The Most Influencial People in the World: QUEEN ISABELLA I (1451-1504)

Today, most people only remember Isabella I of Castile as the queen who financed Christopher Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic. In reality, she was an energetic and capable ruler, who made a whole series of crucial decisions which profoundly influenced Spain and Latin America for centuries and which indirectly affect many millions of persons today.

Since most of her policies were decided upon after consultation with her shrewd and equally capable husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, and since they were carried out with his close cooperation, it seems reasonable to consider them as a joint entry in this book. However, Isabella’s name has been chosen to head this article because it was her suggestions which were adopted in their most important decisions.

Isabella was born in 1451, in the town of Madrigal, in the kingdom of Castile (now part of Spain). As a young girl, she received a strict religious training and became a very devout Catholic. Her half-brother, Henry IV, was king of Castile from 1454 until he died, in 1474. At that time, there was no kingdom of Spain. Instead, the present territory of Spain was divided among four kingdoms: Castile, which was the largest; Aragon, in the northeast portion of present-day Spain; Granada, in the south; and Navarre, in the north.

In the late 1460s, Isabella, who was the probable heir to the throne of Castile, was the richest heiress in Europe, and various princes sought her hand. Her half-brother, Henry IV, wished her to marry the king of Portugal. However, in 1469, when she was eighteen years old, Isabella slipped off, and despite the opposition of King Henry, married Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Aragon. Angered at Isabella’s disobedience, Henry named his daughter Juana to succeed him. Nevertheless, when Henry died, in 1474, Isabella claimed the throne of Castile. The supporters of Juana did not accept this, and a civil war followed. By February 1479, Isabella’s forces were triumphant. King John II of Aragon died that same year, and Ferdinand became the king of Aragon. Thereafter, Ferdinand and Isabella ruled most of Spain together.

In theory, the two kingdoms of Aragon and Castile were still separate, and most of their governmental institutions remained separate. In practice, however, Ferdinand and Isabella made all their decisions together, and to the best of their ability acted as the joint rulers of Spain. Throughout the twenty-five years of their combined rule, their basic policy was to create a unified Spanish kingdom governed by a strong monarchy. One of their first projects was the conquest of Granada, the only portion of the Iberian Peninsula which was still under Moslem rule. The war commenced in 1481; it ended in January 1492, with the complete victory of Ferdinand and Isabella. With the conquest of Granada, Spain assumed almost exactly the same territorial boundaries that it has today. (The small kingdom of Navarre was annexed by Ferdinand in 1512, after Isabella had died.)

Very early in their reign, Ferdinand and Isabella instituted the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was an ecclesiastical tribunal which combined the powers of judge, jury, prosecuting attorney, and police investigators. It was notorious both for the ferocity of its punishments and for the gross unfairness of its procedures. Suspects had little or no opportunity to refute the charges against them. They were not informed of the full testimony against them, or even of the names of their accusers. Suspects who denied the charges brought against them were often subjected the gruesome tortures until they confessed. At a conservative estimate, at least two thousand persons were burnt at the stake during the first twenty years of the Spanish Inquisition, and many times that number received lesser punishments.

The Spanish Inquisition was headed by the ultra-fanatical monk, Tomás de Torquemada, who was the personal confessor of Isabella. Although the Inquisition had been authorized by the Pope, it actually was under the control of the Spanish monarchs. The Inquisition was under partly to establish religious conformity, and partly to stamp out political opposition to the monarchs. In England, the feudal lords always retained enough strength to check the power of the king. The Spanish feudal lords also had once been powerful; however, the Spanish monarchs were able to use the Inquisition as a weapon against defiant feudal lords, and were thereby able to establish a centralized and absolute monarchy. They also used it to gain greater control over the Spanish clergy.

However, the principal targets of the Inquisition were those persons suspected of religious deviation, and in particular, Jews and Moslems who had become nominally converted to Catholicism, but who continued to practice their former religions in secret.

At its inception, the inquisition was not directed against progressing Jews. However, in 1492, at the insistence of the fanatical Torquemada, Ferdinand and Isabella signed a decree ordering all Spanish Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave the country within four months, leaving their property behind. For the roughly 200,000 Spanish Jews, this order of expulsion was a disaster, and many died before reaching a safe haven. For Spain, the loss of a high proportion of the country’s most industrious and skilled tradesmen and artisans proved a severe economic setback.

When Granada had surrendered, the peace treaty provided that the Moslems living in Spain were to be permitted to continue practicing their religion. In fact, however, the Spanish government soon violated this agreement. The Moors therefore rebelled, but were defeated. In 1502, all Moslems living in Spain were forced to choose either conversion to Christianity or exile—the same choice that had been presented to the Jews ten years earlier.

Although Isabella was a devout Catholic, she never permitted her orthodoxy to interfere with her Spanish nationalism. She and Ferdinand struggled hard and successfully to insure that the Catholic Church in Spain was controlled by the Spanish monarchy, rather than by the Pope. This was one of the reasons why the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century never made any headway in Spain.

The most notable event of Isabella’s reign, of course, was the discovery of the new world by Christopher Columbus, which also occurred in the fateful year 1492. Columbus’s expedition was sponsored by the kingdom of Castile. (However, the Story that Isabella had to pawn her jewels to pay for the expedition is not true.)

