Review on Major individuals in history 1750-present

1. Galileo Galilei
an Italian physicist, mathematician,
astronomer, and philosopher who
played a major role in the Scientific
Revolution.
His achievements include
improvements to the telescope and
consequent astronomical observations.
Galileo has been called the "father of
modern observational astronomy," the
"father of modern physics," the "father
of science,” and "the Father of Modern
Science."
Galileo challenged the Church and the
geocentric theory. Due to his support
of the heliocentric theory, he was tried
by the Roman Catholic Inquisition,
found "vehemently suspect of heresy,"
forced to recant, and spent the rest of
his life under house arrest.

2. Sir Isaac Newton
an English physicist, mathematician,
astronomer, natural philosopher,
alchemist, and theologian.
Newton described universal
gravitation and the three laws of
motion which dominated the
scientific view of the physical
universe for the next three centuries.
Newton showed that the motions of
objects on Earth and of celestial
bodies are governed by the same set
of natural laws by demonstrating the
consistency between Kepler's laws of
planetary motion and his theory of
gravitation, thus removing the last
doubts about heliocentrism and
advancing the scientific revolution.

3. John Locke
1632-1704
English philospoher and political theorist.
Locke wrote Two Treaties on GOvernment
which explained that all men have Natural
Rights, which include Life, Liberty, and
Property. Locke stated that the purpose of
government was to protect peopleś natural
rights and if the government did not do this,
then the people had the obligation to
overthrow the government. He helped
stimulate the Enlightenment, which
challenged accepted beliefs and authority.
Locke inspired a spirit of questioning which
challenged the divine right of absolute
monarchies and brought about new ideas
about power being derived from the
people. The American, French, and Latin
American revolutions were a result of his
ideas.

4. Mao Zedong
Mao was a Chinese communist leader and began fighting
a civil war against Jiang Jieshi and his Nationalist Party.
In retreat, Mao led his followers on the 'Long March', a
6,000 mile journey to northwest China to establish a new
base. The Civil War ended when the Japanese invaded
China during WWII. However, after World War II, civil
war broke again and, in 1949, the Communists were
victorious and Jiang Jieshi fled to the island of Taiwan.
Mao set out to modernize China. farmers were
organized into collectives. All opposition was ruthlessly
suppressed. In 1958, in an attempt to introduce a more
'Chinese' form of communism, Mao launched the 'Great
Leap Forward'. This aimed at mass mobilization of labor
to improve agricultural and industrial production. The
result, instead, was a massive decline in agricultural
output, which, together with poor harvests, led to famine
and the deaths of millions. The policy was abandoned
and Mao's position weakened. In an attempt to re-assert
his authority, Mao launched the 'Cultural Revolution' in
1966, aiming to purge the country of 'impure' elements
and revive the revolutionary spirit. The results were a
“Lost Generation” of uneducated children and much of
the country's cultural heritage destroyed.

5. Otto von Bismarck
Appointed Prussian chancellor in
1862, he began a series of wars to
unify all the German states. With his
policy of Blood and Iron, he believed
that international conflicts could best
be resolved through the use of
military force. He was a nationalist
leader who upset the balance of
power that had been established at
the Congress of Vienna. Bismarck
annexed the French province of
Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-
Prussian War. This created
hostilities with France that would
carry over into the 20th century.

6. Napoleon He was a French Emperor who was
responsible for many French
Revolution reforms including the
Napoleonic Code as well as
conquering most of Europe. He gave
rise to a sense of nationalism
throughout Europe because countries
resented being ruled by a foreign
power and were inspired by his
support for liberty. He was defeated
at Waterloo, and died several years
later on the island of St. Helena. After
his fall, European leaders met at the
Congress of Vienna, which was
headed by Prince Metternich of
Austria. Here the leaders tried to turn
back the clock to restore monarchies
that were overthrown and establish a
Balance of Power to prevent the rise
of a powerful military leader like
Napoleon.

