Today I sent the manuscript for ON THIS DAY IN POLITICS to my publisher Allen & Unwin. So it's time to start planning for the next book. As you may know, I've published THE PRIME MINISTERS and THE PRESIDENTS in the last two years. KINGS & QUEENS will be published in September 2023. All the essays have been commissioned.
The fourth book in the series will be THE DICTATORS - TWO MILLENNIA OF TYRANTS, TOTALITARIANS & DESPOTS. It will be the same format, but it is slightly complicated by the fact that there have been far more dictators in world history than it's possible to cover in a single volume book. What I am trying to do it to compile a list of 100 or so dictators and then whittle it down to 50 to commission people to write about in the book.
Of course, one issue is how to define what a dictator actually is, which will give me plenty of food for thought in the foreword to the book. Often dictators have gone through the normal democractic process, and it's only once they obtain power that their dictatorial tendencies come to the fore. Others obtain power by force. One key theme of the book will also be how dictators lose power.
This is as far as I have got in compiling an initial list, and the point of this article is to encourage you to add to the 91 I've already come up with, and suggest other dictators I should think about including. I'm especially keen to include dictators from ancient times, the middle ages, going through the centuries to the present day. So please either leave your comments here or email me info@iaindale.com.
| Alexander the Great |
336-323 |
Greece |
| Fabius Cunctator |
221-203 |
Italy |
| Sulla |
82-79 |
Italy |
| Julius Caesar |
49-44 |
Italy |
| Augustus |
27-14 |
Italy |
| Nero |
54-68 |
Italy |
| Qin Shi Huang |
247-210 |
China |
| Attila the Hun |
434-453 |
|
| Genghis Khan |
1206-1227 |
|
| Ivan the Terrible |
1547-1575 |
Russia |
| Oliver Cromwell |
1649-1658 |
England |
| Catherine the Great |
1762-1796 |
Russia |
| Napoleon Bonaparte |
1804-1815 |
France |
| Porfirio Diaz |
1884-1911 |
Mexico |
| Vladimir Lenin |
1917-1921 |
Russia |
| Miklos Horthy |
1920-1944 |
Hungary |
| Benito Mussolini |
1922-1943 |
Italy |
| Josef Stalin |
1922-1952 |
Russia |
| Kemal Ataturk |
1923-1938 |
Turkey |
| Antonio de Oliveira Salazar |
1932-1968 |
Portugal |
| Engelbert Dolfuss |
1932-1934 |
Austria |
| Adolf Hitler |
1933-1945 |
Germany |
| Rafael Trujillo |
1934-1961 |
Dominican Republic |
| Fransisco Franco |
1936-1975 |
Spain |
| The Somozas |
1936-1979 |
Nicaragua |
| Enver Hoxha |
1941-1985 |
Albania |
| Shah Reza Pahlavi |
1941-79 |
Iraq |
| Chaing Kai Shek |
1943-1975 |
Taiwan |
| Mao Tse Tung |
1943-1976 |
China |
| Juan Peron |
1946-1955 |
Argentina |
| Ho Chi Minh |
1946-1969 |
Vietnam |
| Boleslaw Bierut |
1947-1956 |
Poland |
| Walter Ulbricht |
1950-1971 |
East Germany |
| Nikita Khruschev |
1953-1964 |
Russia |
| Josip Broz Tito |
1953-1980 |
Yugoslavia |
| Alfredo Stroessner |
1954-1989 |
Paraquay |
| Todor Zhivkov |
1954-1989 |
Bulgaria |
| Gamal Abdel Nasser |
1956-1970 |
Egypt |
| Janos Kadar |
1956-1988 |
Hungary |
| Papa Doc Duvalier |
1957-1971 |
Haiti |
| Ahmed Sekou Toure |
1958-1984 |
Guinea |
| Ne Win |
1958-1981 |
Burma |
| Lee Kwam Yew |
1959-1990 |
Singapore |
| Kwame Nkrumah |
1960-1966 |
Ghana |
| Leonid Brezhnev |
1964-1982 |
Russia |
| Ferdinand Marcos |
1965-1986 |
Philippines |
| Nicolae Ceausescu |
1965-1989 |
Romania |
| Fidel Castro |
1965-2011 |
Cuba |
| Mobutu Sese Seko |
1965-1997 |
Congo |
| Jean-Bedel Bokassa |
1966-1979 |
Central African Republic |
| Kim Il Sung |
1966-1994 |
North Korea |
| Hastings Banda |
1966-1994 |
Malawai |
| Suharto |
1968-1998 |
Indonesia |
| Anwar Sadat |
1970-1981 |
Egypt |
| Idi Amin |
1971-1979 |
Uganda |
| Baby Doc Duvalier |
1971-1986 |
Haiti |
| Erich Honecker |
1971-1989 |
East Germany |
| Hafez al-Assad |
1971-2000 |
Syria |
| Augusto Pinochet |
1974-1990 |
Chile |
| Pol Pot |
1976-1979 |
Cambodia |
| Mengistu Haile Mariam |
1977-1991 |
Ethiopia |
| Muhammad Zia Ul Haq |
1977-1988 |
Pakistan |
| Muammar Gaddafi |
1977-2011 |
Libya |
| Deng Xiaoping |
1978-89 |
China |
| Ayatollah Khomeini |
1979-1989 |
Iran |
| Saddam Hussein |
1979-2003 |
Iraq |
| Daniel Ortega |
1979-2023 |
Nicaragua |
| Samuel Doe |
1980-1990 |
Liberia |
| Robert Mugabe |
1980-2017 |
Zimbabwe |
| Leopoldo Galtieri |
1981-1982 |
Argentina |
| Wojciech Jaruzelski |
1981-1989 |
Poland |
| Hosni Mubarak |
1981-2011 |
Egypt |
| Manuel Noriega |
1983-1989 |
Panama |
| Slobodan Milosevic |
1989-2000 |
Serbia |
| Nursultan Nazarbayev |
1990-2019 |
Kazakhstan |
| Saparmurat Niyazov |
1991-2005 |
Turkmenistan |
| Omar Al-Bashir |
1993-2019 |
Sudan |
| Aleksandr Lukashenko |
1994-2023 |
Belarus |
| Charles Taylor |
1997-2003 |
Liberia |
| Kim Jong Il |
1997-2011 |
North Korea |
| Hugo Chavez |
1999-2013 |
Venzuela |
| Vladimir Putin |
1999-2023 |
Russia |
| Basher al-Assad |
2000-2023 |
Syria |
| Paul Kagame |
2000-2023 |
Rwanda |
| Ilham Aliyev |
2003-2013 |
Azerbaijan |
| Recep Erdogan |
2003-2023 |
Turkey |
| Mahmoud Ahmadinejad |
2005-2013 |
Iran |
| Kim Jong Un |
2012-2023 |
North Korea |
| Xi Jinping |
2012-2023 |
China |
| Nicolas Maduro |
2013-2023 |
Venezuela |
| Mohammed bin Salman |
2017-2023 |
Saudi Arabia |
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