Isabella died in 1504. During her lifetime, she had given birth to one son and four daughters. The son, Juan, died in 1497. The best known of her daughters was Juana. Ferdinand and Isabella arranged for Juana to marry Philip I (the Handsome), who was the son of the Austrian Hapsburg emperor and was also the heir to the kingdom of Burgundy. As a result of this extraordinary dynastic marriage, Isabella’s grandson, the Emperor Charles V, inherited one of the largest empires in European history. He was also elected Holy Roman Emperor, and was the wealthiest and most powerful European monarch of his time. The territories which he either nominally or actually ruled included Spain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, most of Italy, and parts of France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, in addition to a large portion of the Western Hemisphere. Both Charles V and his son Philip II were ardent Catholics who, during their long reigns, used the wealth of the New World to finance wars against the Protestant states of northern Europe. Thus, the dynastic marriage arranged by Ferdinand and Isabella influenced the history of Europe for almost a century after their deaths.

Let me try to summarize the accomplishments and influence of Ferdinand and Isabella. By their joint efforts, they largely succeeded in creating a United Kingdom of Spain with essentially the same boundaries that Spain has retained for the last five centuries; they created a centralized, absolute monarchy in Spain; the expulsion of the moors and the Jews had important consequences both for the exiles and for Spain herself; and their religious bigotry and establishment of the Inquisition had profound effects on the entire future history of Spain.

This last point merits some discussion. In the simplest terms, one might say that the inquisition placed Spain in an intellectual strait jacket. In the centuries following 1492, most of Western Europe underwent an enormous intellectual and scientific flowering. Not so Spain. In a society where the expression of any deviant thought placed one in danger of arrest by the inquisition, it is not surprising that originality was lacking. Other European countries allowed some diversity of opinion. In Spain, the Inquisition permitted only a rigidly orthodox Catholicism. By 1700, Spain was an intellectual backwater compared with the rest of Western Europe. Indeed, although it is five centuries since Ferdinand and Isabella established the Spanish Inquisition, and over 150 years since the Inquisition was finally abolished, Spain has still not fully recovered from its effects.

Furthermore, Isabella’s sponsorship of Columbus’s expedition insured that most of South and Central America became Spanish colonies. This meant that Spanish culture and institutions—including the inquisition—were established throughout a large portion of the Western Hemisphere. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that just as Spain was intellectually backward compared with most of Western Europe, so the Spanish colonies in South America became intellectually less advanced than the English colonies in North America.

In considering where Isabella should be ranked on this list, one factor to be considered is whether much the same events would have occurred without her. It is true that the crusading spirit was already very strong in Spain, because of the 700-year-long struggle to reconquering the Iberian Peninsula from the Moslems. However, when that struggle ended successfully in 1492, Spain had a choice of directions in which to go. It was Ferdinand and Isabella—particularly Isabella—who set the course of Spain in the direction of uncompromising religious orthodoxy. Without her influence, it seems quite possible that Spain would have remained a reasonably pluralistic society.

It is perhaps natural to compare Isabella with the more famous Queen Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth of her comparatively humane and tolerant policies, she seems a far more admirable ruler. But she was less of an innovator than Isabella, and none of her actions had as profound an influence as did Isabella establishment of the Inquisition. Although some of Isabella’s policies were quite abhorrent, few monarchs in history have had as far-reaching an influence as she had.

The Most Influencial People in the World: JOSEPH STALIN (1879-1953)

Stalin, whose original name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, was for many years the dictator of the Soviet Union. He was born ìn 1879, in the town of Gori, in Georgia, in the Caucasus. His native language was Georgian—a very different language from Russian, which he learned later, and which he always spoke with a marked Georgian accent.

Stalin was reared in poverty. His father, a cobbler who drank excessively and beat his son brutally, died when Iosif was eleven years old. As a youth, Iosif attended a church school in Gori, and as a teenager, he attended a theological seminary in Tiflis; however, in 1899, he was expelled from the seminary for spreading subversive ideas. He joined the underground Marxist movement, and in 1903, when there was a party split, he sided with the Bolshevik wing. In the years leading up to 1917, he was an active party member, and was arrested at least six times.

(However, since his sentences were generally light, and since he managed to escape on more than one occasion, it seems possible that he was actually a double agent for part of that time.) It was during this period that he adopted the not inappropriate pseudonym “Stalin”(man of steel).

Stalin did not play a really major role in the Communist revolution of 1917. However, he was very active during the next two years, and in 1922, became Secretary General of the Communist Party. This post gave him a great deal of influence in the administration of the party and was a major factor in his success in the struggle for power that occurred after Lenin died.

It is clear that Lenin wished Leon Trotcky to be his successor. In fact, in his political testament, Lenin stated that Stalin was too ruthless and ought to be removed from his post as Secretary General. However after Lenin’s death in early 1924, Stalin succeeded in having Lenin’s testament suppressed. Furthermore, Stalin was able to join forces with Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev, two important members of the Potburo, to form a “troika,” or triumvirate. Together they succeeded in defeating Trotsky and his followers. Then Stalin, a genius at political infighting, turned on Zinoviev and Kamenev and defeated them. Having defeated the “left-wing opposition” (i.e.,Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and their followers) in the power struggle, Stalin proceeded to adopt several of their main political proposals. Not long after that, Stalin turned on the leaders of the right wing of the Communist party—his erstwhile allies—and defeated them too. By the early 1930s, he was the sole dictator of the Soviet Union.

From this position of power, starting in 1934, Stalin unleashed a drastic series of political purges. The event that nominally set off those purge was the assassination, on December 1, 1934, of Sergei Kirov, a high Communist official and one of the Stalin’s advisors. However, it seems quite likely that Stalin himself ordered Kirov’s assassination, party in order to get rid of Kirov, but mostly in order to furnish a pretext for the purges that followed.

