence, even though he's not necessarily popular among them.  I agree that Shi Huangdi was quite bloodthirsty and definitely had a repressive streak to put it mildly, if not quite on the same scale as Genghis (who wiped out entire societies, as in Merv and Nishapur). 

However, while Shi Huangdi's campaigns were very bloody, his primary interest was in creating a unified empire (and the nucleus of a nation), which he succeeded in by dint of his administrative skills following his military operations.  Again, his administrative accomplishment is unparalleled in world history-- by unifying the currency, script, weights and measures, roads, and administrative bureaucracy of the East Asian plain like that, he effectively created China as a nation, and his administrative innovations have largely endured to the present day in the state he founded.  Even the successor dynasties-- who by their nature criticized their predecessors like the Qin-- adopted Shi Huangdi's innovations and used them because they were so useful in unifying the nation.  Thus, while Rome fell apart as a unified political entity, the unified Chinese nation that Qin Shi Huangdi founded, has endured some incredible tests for over 2,000 years.

It's notable in fact, when comparing Qin Shi Huangdi and Genghis, that ultimately Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire not only collapsed a century after it had been initiated-- Mongol power was essentially pushed back to a small region in the nomadic steppes (corresponding more or less to Mongolia today), and the Mongol conquerors were overthrown and ultimately absorbed into the Chinese state that Qin Shi Huangdi had initiated, rather than the other way around.  Whereas Qin Shi Huangdi's institutions in China were ultimately so durable (both administratively and culturally), Genghis left much less behind in terms of durable institutions.  Genghis still ranks highly simply because he was more or less the engine for so many Eurasian developments later (transmitting much Chinese technology to the West, the safe roads that Marco Polo traveled on to Cathay, the Golden Horde and Il-Khanates, the Mughals themselves), but Qin Shi Huangdi-- who after all, for his time, was also an extraordinary conqueror in his own right-- innovated far more in the way of effective administrative structures and durable institutions.

IIRC Hart and most other list-compilers have focused on that aspect too, and given that essentially unparalleled achievement-- really a historical phenomenon, considering how well Shi Huangdi's institutions have endured-- it just seems that Shi Huangdi should be high up in the Top 10 on any list.  Again, most Chinese I've talked to don't necessarily like him, because he was repressive and more or less a megalomaniac-- but he was a genius of administration, and it's in large part because of him that China has remained a unified power like this for centuries, rather than falling apart and squabbling as the Western countries did.

4. Replace Salāh ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb with Umar Ibn al-Khattab-- this isn't one I came up with on my own, it was purely on the advice of some specialists in Muslim and Arab history, both Muslim and non-Muslim, who suggested this revision for my own list.  Saladin is still an important and crucial force in world history, and as with Genghis and Zhu above, he probably wouldn't move too much (maybe down to #15 at most).  Saladin is indeed a pivotal figure in ensuring that the Middle East has the character it does today, as well as for a lesser-known (but also very important) contribution in unifying most of the Muslim lands under a coherent Sunni banner, and fighting some apostasies at the time (different from the Sunni-Shiite rift).

But while Saladin was crucial for preserving and re-establishing Muslim rule in the region, Umar was (after Muhammad himself) chiefly responsible for instituting it in the first place.  He was the political and military leader who managed to conquer both the Byzantine and Persian domains, establishing the core of what we know as "the Muslim world" today.  So Umar is one of those critical "if not for him, history would have been extremely different" types of historical figures.  The Arab Islamic state when Umar took power was tiny, and a cultural backwater compared to the Byzantines and Persians-- and if Umar had been defeated (which history suggests was the most likely outcome for a small and untested power, as was the case for the Mecca-Medina state that Muhammad had founded), then Islam would have been largely squelched, as perhaps a little southern Arab faith, modeled on Judeo-Christian lines, but little in the way of regional (let alone global) impact.  So as the specialists told me when I was drawing up this kind of list myself, Saladin was an outstanding and pivotal figure for the faith, but Umar was pivotal for helping to establish it in the first place.

