# Top 18 Leaders in World History

> Conquerors sit next to peacemakers here, and the empire-builders do not automatically win.

*By YPB Team · Published August 19, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/top-18-leaders-in-world-history*

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## Current results (3 votes)

1. **Nelson Mandela** — 66.67% (2 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Spent 27 years in prison, then led South Africa out of apartheid without reprisals.
2. **Napoleon Bonaparte** — 33.33% (1 votes · score 763/1000)
   Rewrote European law and the map, then lost both at Waterloo.
3. **Queen Elizabeth I** — 0% (0 votes · score 680/1000)
   Ruled England for 44 years and made an isolated island into a naval power.
4. **Alexander the Great** — 0% (0 votes · score 624/1000)
   Took an empire from Greece to the Indus before he turned 33.
5. **Queen Victoria** — 0% (0 votes · score 485/1000)
   Gave her name to an era and reigned over a quarter of the world's population.
6. **Abraham Lincoln** — 0% (0 votes · score 485/1000)
   Held the United States together through civil war and ended slavery within it.
7. **Charlemagne** — 0% (0 votes · score 485/1000)
   Crowned emperor in 800, he pulled most of western Europe under one administration.
8. **Mahatma Gandhi** — 0% (0 votes · score 397/1000)
   Turned non-violent resistance into a method and led India to independence with it.
9. **Simón Bolívar** — 0% (0 votes · score 397/1000)
   Led six South American countries out of Spanish rule and tried to federate them.
10. **George Washington** — 0% (0 votes · score 397/1000)
   Won a revolution, then handed power back twice — first the army, then the presidency.
11. **Cyrus the Great** — 0% (0 votes · score 397/1000)
   Founder of the Persian Empire, remembered for governing conquered peoples by their own laws.
12. **Winston Churchill** — 0% (0 votes · score 397/1000)
   Britain's wartime prime minister, whose broadcasts carried the country through 1940.
13. **Genghis Khan** — 0% (0 votes · score 397/1000)
   Built the largest contiguous land empire in history out of scattered steppe clans.
14. **Suleiman the Magnificent** — 0% (0 votes · score 397/1000)
   Ottoman sultan for 46 years, known at home as 'the Lawgiver' for rebuilding the legal code.
15. **Julius Caesar** — 0% (0 votes · score 291/1000)
   The general whose conquests and assassination ended the Roman Republic.
16. **Ashoka the Great** — 0% (0 votes · score 162/1000)
   The Mauryan emperor who renounced conquest after Kalinga and carved his policy into rock.
17. **Catherine the Great** — 0% (0 votes · score 162/1000)
   Expanded Russia's borders and its libraries across 34 years on the throne.
18. **Franklin D. Roosevelt** — 0% (0 votes · score 162/1000)
   The only US president elected four times, through both depression and world war.

Tags: politics, leaders