In the course of the next few years, a high proportion of the men who had been Communist party leaders during the 1917 Revolution, and under Lenin’s administration, were charged with treason by Stalin and executed. Many of them openly confessed in large public trails. It was as if Thomas Jefferson, while President, had arrested most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, charged them all with treason, and executed them after their “confessions” in public trails. In 1938, the man who had headed the earlier purges, Genrikh Yagoda, was himself brought to trial, confessed to treason, and was duly executed. For that matter, his successor, Nicolai Yezhov, was also eventually purged and executed.

The purges of the mid-1930s extended throughout the Communist party and the Soviet armed forces. They were not directed primarily against anti-Communists or counter-revolutionaries. (Most of those had been crushed during Lenin’s administration.) Rather, they were directed against the Communist party itself. Stalin was far more successful in killing Communists than the Czarist police had even been. For example, of the members of the Central Committee elected at the Party Congress of 1934, more than two thirds were killed during the subsequent purges. From this, it is clear that Stalin’s primary motive was to preclude the establishment of any independent power within the country.

Stalin’s ruthless use of the secret police, and his program of arbitrary arrests and executions, and long terms in prison or labor camps for anyone even slightly critical of his rule, succeeded in cowing the population into submission. By the end of the 1930s he had created perhaps the most totalitarian dictatorship of modern times, a government structure which intruded into every aspect of life and under which intruded into every aspect of life and under which there were no civil liberties.

Among the economic policies instituted by Stalin was the forced collectivization of agriculture. This policy was highly unpopular with the peasants, and many of them resisted it. In the early 1930s, however, by Stalin’s orders, millions of peasants were either killed or starved to death, and in the end his policy prevailed.

Another policy that Stalin pushed was the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union. This was accomplished in part by a series of “Five-Year Plans,” since imitated by many countries outside the Soviet Union. Despite various inefficiencies, Stalin’s program of industrialization was, in the short run, a success. In spite of its enormous material losses during World War II, the Soviet Union emerged from that war as the world’s second largest and industrial power. (In the long run, though, the agricultural and industrial policies which he instituted have severely damaged the Soviet economy.)

In August 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed their famous “nonaggression” pact. Within two weeks, Hitler invaded Poland from the west, and a few weeks later the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east and took over the eastern half of the country. Later that year, the Soviet Union threatened the three independent nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia with armed invasion. All three surrendered without a fight and were eventually annexed to the USSR. Similarly, part of Romania was annexed by the threat of force. Finland refused to submit to threats; however, a Russian invasion resulted in the conquest of Finnish territory. An excuse often given for these annexations is that the territory was needed by the Soviet Union for defense against the expected attack from Nazi Germany. However, when the war was over, and Germany thoroughly defeated, Stalin did not relinquish control over any of the occupied territories.

At the end of World War II, Soviet armies occupied much of Eastern Europe, and Stalin utilized the opportunity to set up Communist governments, subservient to the Soviet Union, throughout that region. A Marxist government also emerged in Yugoslavia; however, as there were no Russian troops in that country, Yugoslavia did not become a Russian satellite. To prevent the other Communist countries in Eastern Europe from following the pean satellite states. It was during the immediate postwar era that the Cold War commenced. Although some people have attempted to blame this on Western leaders, it seems abundantly clear that the principal cause of the Cold War was the expansionist policies of Stalin, and his implacable desire to spread the Communist system—and Soviet power—throughout the world.

In January 1953, the Soviet government announced that a group of doctors had been arrested for plotting the deaths of high-ranking Soviet officials. This sounded very much as if Stalin was planning still another set of sweeping purges. However, on March 5, 1953, the seventy-three-year-old dictator died in the Kremlin in Moscow. His body was preserved and put on display in a position of honor, next to the body of Lenin in the mausoleum in Red Square. In later years, however, Stalin’s reputation was downgraded very sharply; and today he is generally abhorred as a tyrant throughout the lands he once ruled.

Stalin’s family life was not very successful. He married in 1904, but three years later his wife died of tuberculosis. Their only child, Jacob, was captured by the Germans in World War II. The Germans offered to exchange him, but Stalin turned the offer down, and Jacob died in a German prison camp. In 1919, Stalin married a second time. His second wife died in 1932, reportedly by her own hand, although there have been rumors that Stalin himself killed her or had her killed. There were two children by the second marriage. The son, an officer in the Soviet Air Force, became an alcoholic. He died in 1962. Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, defeated from the Soviet Union and in 1967 came to the United States.

The outstanding characteristic of Stalin’s personality was his total ruthlessness. No consideration of sentiment or pity seems to have influenced him in the slightest. He was also an intensely suspicious person, verging on paranoia. He was, however, an immensely capable man: energetic, persistent, and shrewd, with an unusually powerful mind.

As the dictator of the Soviet Union for approximately a quarter of a century, Stalin had a great deal of influence on a great many lives. In fact, if the overall influence of a dictator upon his own generation is deemed to be proportional to the number of people he controls, to the degree of his individual control, and to the time he remains in power, then Stalin was perhaps the foremost dictator in history. During his lifetime, Stalin sent millions of persons to their deaths, or to forced labor camps, or had them starved to death. (There is no way of knowing just how many people died as a result of his various purges, but it was probably in the neighborhood of 30 million.)

There is therefore no doubt that Stalin’s short-term influence was immense. However, like his contemporary, Adolf Hitler (with whom he is often compared), it is unclear how great his permanent influence will be.

