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1881 CE

This year falls in the Age of revolutions and empire (1789–1914). Revolutions in France, Haiti and Latin America overturn old regimes, and industry, beginning in Britain, changes work, cities and war. European powers and the United States expand their reach, and by 1914 much of Africa and Asia is under colonial rule.

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Dated to 1881 CE

Ruler · Twentieth century · TurkeyMustafa Kemal Ataturk1881–1938Founder of the Republic of Turkey, 1881 to 1938, who built a modern secular state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. His victory in the Turkish War of Independence ended the Allied partition of Anatolia. As president from 1923 he abolished the caliphate, replaced Arabic script with Latin, and remade Turkish law and education.

Within fifteen years

Ruler · Twentieth century · United StatesFranklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Thirty second president of the United States, 1933 to 1945, born in 1882, the only president elected four times. His New Deal programs fought the Great Depression, and he led America through nearly all of World War II. He died in office in April 1945, weeks before Germany's surrender.
Ruler · Twentieth century · ItalyBenito Mussolini1883–1945Fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943, born in 1883, the first of the twentieth century's fascist rulers. His March on Rome in 1922 made him prime minister, and he built a one party state glorifying war and the Roman past. Deposed in 1943, he was executed by partisans in 1945.
Ruler · Twentieth century · RussiaJoseph Stalin1878–1953General secretary of the Soviet Communist Party from 1922 and dominant ruler of the USSR until 1953. Forced collectivization, famine, and the mass operations of 1937–1938 were carried out under his authority.
Country · RomaniaRomania1878–Romania is a Balkan country on the Black Sea, heir to the Roman province of Dacia. Two principalities united in 1859, and full independence from the Ottoman Empire came in 1878. It is a semi presidential republic.
Ruler · Twentieth century · ChinaChiang Kai-shek1887–1975Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party after Sun Yat-sen, and the Nationalist side of the war with Japan and the civil war. His government retreated to Taiwan in December 1949.
Ruler · Twentieth century · United KingdomWinston Churchill1874–1965British prime minister for most of World War II, 1874 to 1965, who led Britain through its darkest years. His speeches in 1940 rallied the country after the fall of France. Voted out in 1945, he returned as prime minister from 1951 to 1955 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.
Ruler · Twentieth century · GermanyAdolf Hitler1889–1945Dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, born in 1889, founder of the Nazi regime and starter of World War II in Europe. His government murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust and millions of others. He killed himself in his Berlin bunker on 30 April 1945 as Soviet troops closed in.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · AustriaLudwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Austrian born thinker, heir to a steel fortune he gave away, who wrote two philosophies: the Tractatus of 1921, then the Investigations, published after his death, which undid it. He lived 1889 to 1951, teaching at Cambridge between wars.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · GermanyMartin Heidegger1889–1976German thinker whose Being and Time of 1927 remade philosophy around the question of being. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and served as rector of Freiburg, a fact that shadows his towering influence. He lived 1889 to 1976.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · EnglandBertrand Russell1872–1970English logician, philosopher, and public campaigner who co wrote Principia Mathematica and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. He moved from logic to pacifism to nuclear disarmament across a 98 year life, 1872 to 1970.
Philosopher · Twentieth century · ItalyAntonio Gramsci1891–1937Sardinian Marxist, cofounder of the Italian Communist Party, imprisoned by the Fascist regime. The Prison Notebooks develop cultural hegemony and the war of position.
Ruler · Twentieth century · RussiaVladimir Lenin1870–1924Leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, 1870 to 1924, born Vladimir Ulyanov, who created the first communist state. He seized power in Russia in October 1917, pulled Russia out of World War I, and won the civil war that followed. His New Economic Policy of 1921 retreated from full communism to save the economy.
Ruler · Twentieth century · ChinaMao Zedong1893–1976Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1943 and the central figure of the People's Republic of China, proclaimed in 1949. He held party leadership until his death in 1976. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were carried out under his authority.
Country · CanadaCanada1867–Canada is the second largest country in the world, stretching across northern North America. The British North America Act of 1867 created the Dominion of Canada. It is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy.
Ruler · Twentieth century · ChinaSun Yat-sen1866–1925Founder of the Republic of China, 1866 to 1925, called the father of modern China in both Taiwan and the mainland. His Revolutionary Alliance overthrew the Qing dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, and he served briefly as provisional president in 1912. He founded the Kuomintang and allied it with the Soviet Union before his death.