7. Adolph Hitler
An Austrian-born German politician and
the leader of the Nazi Party. He became
the head of state, or Führer, ruling the
country as an absolute dictator of
Germany.
He promoted German nationalism, anti-
semitism, and anti-communism with
propaganda and a cult of personality.
His rearmament of Germany led to the
1939 invasion of Poland and the
outbreak of World War II in Europe. By
1945, Allied armies had invaded
German-held Europe from all sides.
However, Nazi forces engaged in the
systematic murder of as many as
17 million civilians, an estimated six
million of whom were Jews targeted in
the Holocaust.

8. Joseph Stalin Leader of the Soviet Communist Party from
1922 until 1953. Stalin introduced an
agricultural program known as
collectivization that took lands from private
farmers and turned them over to the
government. This caused widespread
famine across the Soviet Union. Stalin also
launched the Great Purges which used
terror to control citizens by jailing or
murdering political opponents. Stalin also
introduced several Five-Year Plans to
develop and increase heavy industrial
output. Under his leadership, the USSR
centralized the government and instituted a
command economy in which government
controlled the means of production. Stalin
helped to create tensions between the
USSR and the USA which led to the Cold
War. Stalin created the “Iron Curtain”
when he did not offer Eastern European
nations elections and used these nations as
a communist bloc. Mao Zedong in China
was influenced by Stalin.

9. Louis XIV
Known as the Sun King, he was
an absolute monarch that
completely controlled France.
One of his greatest
accomplishments was the building
of the Palace of Versailles.
Louis revoked the Edict of
Nantes, which had protected
Huguenots (French Protestants)
from persecution by the Catholics.
This weakened the French
economy by driving out as many
skilled workers and industrialists.
Louis was Divine Right ruler and
greatly burdened the French
economy through his lavish
lifestyle and costly wars.

10. Karl Marx Co-author with Friedrich Engels of the
Communist Manifesto, which is the
basis for modern communism. Marx
wrote the Communist Manifesto in
response to problems of the Industrial
Revolution and the way that it exploited
workers. He believed that a class
struggle always existed between the
“Haves and the Have-nots” and the only
way for the struggle to end was for an
overthrow of the ruling class
(Bourgeoisie) by the workers
(Proletariat). Marx promoted the idea
of a worldwide communist revolution
that would create a classless society in
which the workers controlled the means
of production. His ideas were the basis
for the Bolshevik revolution in Russia,
the communist revolutions in China and
Cuba, and the communist governments
in North Korea and Vietnam.

11. Gandhi
The political and spiritual leader of
India during the Indian
independence movement.
He pioneered satyagraha—
resistance to tyranny through mass
civil disobedience, a philosophy
firmly founded upon ahimsa or total
nonviolence. (Salt March,
Homespun Movement, Quit India)
Gandhi is commonly known around
the world as Mahatma Gandhi or
"Great Soul."

12. Emperor Meiji Emperor of Japan was considered a
living god and was responsible for
the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate
and the rapid modernization,
industrialization and
Westernization of Japan. This was
in response to Western imperialism
and was known as the Meiji
Restoration. Japan then became
an imperialist power themselves to
make up for the lack of natural
resources on their island nation.
With this success, Japan was able to
defeat China in the Sino-Japanese
War and gained the colonial
possession of Taiwan. Japan
followed that success with the defeat
of Russia in the Russo-Japanese
War. As a result, Japan annexed
Korea in 1910.

13. Pol Pot 1925-1998
Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge
movement led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.
During that time, about 1.5 million
Cambodians out of a total population of 7 to
8 million died of starvation, execution,
disease or overwork. Some estimates place
the death toll even higher.
The Khmer Rouge, in their attempt to
socially engineer a classless peasant
society, took particular aim at intellectuals,
city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil
servants and religious leaders.
An invading Vietnamese army deposed the
Khmer Rouge in 1979, and, despite years of
guerilla warfare, they never took power
again. Pol Pot died in 1998 without ever
being brought to justice.