During his lifetime, Stalin expanded the borders of the Soviet Union, set up a satellite empire in Eastern Europe, and transformed the USSR into a great power, with influence in every portion of the globe. But in the past few years the imposing Soviet empire in Eastern Europe has crumbled away, and the Soviet Union itself has fractured into fifteen independent states.

During Stalin’s lifetime, the USSR was a vast police state. However, the fearful grip of the secret police was gradually curbed after Stalin’s death. Today, Russians enjoy more individual liberty than at any time in their country’s history.

 Stalin’s economic program was derived from the ideas of Marx and Lenin. But while Marx had suggested those policies, and Lenin had started to put them into effect, it was really Stalin who succeeded in largely eliminating private farming and private business enterprises with in Soviet Union. However, those policies have proven to be disastrous, and are now being abandoned entirely.

Despite this, I cannot help but feel that the foregoing greatly underestimates Stalin’s overall influence. Joseph Stalin was not just another power-mad dictator who ruled a large country for twenty-five years. By instituting the Cold War, he dominated the history of the entire world for many years after he died. No war in history—not even World War II—had such a global effect as did the Cold War. It was not just the USSR and the USA which were affected: every country on earth was caught up in the diplomatic and economic aspects of the struggle, and in many parts of the world there were shooting wars as well. The arms race between the two superpowers—which, although the largest and costliest arms race in history, was only one aspect of the struggle—cost many trillions of dollars. Worst of all, perhaps, for many years the entire world lived under the threat of a nuclear holocaust which might entirely destroy civilization.

The Cold War was widely detested, and most people devoutly wished for its end. But for decades the dead, denounced Stalin had more power—more actual effect on the world—than any living political figure. Of him, more perhaps than of any other man in history, it could truly be said that, “the evil that men do lives after them.”

The Cold War is over now, and Stalin’s pernicious influence may finally be ending. We should also remember that some of the blame for Stalin’s crimes must be accorded to Lenin, who preceded Stalin and set the stage for him. Nevertheless, Stalin was one of the titans of history: a cruel genius who will not soon be forgotten.

The Most Influencial People in the World: JULIUS CAESAR (100 B.C. – 44 B.C.)

Gaius Julius Caesar, the famous Roman military and political leader, was born in Rome in 100 B.C., during a period of extraordinary political turmoil.

In the second century B.C., following their victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War, the Romans had created a large empire. This conquest had made many Romans very rich. However, the wars had badly disrupted the social and economic fabric of Rome, and many of the peasantry had been dispossessed. The Roman Senate, in origin a sort of board of aldermen for a small city, proved unable to fairly and efficiently govern a large empire. Political corruption was rampant, and the entire Mediterranean world was suffering from misgovernment by Rome. In Rome itself, starting in about 133 B.C., there had been a protracted period of disorder. Politicians, generals, and demagogues struggled for power, and partisan armies (such as that of Marius in 87 B.C. and that of Sulla in 82 B.C.) marched through Rome itself. Though the fact of misgovernment was obvious to all, most Roman citizens wanted to retain republican government. Julius Caesar was probably the first important political leader to clearly see that democratic government in Rome was no longer worth saving, and indeed was already past saving.

Caesar himself was descended from an old patrician family. He had received a good education, and as a young man, entered political life. The details of the various offices which he held, his sundry alliances, and his political rise are very appointed the governor of three foreign provinces ruled by Rome: Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy); Illyricum (the coastal regions of present-day Yugoslavia); and Narbonese Gaul (the southern coast of France). Under his command at that time were four Roman legions, totaling about twenty thousand men.

During the years 58-51 B.C., Caesar used those forces to invade and conquer all the rest of Gaul—a region comprising, roughly, present-day France and Belgium, together with parts of Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. Although his forces were badly outnumbered, he succeeded in completely defeating the Gallic tribes and in adding all the territory up to the Rhine River to the Roman dominions. He also sent two expeditions to Britain, but achieved no permanent conquests there.

The conquest of Gaul made Caesar, who was already a leading political figure, a popular and powerful. When his military command ran out, he was ordered by the Roman senate to return to Rome as a private citizen—that is, without his army. Caesar feared, probably correctly, that if he returned to Rome without his troops, his political opponents would use the opportunity to destroy him. Therefore, on the night of January 10-11, 49 B.C., in defiance of the Roman Senate, Caesar led his troops across the Rubicon River in northern Italy and marched on Rome. This plainly illegal act started a civil war between Caesar’s legions on the one hand and forces loyal to the Senate on the other hand. The was lasted four years and ended in a complete victory for Caesar, the final battle being fought at Munda, in Spain, on March 7, 45 B.C.

Caesar had already concluded that the efficient, enlightened despotism which Rome required could best be supplied by himself. He returned to Rome in October of 45 B.C., and was soon made dictator for life. In February of 44 B.C., he was offered a crown but turned it down. However, since he was already a military dictator, this did not greatly reassure his republican opponents. On March 15, 44 B.C., (the famous ides of March) Caesar was assassinated at a Senate meeting by a group of conspirators.

During the last years of his life, Caesar had embarked on a vigorous program of reform. He had instituted a plan to resettle army veterans and the urban poor of Rome in new communities throughout the empire. He had extended Roman citizenship to several additional groups of persons. He planned to institute a uniform system of municipal government for Italian cities. He also planned a vast building program, and a codification of Roman law. He instituted various other reforms as well. But he did not succeed in setting up a satisfactory constitutional system, of government for Rome, and this was perhaps the principal cause of his downfall.

