Copyright © 2026 OyList. All Rights Reserved.
Share
Items20
1
Napoleon
Born
In France, Napoleon is the author of the Civil Code, the lycées, the Legion of Honour and the prefect system, and he lies in state at Les Invalides. Elsewhere the memory is of invasion: the guerrilla war and executions in Spain that Goya painted, the retreat from Moscow, and in Haiti and Guadeloupe the attempt to restore slavery in 1802. The 2021 bicentenary of his death exposed the split inside France too, with President Macron commemorating him while condemning the slavery decree.
More about Napoleon2
Woodrow Wilson
Born
Wilson's Fourteen Points and his call for national self-determination made him a hero across Europe and the colonial world in 1919; crowds in Paris and Rome greeted him in their hundreds of thousands, and nationalists from Korea to Egypt appealed to his words. At home the Senate refused to join the League of Nations, and his reputation has since been weighed down by his segregation of the federal civil service. Princeton removed his name from its public policy school in 2020.
More about Woodrow Wilson3
Winston Churchill
Born
In Britain Churchill regularly tops polls of the greatest Briton for leading the country through 1940. In India the memory is dominated by his hostility to independence and by the 1943 Bengal famine, in which around three million died while his war cabinet limited relief shipments; historians still argue over how much blame he personally bears. In Ireland, Kenya and parts of the Middle East his record is viewed through other episodes of imperial policy. The outside view is a necessary correction, not a replacement.
More about Winston Churchill4
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
In Turkey insulting Atatürk's memory is a criminal offence, and the country stops for a minute's silence every 10 November. Abroad he has been admired as a secular moderniser, by figures from the Shah of Iran to Habib Bourguiba. Armenians, Greeks from Anatolia and many Kurds remember the founding of the republic through expulsions, population exchange and suppressed revolts, and the question of the Armenian genocide that preceded his rule shapes how his state is seen. Inside Turkey, political Islam has offered its own revisionist reading.
More about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk5
Kwame Nkrumah
Born
Across Africa and the diaspora Nkrumah is the founding prophet of Pan-Africanism, the man who led Ghana to independence in 1957 and helped found the Organisation of African Unity; a statue of him stands outside the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. In Ghana the memory is more divided. He made the country a one-party state, jailed opponents without trial, and was overthrown in a coup in 1966 that many Ghanaians celebrated. His rehabilitation at home came gradually, decades after his death.
More about Kwame Nkrumah6
Fidel Castro
Born
Few leaders split opinion by geography so sharply. In much of Latin America and Africa, Castro is remembered for defying the United States, for Cuban doctors sent abroad and for troops that fought South Africa in Angola, which Nelson Mandela publicly thanked him for. Among Cuban exiles in Miami, his death in 2016 was celebrated in the streets. Inside Cuba the official reverence sits beside political prisoners, a single legal party and an economic crisis that drove record emigration in the 2020s.
More about Fidel Castro7
Lee Kuan Yew
Born
Abroad, Lee is the model technocrat: Deng Xiaoping studied Singapore's development, and Western leaders from Thatcher to Obama sought his advice. In Singapore he is revered for turning a vulnerable port into one of the richest states on earth, but the domestic picture includes defamation suits that bankrupted opponents, detention without trial under the Internal Security Act and tight control of the press. A family dispute over his house after his death in 2015 opened an unusually public argument about his wishes.
More about Lee Kuan Yew8
Jimmy Carter
Born
Americans long remembered Carter's presidency for inflation, gas queues and the Iran hostage crisis, and he lost re-election by a landslide. Abroad he was seen differently: the Camp David Accords, a human rights policy that dissidents in Latin America and the Soviet bloc credited, and decades of election monitoring and the near-eradication of Guinea worm through the Carter Center. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. By his death in December 2024, the domestic verdict had moved much closer to the foreign one.
More about Jimmy Carter9
Margaret Thatcher
Born
At home Thatcher divides Britain almost exactly along regional and class lines, and street parties marked her death in some former mining towns in 2013. In the Falkland Islands, 10 January is Margaret Thatcher Day; in Argentina she is remembered for the war and the sinking of the Belgrano. In Central and Eastern Europe she is recalled more simply as a Cold War ally of the dissidents. American conservatives treat her as an icon, and the British left as the author of deindustrialisation.
More about Margaret Thatcher10
Ronald Reagan
Born
Reagan's statues stand in Warsaw, Budapest and Tbilisi, and many in Central Europe credit his pressure on Moscow with hastening the end of communism. In Central America his administration's backing for the Contras and the Salvadoran military is remembered for mass killings, and the Iran-Contra affair broke US law. At home he remains the hero of the conservative movement and a symbol of deregulation and inequality to his critics. The same presidency means sharply different things in Gdańsk and in El Mozote.