14. Pancho Villa1878-1923
Pancho Villa started off as a bandit who
was later inspired by reformer Francisco
Madero, helping him to win an election
over Mexican Dictator Porfirio Diaz. After
Madero was assassinated, the Mexican
Revolution began due to the military coup
by Victoriano Huerta.
Pancho Villa formed his own army to
oppose the dictator. He fought numerous
battles and became a symbol of hope for
the common people.
He eventually lost to the new leader of
Mexico, Alvaro Obregon and, after
retiring to his hacienda, was
assassinated three years later on July 20,
1923.

15. Mikhail Gorbachev
1931-
Mikhail S. Gorbachev became general secretary
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in
March 1985 and launched two major programs.
“Perestroika” (“restructuring”) and “glasnost”
(“openness”) introduced profound changes in
economic practice, internal affairs and
international relations.
Within five years, Gorbachev’s revolutionary
program swept communist governments
throughout Eastern Europe from power and
brought an end to the Cold War (1945-91).
Gorbachev’s actions also inadvertently set the
stage for the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union,
which dissolved into 15 individual republics
known as the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS). He resigned from office on
December 25, 1991.

16. Nelson Mandela 1918-2013
The South African activist and former
president Nelson Mandela helped bring an
end to apartheid and has been a global
advocate for human rights.
A member of the African National
Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he
was a leader of both peaceful protests and
armed resistance against the white
minority’s oppressive regime in a racially
divided South Africa. His actions landed
him in prison for nearly three decades and
made him the face of the anti-apartheid
movement both within his country and
internationally.
Released in 1990, he participated in the
eradication of apartheid and in 1994
became the first black president of South
Africa, forming a multiethnic government to
oversee the country’s transition.

17. Kemal Ataturk(1881-1938)
Kemal Ataturk was an army officer who
founded an independent Republic of
Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman
Empire. He was a great Nationalist
leader who served as Turkey’s first
president from 1923 until his death in
1938, implementing reforms that
rapidly secularized and westernized the
country.
Under his leadership, the role of Islam
in public life shrank drastically,
European-style law codes came into
being, the office of the sultan was
abolished and new language and dress
requirements were mandated. But
although the country was nominally
democratic, Atatürk at times stifled
opposition with an authoritarian hand.

18. Deng Xiaoping 1904-1997
Deng Xiaoping was the communist
leader who ruled China from the late
1970s until 1997. He abandoned many
communist doctrines and incorporated
elements of the free-enterprise system
into the economy.
Deng’s “Four Modernizations” consisted
of reforms in virtually all aspects of
China's political, economic and social
life, restoring the country to domestic
stability and economic growth after the
excesses of the Cultural Revolution.
His limited capitalism policies also
created some problems, marked by the
1989 massacre of demonstrators
in Tiananmen Square.

19. Fidel Castro1926-2016
Cuban leader Fidel Castro established the
first communist state in the Western
Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of
the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista
in 1959.
He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades.
During that time, Castro’s regime was
successful in reducing illiteracy, stamping
out racism and improving public health care,
but was widely criticized for stifling economic
and political freedoms.
Castro’s Cuba also had a highly antagonistic
relationship with the United States–most
notably resulting in the Bay of Pigs invasion
and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The two
nations officially normalized relations in July
2015, easing a trade embargo that had been
in place since 1960, when U.S.-owned
businesses in Cuba were nationalized
without compensation.