Since it was only a year between Caesar’s victory at Munda and his assassination in Rome, many of his plans were never implemented, and it is hard to be sure just how enlightened or efficient his administration would have been had he lived. Of all his reforms, the one which had the most lasting effect was the adoption of a new calendar. The calendar he introduced has, with only minor modifications, remained in use ever since.

Julius Caesar was one of the most charismatic political figures in history, and possessed a wide variety of talents. He was a successful political, a brilliant general, and an excellent orator and writer. The book he wrote (De Bello Gallico) describing the conquest of Gaul has long been considered a literary classic: in the opinion of many students, the most readable and interesting of all the Latin classics. Caesar was bold, vigorous, and handsome. He was a notorious Don Juan, and even by the permissive standards of his day was considered promiscuous. (His most famous affair, of course, was his celebrated romance with Cleopatra.)

Caesar’s character has often been criticized. He was ambitious for power, and he certainly used his political offices to become rich. However, unlike most ambitious politicians, he was in general neither devious nor deceitful. Caesar was ruthless and brutal when fighting the Gauls. On the other hand, he was remarkably magnanimous to his defeated Roman opponents.

It is an indication of the prestige attached to his name that both the German imperial title, Kaiser, and the Russian imperial title, Czar, are derived from the word “Caesar.” He has always been far more famous than his grandnephew Augustus Caesar’s actual influence upon history is not equal to his enormous fame. It is true that he played a significant role in the downfall of the Roman Republic. But his importance in that respect should not be exaggerated, since republican government in Rome was already tottering.

Caesar’s most important accomplishment was his conquest of Gaul. The territories he conquered there were to remain under Roman rule for approximately five centuries. During that interval, they became thoroughly Romanized. Roman laws, customs, and language were adopted, and later, Roman Christianity as well. Present-day French is derived to a substantial extent from the colloquial Latin of those times.

Caesar’s conquest of Gaul was also an important influence on Rome itself, providing Italy for several centuries with security against attacks from the north. Indeed, the conquest of Gaul was a factor in the security of the whole Roman Empire.

Would the Romans sooner or later have conquered Gaul, even without Caesar? They had no technological or numerical advantage over the Gallic tribes. On the other hand, Rome was rapidly expanding in the period before Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, and for some time afterward. Given the high military effectiveness of the Roman armies of that time, the proximity of Gaul to Rome, and the disunity of the Hallic tribes, it appears that Gaul had little chance of remaining independent. In any event, it is indisputable that Caesar was the general who actually defeated the large Celtic armies and conquered Gaul, and he is in this book chiefly for the accomplishment.

The Most Influencial People in the World: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR (c. 1027 – 1087)

In the year 1066, Duke William of Normandy, with only a few thousand troops behind him, crossed the English Channel in an attempt to become ruler of England. His bold attempt succeeded—the last time that any foreign invasion of England has been successful. The Norman Conquest did far more than obtain the throne of England for William and his successors. It profoundly influenced all subsequent English history—in ways and to an extent that William himself could scarcely have envisioned.

William was born about 1027, in Falaise, a town in Normandy, France. He was the illegitimate, but only son of Robert I, Duke of Normandy. Robert died in 1035, while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Before his departure, he had designated William to be his heir. Thus, at the age of eight, William became Duke of Normandy.

Far from assuring him of a comfortable position of wealth and power, the succession put William in a precarious position. He was only a little boy, and he was the overlord of feudal barons who were grown men. Not surprisingly, the barons’ ambition was stronger than their loyalty, and a period of severe anarchy followed, during which three of William’s guardians died violent deaths, and his personal teacher was murdered. Even with the help of King Henry I of France, his nominal overlord, William was lucky to survive those early years.

In 1042, when William was in his mid-teens, he was knighted. Thereafter, he took a personal role in political events. After a long series of wars against the feudal barons of Normandy, William finally succeeded in gaining firm control of his duchy. (Incidentally, his illegitimate birth was a distinct political handicap, and his opponents frequently referred to him as “the Bastard.”) In 1063, he succeeded in conquering the neighboring province of Maine, and in 1064, he was also recognized as the overlord of the neighboring province of Brittany.

From 1042 to 1066, the King of England was Edward the Confessor. Since Edward was childless, there was much maneuvering for the succession to the English throne. From the standpoint of consanguinity, William’s claim to succeed Edward was rather weak: Edward’s mother was a sister of William’s grandfather. However, in 1051, Edward, perhaps influenced by William’s manifest ability, promised William the succession.

In 1064, Harold Godwin, the most powerful of the English lords, and a close associate and brother-in-law of Edward the Confessor, fell into William’s hands. William treated Harold well, but detained him until Harold swore a solemn oath to support William’s claim to the English throne. Many people would not consider a promise extorted in this fashion to be either legally or morally binding, and certainly Harold did not. When Edward died in 1066, Harold Godwin claimed the throne of England for himself, and the Witan (a council of English lords which often took part in deciding the succession) chose him to be the new king. William, ambitious to extend his realm and angered at Harold’s breach of his oath, decided to invade England in order to impose his claim by force of arms.

William assembled a fleet and an army on the French coast, and in early August of 1066, he was ready to set sail. However, the expedition was delayed for several weeks by unrelenting north winds. Meanwhile, Herald Hardraade, the King of Norway, launched a separate invasion of England from across the south of England, prepared to oppose William’s invasion. Now he had to march his army to the north, to meet the Norwegian attach. On September 25, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the Norwegian king was killed and his forces routed.