5. I'd probably have Emperor Constantine somewhere in the Top 10-- the fact that he prevailed against his rivals, and effectively established Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire (even if inadvertently in some ways), and its major tenets at the Nicaea Council: Just of massive and almost incomparable importance.  Prior to Constantine, Christianity had been spreading throughout the Roman Empire, but it was still a small minority religion overall, and largely disdained as an "Eastern mystery cult" especially by the upper classes.  By Constantine's time, central Roman authority is weakening, and if Constantine is defeated (or doesn't re-restablish a strong authority with the Christian faith as a central element), then the entirety of Western Civilization looks radically different today.  Rome soon falls apart, and we probably wouldn't be Christian-- there wouldn't be anything like "Christendom," no papacy and thus no Protestant Reformation later on (since there's no unified Catholic Church to rebel against in the first place).  Even though there still might be "Christianity," it wouldn't be so firmly identified with the West-- which sprang from the ruins of Rome after 476.  Plus, without Constantine, no fortified Constantinople like that, which effectively protected the West for many centuries against invasion, and served as a storehouse for consolidating the Greek-speaking intellectual heritage from many centuries before (thenceforth transmitted to the West after 1453). 

6. Finally-- not sure where I'd put Asoka, though I'd be inclined to place him somewhere in the range of Chandragupta Maurya.  He was sort of like Constantine in ensuring the spread of Buddhism (which, again, would have probably just languished as a mystery cult otherwise), and he did help to stitch together India at its biggest extent, while introducing a novel code of laws for the country.  Among Indians, he's if anything even more venerated than Gandhi is (his wheel is on the Indian flag).  Still, I think you can make a good case for putting Chandragupta Maurya very high up there as you do, since he was probably more foundational in establishing a centralized, unified Indian state than Asoka was.

Anyway, as I said, great list overall.  These would just be my suggestions for the small number of major changes-- especially for Queen Elizabeth I (and for Qin Shi Huangdi and Umar ibn al-Khattab), which would definitely raise a lot of skeptical eyebrows.  (Something that I myself have direct and unpleasant experience with.)

On the question of Elizabeth, you miss the most important contribution she made to the future of England - the establishmen of the Church of England as an institution almost anyone could belong to. Granted there was a backlash under the Commonwealth, but the tolerance of religious variation that marks subsequent English history began under Elizabeth. And I think she worked deliberately to make it so, though probably from secular rather than religious motives.

My issue with the Salah Addin and some of the other Moslem leaders is whether to distinguish their political entity, their nation/people from others.  If it is separate, then they presided over tremendous growth (Power of the Ayyubids from 1 to 4, for Salah Addin).  If I consider them "Arabs", well, they weren't.  If I consider them "Moslems", well, they just ruled parts of the moslem world.  How should I differentiate the entities?

As I said, I am looking at how the specific leader impacted the trajectory of his nation/people.  That is easy for some parts of the world, hard for others...  Because it is sometimes difficult to identify the edge between the same nation/people/country, with a different dynasty, and a different nation/people/country.  Here are the nations/peoples/countries I have been using for the Moslem world (well, those that I have gotten to):

Abbasid Caliphate

Aceh

Adal

Afghan

Almohads

Almoravids

Arabs

Ayyubids

Buyid

Cordoba

Fatimid

Kashgar

Pashtun/Suri

Uzbekh

In your opinion, Al Jassas, should I indeed split all of those out?  (I'm using "Arabs" for the era up to the Umayyads, who I haven't studied yet.)  Do you understand what I'm meaning?  The selection of how to split out these peoples/nations/countries determines what numerical result Salah Addin will get (did he start something new, a new people/nation/country?)

Edited by DSMyers1 - 24-Dec-2008 at 12:38

Portuguese and Brazilian Top Leaders

Edited by Bandeirante - 24-Dec-2008 at 16:37

Hello DS