Most influential areas/countries in world history

[batson]

I love history!

And I've been thinking lately, what are the most influential countries and/or cultural areas from a world history perspective? What do you think?

Here are my personal top 5:

5 Rome/Italy

The ancient Roman Empire spread the western civilization far and wide. It's state originated a form of government that is still, in modified shape, in use all over the world today. Later on in the history of Italy, the country originated the renaissance, which reintroduced classical knowledge to the west and thus laid the foundation for secular humanist thought as well as, ultimately, the scientific revolution.

4 China

Chinese civilization has had an impact on Asia to the same extent that greek civilization has had an impact on the west. In terms of culture, places like Japan and Korea owes theirs to the chinese. China is also responsible for several history-changing inventions, such as gun powder and paper.

3 Great Brittain

Not even mentioning it's cultural contributions, Great Brittain originated the industrial revolution, thus ushering all of humanity into a new (and, at least in some ways, better) era.

2 Greece

The cradle of western civilization. The west ultimately derives it's philosophy, artistic sensibilities and basic thirst for empirical knowledge from ancient Greece. And I probably don't need to tell anyone just how unimaginably impactful western civilization has been on the world at large, especially over the past few hundred years.

1 Mesopotamia

As significant as western civilization is, there is one that stands above it in importance: the Mesopotamian. Mostly situated in the part of the world currently known as Iraq (also Kuwait, Syria, Turkey and Iran), this was the first civilization to arise. This is where agriculture developed, forever altering the course of humanity by turning most of us from hunter-gatherers to setteled farmers. It also originated such basic components of civilization as cities, taxes, the written language, and the wheel.

What are you'r thoughts?

[Solister]

This might be an interesting subject, but I don't think there's much to discuss. I can't disagree with your choice.

I think I also could add Portugal for nearly the same reason as Britain as well Spain could join the boat, after all those three colonized almost half of the world (Words from a Brazilian), and still even before Britain, Portugal developed its navigation techniques while Spain got the fame to "discover" America (By Christopher Columbus, an Italian, actually).

Other country I could add is France due to its enlightenment philosophy which later would most lead to the USA independence and French Revolution, though I follow some History pages and most identify the Frenches as huge d*cks, mostly for Louis XIV politics, I guess. As I mentioned them, I believe the USA have an interesting Independence/later Civil War story, but I think this is most my tastes rather than real influence.

To delight my communist history teachers, I recognize Russia had a good history regarding their Communist revolution, though many argue this lead to some of the most terrific and bloody history moments.

And to close, a little of intertextuality here, as you mentioned, China. Alright, let's forget the Coronavirus jokes. Must admit I loved the Chinese past, like all the tech they develop years before the European contact and still while making good trades before being targeted as an ambitious land. I really would like to live nearly the 1600s into mainland China, thus by late 1800s, the England start colonizing and drugging the population which lead to a similar Communist revolution as we had on Russia (But nearly 50 years later). Now I don't really believe born as a Chinese is a good deal, unless you maybe born into those capitalist centers like Shanghai or Hong Kong to mention a few, but still a very painful life I guess.

Lastly and not focusing much into ideologies, as you also mentioned, most ancient civilizations deserve their praise. Egyptian and Greeks for their magnificent architecture works, Rome for their military techniques,  Greeks once again for their culture and Mesopotamian for their law works. Still, this is just a very rough analysis, there's still Persians with their carpet and alike works.

[batson]

17 hours ago, Solister said:

This might be an interesting subject, but I don't think there's much to discuss. I can't disagree with your choice.

I think I also could add Portugal for nearly the same reason as Britain as well Spain could join the boat, after all those three colonized almost half of the world (Words from a Brazilian), and still even before Britain, Portugal developed its navigation techniques while Spain got the fame to "discover" America (By Christopher Columbus, an Italian, actually).

Other country I could add is France due to its enlightenment philosophy which later would most lead to the USA independence and French Revolution, though I follow some History pages and most identify the Frenches as huge d*cks, mostly for Louis XIV politics, I guess. As I mentioned them, I believe the USA have an interesting Independence/later Civil War story, but I think this is most my tastes rather than real influence.

To delight my communist history teachers, I recognize Russia had a good history regarding their Communist revolution, though many argue this lead to some of the most terrific and bloody history moments.