Just two days later, the wind changed in the England Channel, and William promptly transported his troops to England. Perhaps Harold should have let William march toward him, or at least he should have fully rested his troops before offering battle. Instead, he quickly marched his troops back south to fight William. The two armies met on October 14, 1066, at the celebrated Battle of Hastings. By the end of the day, William’s cavalry and archers had succeeded in routing the Anglo-Saxon forces. Near nightfall, King Harold himself was killed. His two brothers had been killed earlier in the battle, and there was no English leader remaining with the stature to raise a new army or to contest William’s claim to the throne. William was crowned in London that Christmas day.

Over the next five years, there were a series of scattered revolts, but William suppressed them all. William used these revolts as a pretext to confiscate all of the land in England and to declare it his own personal property. Much of it was then dispensed to his important Norman followers, who held the land under feudal tenure as his vassals. As a result, virtually the entire Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was dispossessed and replaced by Normans. (As dramatic as this sounds, only a few thousand people were directly involved in this transfer of power. For the peasants tilling the soil, there was simply a change of overlords.)

William always contended that he was the rightful King of England, and during his lifetime most English institutions were retained. As William was interested in obtaining information concerning his new holdings, he ordered that a detailed census of the population and property of England be taken. The results were recorded in the enormous Doomsday Book, which has been an invaluable source of historical information. (The original manuscripts still exist; they are now in the Public Record Office in London.)

William was married and had four sons and five daughters. He died in 1087, in the city of Rouen, in northern France. Every monarch of England since then has been his direct descendant. Curiously, although William the Conqueror is perhaps the most important of all the kings of England, he himself was not English, but French. He was born and died in France, lived almost his entire life there, and spoke only French. (He was, incidentally, illiterate.)

In assessing William’s influence upon history, the most important thing to remember is that the Norman conquest of England would not have occurred without him. William was not the natural successor to the English throne, and save for his personal ambition and ability, there was no historical reason or necessity for the Norman invasion. England had not been invaded from France since the Roman conquest a thousand years earlier. It has not been successfully invaded from France (or from anywhere else) in the nine centuries since William’s day.

The question then is: just how great was the effect of the Norman Conquest? The Norman invaders were relatively small in number, but they had a great influence upon English history. In the five or six centuries before the Norman Conquest, England had been invaded repeatedly by Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian peoples, and her culture was basically Teutonic. The Normans were themselves of Viking descent, but their language and culture were French. The Norman Conquest, therefore, had the effect of bringing English culture into close contact with French culture. (Today that may seem a natural thing; however, in the centuries before William the Conqueror, most of England’s culture contacts had been with northern Europe.) What resulted in England was a blend of the French and Anglo-Saxon predecessors, thereby had at their command a force of several thousand armed knights—a powerful army by medieval standards. The Normans were skilled administrators, and the English government became one of the most powerful and effective governments in Europe.

Another interesting result of the Norman Conquest was the development of a new English language. As a result of the Norman Conquest, there was a large infusion of the Norman Conquest, there was a large infusion of new words into English—so large, in fact, that modern English dictionaries include more words of French or Latin origin than of Anglo-Saxon derivation. Furthermore, during the three or four centuries immediately following the Norman Conquest, English grammar changed very rapidly, largely in the direction of greater simplicity. Had it not been for the Norman Conquest, present-day English might be only slightly different from Low German and Dutch. This is the only known instance in which a major language would not exist in anything like its present form, were it not for the career of a single individual. (It is worth nothing that English is today quite plainly the foremost language in the world.)

One might also mention the effect of the Norman Conquest upon France. For roughly four centuries thereafter, there was a long series of wars between the English kings (who, because of their Norman origin, held substantial land in France) and the French kings. These wars are directly traceable to the Norman Conquest; prior to 1066, there had been no wars between England and France.

In many ways, England is substantially different from all the continental European countries. Both by her acquisition of a great empire and by her democratic institutions, England have had a profound to her own size. To what extent are these aspects of British political history a consequence of William’s activities?

Historians are not agreed on just why modern democracy developed originally in England, rather than, say, in Germany. But English culture and institutions were a blend of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman, and this blend resulted from the Norman Conquest. On the other hand, I hardly think it reasonable to give the despotic William too much of the credit for the later growth of English democracy. Certainly, there was precious little democracy in England in the century following the Norman Conquest.

With regard to the formation of the British empire, William’s influence seems more clear. Prior to 1066, England had invariably been on the receiving end of invasions. After 1066, the roles were reversed. Thanks to the strong central government which William established and which his successors maintained, and to the military resources which this government commanded, England was never invaded again. Instead, she was continually engaged in overseas military operations. It was therefore natural that when the power of Europe expanded overseas, England eventually acquired more colonies than any other European state.

One cannot, of course, give William the Conqueror the credit for all later developments in English history; but surely the Norman Conquest was an indirect factor in much of what later occurred. The long-term influence of William is therefore very great.

The Most Influencial People in the World: SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939)

Sigmund Freud, the originator of psychoanalysis, was born in 1856, in the town of Freiberg, which is now in Czechoslovakia but was then part of the Austrian empire. When he was four years old, his family moved to Vienna, where he lived almost his entire life. Freud was an outstanding student in school, and he received his medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1881. During the next ten years, he did research in physiology, joined the staff of a psychiatric clinic, engaged in private practice in neurology, worked in Paris with the eminent French neurologist, Jean Charcot, and also worked with the Viennese physician, Josef Breuer.