20. Slobodan Milosevic 1941-2006
A Serbian who was elected as Serbia’s
president in 1989 and founded the
Socialist party. In 1997, he became
Yugoslavia’s president and soon took
part in the Bosnian War, where he
orchestrated a policy known as “Ethnic
Cleansing” against non-Serbian people.
He also ethnically cleansed more than
800,000 Albanians from their homes in
Kosovo and had political opponents and
former friends murdered.
In Bosnia, he triggered the worst crisis in
transatlantic relations before the Iraq war
and left the United Nations and the
European Union looking spineless and
humiliated, their foreign policymaking and
peacekeeping credibility in tatters.
He lost power in 2000 and was charged
with crimes against humanity.

21. Tokugawa Ieyasu1543-1616
He allied himself with the powerful
forces of Oda Nobunaga and then
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and after
Hideyoshi’s death, Ieyasu became
shogun to Japan’s imperial court in
1603.
He took steps to regulate trade and stop
Christian missionaries. He built the
largest castle in the world, a sprawling
network of moats, stone walls,
gatehouses, and fireproof warehouses
full of rice and coin. Around it lay
mansions in which the daimyo
essentially lived as hostages.
Edo became a bustling town and port,
full of artisans, traders, clerks, and
laborers. Even after retiring, Ieyasu
worked to neutralize his enemies and
establish a family dynasty that would
endure for centuries.

22. Ho Chi Minh
As an advocate for Vietnamese
nationalism, Ho Chi Minh led the
movement to end the French colonial
rule of Vietnam and founded the
Vietnamese Communist Party.
During World War II, Ho led forces
against the Japanese occupation, and
after the war he stood up to the French
reoccupation of his homeland.
In an effort to stop Ho's communist
influence from spreading to Southern
Vietnam, the United States became
embroiled in the Vietnam War. Ho
prevailed in the war and the capital of
Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City
in his honor.

23. Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta is considered the
father of Kenya’s independence
movement. Kenyatta represented
Kenya in multiple negotiations with the
British over 30 years. After World War
II he formed a new political party, the
Kenyan African Union, with a goal of
an independent Kenya. Despite the
violent Mau Mau rebellion in the
1950’s, Kenyatta wanted a peaceful
transfer of power.
On December 12, 1963 Kenya
formally declared independence and
Kenyatta was elected as the first prime
minister. Kenyatta urged the white
settlers to remain and took steps to
improve Kenya’s economy by
promoting capitalism. He also oversaw
Kenya’s admittance to the United
Nations.

24. Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein was president
of Iraq for more than two
decades and is seen as a
figurehead of the country's
military conflicts with Iran and
the United States.
Saddam Hussein was a
secularist who rose through the
Baath political party to assume
a dictatorial presidency. Under
his rule, segments of the
populace enjoyed the benefits
of oil wealth, while those in
opposition faced torture and
execution.
After military conflicts with U.S.-
led armed forces, Hussein was
captured in 2003. He was later
executed.

25. Adam Smith
Adam Smith was an economist and
philosopher who wrote what is
considered the "bible of
capitalism," The Wealth of Nations, in
which he details the first system of
political economy.
Smith’s ideas are a reflection on
economics in light of the beginning of
the Industrial Revolution, and he states
that free-market economies (i.e.,
capitalist ones) are the most productive
and beneficial to their societies. He
goes on to argue for an economic
system based on individual self-interest
led by the natural law of “supply and
Demand,” which would achieve the
greatest good for all.

26. Ayatollah Khomeini Khomeini was an Iranian religious and
political leader, who in 1979 made Iran
the world's first Islamic republic.
Khomeini was an outspoken critic of
the pro-Western regime of the
Shah. In January 1979, the shah's
government collapsed and he fled into
exile. Khomeini returned to Iran in
triumph.
He declared an Islamic republic and
was appointed Iran's political and
religious leader for life. Islamic law
was introduced across the country. His
denunciation of American influence led
to militant Islamic students storming
the US Embassy in Teheran where
American hostages were held captive
for more than a year.