And to close, a little of intertextuality here, as you mentioned, China. Alright, let's forget the Coronavirus jokes. Must admit I loved the Chinese past, like all the tech they develop years before the European contact and still while making good trades before being targeted as an ambitious land. I really would like to live nearly the 1600s into mainland China, thus by late 1800s, the England start colonizing and drugging the population which lead to a similar Communist revolution as we had on Russia (But nearly 50 years later). Now I don't really believe born as a Chinese is a good deal, unless you maybe born into those capitalist centers like Shanghai or Hong Kong to mention a few, but still a very painful life I guess.

Lastly and not focusing much into ideologies, as you also mentioned, most ancient civilizations deserve their praise. Egyptian and Greeks for their magnificent architecture works, Rome for their military techniques,  Greeks once again for their culture and Mesopotamian for their law works. Still, this is just a very rough analysis, there's still Persians with their carpet and alike works.

Good observations! I wanted to challange myself by doing a mere top 5 list, thus having to really think it through, but if I had done a longer list I would have included many of the countries you mention. The USA, Russia, France, Spain and Portugal have all had a tremendous impact on history.

So you're Brazilian? I'm curious, how would you rate you'r own countries impact on the world? I'm Swedish, and to be perfectly blunt, I think Sweden has pretty much always been a mere bit player on the world stage. Most of our history since the viking age can be described as "copying the thing's being invented in other parts of Europe, but only after a while". I suppose the biggest legacy of Sweden in modern times is that for a while in the 20th century, Sweden was kind of a left-wing utopia, idolized by left-wingers all around the world but often disliked by right-wingers. Sweden was both probably the most progressive country in the world, and also one of the most objectively peaceful countries in the world in terms of crime rates. So basically, lefties all over the world liked to point to Sweden and say "what they're doing seems to be going well, so let's do it too!". However, that era is over now, since Sweden in recent decades has been hit by a disastrous crime wave, including gun crimes and rape. The utopia is over, and nobody wants to look to Sweden as an examplary society anymore...

[Solister]

1 hour ago, batson said:

Good observations! I wanted to challange myself by doing a mere top 5 list, thus having to really think it through, but if I had done a longer list I would have included many of the countries you mention. The USA, Russia, France, Spain and Portugal have all had a tremendous impact on history.

So you're Brazilian? I'm curious, how would you rate you'r own countries impact on the world? I'm Swedish, and to be perfectly blunt, I think Sweden has pretty much always been a mere bit player on the world stage. Most of our history since the viking age can be described as "copying the thing's being invented in other parts of Europe, but only after a while". I suppose the biggest legacy of Sweden in modern times is that for a while in the 20th century, Sweden was kind of a left-wing utopia, idolized by left-wingers all around the world but often disliked by right-wingers. Sweden was both probably the most progressive country in the world, and also one of the most objectively peaceful countries in the world in terms of crime rates. So basically, lefties all over the world liked to point to Sweden and say "what they're doing seems to be going well, so let's do it too!". However, that era is over now, since Sweden in recent decades has been hit by a disastrous crime wave, including gun crimes and rape. The utopia is over, and nobody wants to look to Sweden as an examplary society anymore...

To be honest, I don't see any real attractive into Brazil history, I remember on my Elementary School classes that meanwhile my teacher was explaining all the subject, I usually took the history book, put it in the right page but shortly later I read about more interesting subjects on the book (That's how I studied the American Civil War, actually). I actually dislike most Brazilian history upon the Empire time (The 1800s) and the more contemporaries times. Still, though I just praised the Portuguese, a good amount of the population have a lot of hate with them for colonizing us and taking out most of our richness and making us now a shitty 3rd World Country.

But yeah, the impact you say? I think our biggest role in the history was most giving support to other nations, selling them goods (Sugar and Coffee being our specialities during the time) but also about political interest supporting the US as allies during both World War. Now you've made me think, I don't believe we have such cultural impact, but I can also mention that we are pretty "new" to the European world basically being recognized since the 1500 and independent since the 1800s, so yeah it's unfair to compare us to the Greeks for example.

Your point about Sweden is very interesting, specially as on our last elections we faced a huge dispute between left and right wings. Until 2018 we were governed by left wing parties but since 2014 (At least as I have a memory, I'm 17 now) it was heavily media proof they were stealing billions of public money, as 2018 though we had a dispute on these same left wing corrupted persons or try a crazy right wing man. We chose the right wing. I mean, you probably already heard of him, Bolsonaro. If not, believe he's a Trump-like president for a third world country. But yeah, must say that most intellectual Brazilian persons had a huge respect for Sweden and Nordic countries for being very organized and honest but mainly for keeping high HDI scores.