Freud’s ideas on psychology developed gradually. It was not until 1895 that his first book, Studies in Hysteria, appeared, with Breuer as co-author. His next book, The Interpretation of Dreams, appeared in 1900, and was one of his most original and most significant works. Although the book sold very slowly at first, it greatly enhanced his reputation. Other important works followed, and by 1908, when he gave a series of lectures in the United States, Freud was already famous. In 1902, he had organized a psychology discussion group in Vienna. One of the earliest members was Alfred Adler, and a few years later, Carl Jung joined. Both men were to become world-famous psychologists in their own right.

Freud was married and had six children. In his later life, he developed cancer of the jaw, and from 1923 on, he underwent more than thirty operations in an attempt to correct the condition. Nevertheless, he continued working, and some important works were produced during these later years. In 1938, the Nazis entered Austria, and the 82-year-old Freud, who was Jewish, was forced to flee to London, where he died the following year.

Freud’s contributions to psychological theory were so extensive that it is difficult to summarize them briefly. He stressed the enormous importance of unconscious mental processes in human behavior. He showed how such processes affect the content of dreams, and cause commonplace mishaps such as slips of the tongue and forgetting names, as well as self-inflicted accidents and even diseases.

Freud developed the technique of psychoanalysis as a method of treating mental illness. He formulated a theory of the structure of the human personality. He also developed or popularized psychological theories concerning anxiety, defense mechanisms, the castration complex, repression, and sublimation, to name just a few. His writings greatly stimulated interest in psychological theory. Many of his ideas were, and are, highly controversial, and have provoked heated discussion ever since he proposed them.

Freud is perhaps best known for proposing the idea that repressed sexual feelings often play a causative role in mental illness or neurosis. (Actually, Freud did not originate this idea, although his writings did much to give it scientific currency.) He also pointed out that sexual feelings and desires begin in early childhood, rather than in adolescence.

Because many of Freud’s ideas are still so controversial, it is very difficult to assess his place in history. He was a pioneer and a trailblazer, with a remarkable talent for coming up with new ideas. However, Freud’s theories (unlike those of Darwin or Pasteur) have never won the general endorsement of the scientific community, and it is hard to tell what fraction of his ideas will ultimately be considered correct.

Despite the continuing controversy over his ideas, there seems little doubt that Freud is a towering figure in the history of human thought. His ideas on psychology have completely revolutionized our conception of the human mind, and many of the ideas and terms which he introduced have become common usage—e.g., the id, the ego, the superego, the Oedipus complex, and the death wish.

It is true that psychoanalysis is an extremely expensive mode of treatment, and that it quite often fails. But it is also true that the technique has a great many successes to its credit. Future psychologists may well conclude that repressed sexual feelings play a lesser role in human behavior than many Freudians have claimed. However, such feeling surely play a greater role than most psychologists before Freud had believed. Similarly, the majority of psychologists are now convinced that unconscious mental processes play a decisive role in human behavior—one that was greatly underestimated before Freud.

Freud was certainly not the first psychologist, and in the long run probably will not be considered the one whose ideas were most nearly correct. Still, he was clearly the most influential and important figure in the development of modern psychological theory, and in view of the enormous importance of his field, he certainly deserves a place on this list.

The Most Influencial People in the World: EDWARD JENNER (1749-1823)

The English physician Edward Jenner was the man who developed and popularized the technique of vaccination as a preventive measure against the dreaded disease of smallpox.

Today, when, thanks to Jenner, smallpox has been wiped off the face of the earth, we tend to forget just how frightful were the casualties it caused in earlier centuries. Smallpox was so contagious that a substantial majority of the people living in Europe caught the disease at some time during their lives. And it was so virulent that at least 10 to 20 percent of those who contracted the disease died from it. Of those who survived, another 10 or 15 percent were permanently disfigured by severe pockmarks. Smallpox was not confined to Europe, of course, but raged throughout North America, India, China, and many other parts of the world. Everywhere, children were the most frequent victims.

For many years, attempts had been made to find a reliable means of preventing smallpox. It had been known for a very long time that a person who survived an attack of smallpox was thereafter immune, and would not catch the disease a second time. In the Orient, this observation had led to the practice of inoculating healthy people with material taken from someone who had a mild case of smallpox. This was done in the hope that the person so inoculated would himself contract only a mild case of the disease and, after recovering, would be immune.

This practice was introduced into England in the early eighteenth century by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and it had become fairly common there a good many years before Jenner. Jenner himself, in fact, had been inoculated with smallpox when he was eight years old. However, this ingenious preventive measure had a grave drawback: a fair number of persons so inoculated developed not a minor attack of the disease but a virulent attack which left them badly pockmarked. In fact, roughly 2 percent of the time inoculation itself resulted in a fatal attack of smallpox! Clearly, a superior method of prevention was badly needed.

Jenner was born in 1749, in the small town of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, England. As a boy of twelve, he was apprenticed to a surgeon. Later, he studied anatomy and worked in a hospital. In 1792, he received a medical degree from St. Andrew’s University. In his mid-forties, he was well established as a physician and surgeon in Gloucestershire.

Jenner was familiar with the belief, which was common among dairymaids and farmers in his region, that people who contracted cowpox—a minor disease of cattle, which can, however, be transmitted to humans—never got smallpox afterward. (Cowpox itself is not dangerous to human beings, although its symptoms somewhat resemble those of an extremely mild attack of smallpox.) Jenner realized that if the farmers’ belief was correct, then inoculating people with cowpox would provide a safe method of immunizing them against smallpox. He investigated the matter carefully, and by 1796, became convinced that the belief was indeed correct. He therefore decided to test it directly.