More about Ronald Reagan11
Mikhail Gorbachev
Born
The clearest case on the list. In Germany and much of the West, Gorbachev is the man who let Eastern Europe go free, allowed German reunification and signed arms control treaties; he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. In Russia polls consistently rank him among the least admired leaders of the century, blamed for the collapse of the Soviet Union, lost status and the economic chaos of the early 1990s. His funeral in 2022 was attended by few Russian officials, and Putin did not attend the ceremony.
More about Mikhail Gorbachev12
Nelson Mandela
Born
Internationally Mandela is close to a secular saint. At home he is deeply loved too, but a younger generation of South Africans, and parties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters, increasingly criticise the 1994 settlement he negotiated for leaving land and wealth largely in white hands. The 'Mandela was a sell-out' argument is a minority view, but it is a real part of domestic debate that rarely features in foreign tributes. Abroad, people also tend to forget he was on a US terrorism watch list until 2008.
More about Nelson Mandela13
Bill Clinton
Born
In Pristina a three-metre statue of Bill Clinton stands on Bill Clinton Boulevard, thanks for the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that ended Serbian rule in Kosovo. In Belgrade the same campaign is remembered for civilian deaths and the bombing of the state television building. In Northern Ireland he is credited with helping the peace process. At home the memory is of the economy, impeachment and, increasingly in his own party, the crime and welfare laws. In Rwanda, he has called the failure to act in 1994 a great regret.
More about Bill Clinton14
Tony Blair
Born
In Kosovo some boys born after 1999 were named Tonibler, and in Sierra Leone Blair is remembered for the British intervention that helped end the civil war in 2000. In Britain and the Arab world his reputation is defined by Iraq, and in 2016 the Chilcot report confirmed the criticisms. Domestically he is also the only Labour leader to win three general elections, which many in his party now treat as a mixed blessing. The same man looks like three different leaders depending on whether you start from Freetown, Baghdad or Sedgefield.
More about Tony Blair15
George W. Bush
Born
In much of sub-Saharan Africa, George W. Bush is remembered above all for PEPFAR, the HIV and AIDS relief programme he launched in 2003, credited with saving around 25 million lives; polls there found him among the most popular American presidents. In Europe and the Middle East his legacy is the Iraq war, Guantánamo and torture under 'enhanced interrogation'. Americans largely remember the war and the 2008 financial crash. PEPFAR's future was cast into doubt by foreign aid cuts in 2025.
More about George W. Bush16
Aung San Suu Kyi
Born
Her reputation reversed abroad while it largely held at home. Aung San Suu Kyi was a global symbol of peaceful resistance during fifteen years of house arrest, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. As Myanmar's de facto leader she defended the army at the International Court of Justice in 2019 against charges of genocide against the Rohingya, and several honours were withdrawn. Among the Burmese majority she remained hugely popular, and since the 2021 coup she has been imprisoned by the military.
More about Aung San Suu Kyi17
Paul Kagame
Born
Donors and development economists have long praised Kagame for rebuilding Rwanda after the 1994 genocide: falling child mortality, health insurance coverage near universal and one of Africa's highest shares of women in parliament. In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda is accused, including by UN experts, of backing the M23 rebels whose offensive took Goma in 2025. At home dissent is tightly limited, and he won re-election in 2024 with over 99 per cent of the vote. Each picture is true, and neither is complete.
More about Paul Kagame18
Shinzo Abe
Born
Abe is mourned in India, Australia and Washington as the architect of the 'free and open Indo-Pacific' and the Quad, and India declared a day of national mourning after his assassination in 2022. In South Korea and China he is remembered for visiting the Yasukuni Shrine and for his government's stance on wartime history, including 'comfort women'. In Japan, the state funeral was opposed by most of the public in polls, and revelations about his party's ties to the Unification Church complicated his legacy.
More about Shinzo Abe19
Jacinda Ardern
Born
Abroad, Ardern became a symbol of compassionate leadership after the Christchurch mosque attacks and for New Zealand's early pandemic record. At home her party's support slid as housing costs, inflation and long lockdowns took their toll, and she resigned in January 2023 citing exhaustion; Labour was heavily defeated that October. She also faced a level of abuse that New Zealand police said had risen sharply. The international admiration and the domestic verdict on delivery are both fair readings of different parts of the record.
More about Jacinda Ardern20
Abiy Ahmed
Born
Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, a year after ending the war with Eritrea and freeing thousands of political prisoners. A year later the war in Tigray began, with mass atrocities documented by UN investigators and a death toll estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Many Ethiopians outside Tigray see him as a modernising leader holding the country together. His Prosperity Party won a landslide in June 2026, in an election that did not take place in Tigray at all.
More about Abiy Ahmed