27. Benito Mussolini
1883-1945
Known as “Il Duce” (“the Leader”),
Mussolini was an Italian dictator
who created the Fascist Party in
1919 and eventually held all the
power in Italy as the country’s
prime minister from 1922 until
1943. He set about attempting to
re-establish Italy as a great
European power. The regime was
held together by strong state
control and Mussolini's cult of
personality.
As dictator during World War II, he
overextended his forces and was
eventually killed by his own people
in Mezzegra, Italy.

28. Simón Bolívar was a South American soldier who
was instrumental in the continent's revolutions
against the Spanish empire. Born into wealth,
Bolívar was sent to Spain for his education, soon
deciding to immerse himself in the political sphere
in Europe. After France invaded Spain in 1808, he
became involved in the resistance movement and
played a key role in the Spanish American fight for
independence. After studying in Europe, Bolívar
returned to Venezuela and began a campaign to
seize control of that country from the Spanish. He
and his followers invaded Venezuela on May 14,
1813; this marked the beginning of his "Campaña
Admirable" (Admirable Campaign), which resulted
in the formation of the Venezuelan Second
Republic later that year. In 1825, the "Republic of
Bolivia" was created in honor of the inspirational
leader, hailed by many as El Libertador (The
Liberator). He died on December 17, 1830 in
Colombia.
Simon Bolivar

29. Toussaint l’Ouverture
A former Haitian slave who led the only successful slave
revolt in modern history. He fought to end slavery and gain
Haiti’s independence from European powers, France.
In 1791, slaves rebelled in the French colony of Saint-
Domingue on the western half of Hispaniola. Inspired by
the French Revolution, and angered by generations of
abuse, slaves began slaughtering whites. Forming an
army of former slaves and deserters from the French and
Spanish armies, he trained his followers in guerrilla
warfare and successfully ended slavery in Hispaniola by
1795.
Once Napoleon took power in 1799, Toussaint feared that
slavery would be reinstated. Under the pretense of
discussing peace, Toussaint was arrested and sent to the
mountains of France. Under intense interrogation, he died
of pneumonia and starvation on April 7, 1803.

30. Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin was a Russian lawyer, revolutionary,
and the leader of the Bolshevik party. After Tsar
Nicholas II gave up his throne during the February
Revolution, Lenin went back to Russia where he was
still a very important Bolshevik leader. He wrote that he
wanted a revolution by ordinary workers to overthrow
the government that had replaced Nicholas II. In
October 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and
Trotsky, in a revolution against Kerensky's government,
which was known as the October Revolution. They
won, and announced that Russia was a socialist
country. In November, Lenin was chosen as its leader.
Because Lenin wanted an end to World War I in
Russia, he signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with
Germany in February 1918. While the treaty ended the
attack by Germany, Russia lost a lot of land that it used
for farming.

31. Akbar the Great
The grandson of Babur, Akbar, was an effective
ruler of the Mughal Empire. He sought to
strengthen his kingdom by bringing peace and
stability to his lands. The people he ruled
practiced a wide variety of religious beliefs,
including Hinduism and Islam. Differences of
religious practices and culture threatened to
bring disorder and chaos. Akbar the Great
encouraged everyone to get along, and to be
tolerant of one another. Akbar considered all
faiths to be equal, and felt that they all taught of
the same divine truth. He invited missionaries
and teachers from many faiths to visit his court
and teach their beliefs. Akbar eventually
attempted to found a new religion, which he
called Din-I Ilahi or “Divine Faith”, which
incorporated aspects of many of the major
religions of the day.

32. Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Garibaldi was an Italian soldier. He fought for
the Italian Unification Movement. He is most
well-known for his contribution to the Italian
Risorgimento, which unified the fractured nation
under one rule. His conquest of Sicily and
Naples, which had previously been held by
France, hastened the unification process and
made him a national hero. While leading a
group called the Red Shirts through a series of
fighting he was nicknamed “the sword.” Rather
than claiming these areas of Italy for himself, he
handed over these conquered territories to
Victor Emmanuel, who later became King, in
order to complete the unification.