In May 1796, Jenner inoculated James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, with matter taken from a cowpox pustule on a dairymaid’s hand. As expected, the boy developed cowpox, but soon recovered. Several weeks later, Jenner inoculated Phipps with smallpox. As he had hoped, the child developed no signs of the disease.

After some further investigations, Jenner set forth his results in a short book, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, which he published privately in 1798. It was that book which was primarily responsible for the rapid adoption of the practice of vaccination, and for years devoted much of his time to disseminating knowledge of his technique, and working for its adoption.

The practice of vaccination spread rapidly in England, and was soon made compulsory in the British army and navy. Eventually it was adopted throughout most of the world.

Jenner freely offered his technique to the world and made no attempt to profit from it. However, in 1802, the British Parliament, in gratitude, granted him an award of 10,000 Pounds. A few years later, Parliament granted him an additional 20,000 Pounds. He became world-famous, and many honors and medals were bestowed upon him. Jenner was married and had three children. He lived to be seventy-three, dying in early 1823, in his home town of Berkeley.

As we have seen, Jenner did not originate the idea that an attack of cowpox would confer immunity against smallpox; he heard it from others. It even appears, in fact, that a few persons had deliberately been vaccinated with cowpox before Jenner came along.

But although Jenner was not a strikingly original scientist, there are few men who have done as much to benefit mankind. By his investigations, his experiments, and his writings, he transformed a folk belief, which he medical profession had never taken seriously, into a standard practice which has saved countless millions of lives. Although Jenner’s technique could only be applied to the prevention of a single disease, that disease was a major one. He richly deserves the honors which his own and all subsequent generations have accorded him.

The Most Influencial People in the World: WILHELM CONRAD RONTGEN (1845-1923)

Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, the discoverer of X-rays, was born in 1845, in the town of Lennep, in Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 1869 from the University of Zurich. During the next nineteen years, Rontgen worked at a number of different universities, gradually acquiring a reputation as an excellent scientist. In 1888, he was appointed professor of physics and director of the Physical institute at the University of Wurzburg. It was there, in 1895, that Rontgen made the discovery which made him famous.

On November 8, 1895, Rontgen was doing some experiment with cathode rays. Cathode rays consist of a stream of elections. The stream is produced by applying a high voltage between electrodes placed at each end of a closed glass tube from which almost all of the air has been removed. Cathode rays themselves are not particularly penetrating, and are readily stopped by a few centimeters of air. On this occasion, Rontgen had completely covered his cathode-ray tube with heavy black paper, so that even when the electric current was turned on, no light could be seen coming from the tube. However, when Rontgen turned on the current in the cathode-ray tube, he was surprised to see that a fluorescent screen lying on a bench nearby started glowing, just as though a light had stimulated it. He turned off the tube, and the screen (which was coated with barium platinocyanide, a fluorescent substance) stopped glowing. Since the cathode-ray tube was completely covered, Rontgen soon realized that some invisible form of radiation must be coming from the tube when the electric current was on. Because of its mysterious nature, he called this invisible radiation “X-rays”—“X” being the usual mathematical symbol for an unknown.

Excited by his chance discovery, Rontgen dropped his other research and concentrated on investigating the properties of the X-rays. In a few weeks of intense work, he discovered the following facts: (1) X-rays can cause various other chemicals besides barium platinocyanide to fluoresce. (2) X-rays can pass through many materials which are opaque to ordinary light. In particular, Rontgen noticed that X-rays could pass right through his flesh the cathode-rays tube and shadow of the bones in his hand. (3) X-rays travel in straight lines; unlike electrically charged particles, X-rays are not deflected by magnetic fields.

In December 1895, Rontgen wrote his first paper on X-rays. His report promptly aroused great interest and excitement. Within a few months, hundreds of scientists were investigating X-rays, and within a year roughly a thousand papers had been published on the topic! One of the scientists whose research was directly motivated by Rontgen’s discovery was Antoine Henri Becquerel. Becquerel, although intending to investigate X-rays, instead chanced upon the even more important phenomenon of radioactivity.

In general, X-rays are generated whenever high-energy electrons strike an object. The X-rays themselves do not consist of electrons, but rather of electromagnetic waves. They are therefore basically similar to visible radiation (that is, light waves), except that the wavelengths of X-rays are very much shorter.

The best known application of X-rays, of course, is their use in medical and dental diagnosis. Another application is radiotherapy, in which X-rays are used to destroy malignant tumors or to arrest their growth. X-rays also have many industrial applications. For example, they can be used to measure the thickness of certain materials or to detect hidden flaws. X-rays are also useful in many fields of scientific research, from biology with a great deal of information concerning atomic and molecular structure.

Rontgen deserves full credit for the discovery of X-rays. He worked alone, his discovery was unanticipated, and he followed it up superbly. Furthermore, his discovery provided an important stimulus to Becquerel and to other researchers.

Nevertheless, one should not overestimate Rontgen’s importance. The applications of X-rays are certainly very useful; however, one cannot say that they have transformed our whole technology, as Faraday’s discover of electromagnetic induction did. Nor can one say that the discovery of X-rays was of truly fundamental importance in scientific theory. Ultraviolet rays (whole wavelengths are shorter than those of visible light) had been known for almost a century. The existence of X-rays—which are similar to ultraviolet waves, except that their wavelengths are shorter still—therefore fits quite smoothly into the framework of classical physics. All in all, I think it quite reasonable to rank Rontgen significantly below Rutherford, whose discoveries were of more fundamental importance.

Rontgen had no children of his own; however, he and his wife adopted a daughter. In 1901, Rontgen was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics, the first one ever awarded. He died in 1923, in Munich, Germany.