Top 5 most important events in history.

1. French Revolution (1788 - 1799)

The French Revolution represented the culmination of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the most decisive and influential revolution in history. It would be the ideal revolution that revolutionaries would look up to in Haiti, in 1848, and in Russia, and it would be the ideal revolution that counterrevolutionaries would revile and point to as a representation of why revolution was bad.

It accelerated the spread of democracy and republican ideals around the world. Nationalism and liberalism would also become much more prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries because of the French Revolution. The total mobilization of the entire French nation, and the shift of everything domestic towards war, the concept of total war, which would be so prominent in the World Wars, came into existence.

Truly a seminal event in world history.

1. Roman-Persian War of 602–628

I’d be willing to bet most of you haven’t heard of this war. But it was the reason that Islam was able to spread all across the Middle East. Persia started strong by conquering all of the Roman East, including Egypt. But the Emperor Heraclius struck back and managed to invade the Persian heartland, defeating all Persian armies standing between him and Ctesiphon. Peace was made, and status quo antebellum was restored.

Except it really wasn’t. Both Empires had expended valuable, nearly irreplaceable resources and manpower fighting each other, and were very vulnerable to an attack from a third party. On top of this, during the war, the Byzantines and Sassanids had been unable to monitor disturbances in Arabia properly, and thus, Muhammad was able to unite all of Arabia into a powerful Caliphate. This, combined with the weakened state of the two Empires, made them easy pickings for the Muslim invasions.

The effects of the massive power shift in the region that happened practically overnight are impossible to overstate. They changed everything. The whole region was Arabized, and the indigenous people of the former Roman East were either pushed out or integrated into the new Arab society. This whole region remains both Islamic and Arab today.

Moreover, the appearance of a whole new religion on the world stage took “religiously motivated conflict” to a whole new level. Because of the Muslim invasions, you have things like the Delhi Sultanate all the way in India to Al-Andalus in Spain. You have the Crusades, the Reconquista, etc. All because Heraclius and Khosrow didn’t just sign a quick peace deal…

1. Treaty of Versailles (1919)

World War I had devastated Europe for over four years. All countries were weary from war. The Central Powers had lost the war, and France was especially eager to take revenge for their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. They laid harsh terms at Germany’s feet.

Germany ceded 25,000 square miles of territory and 7 million people living in those territories to Denmark, France, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, and Czechoslovakia. On top of this, Germany had to cede all of its overseas colonies in Africa and the Pacific to the victorious Allies.

Germany was forced to pay a war debt of 132 billion gold marks. This was very damaging to the German economy, as they printed vast amounts of paper marks to pay the debt, resulting in devastating hyperinflation that destroyed the value of the German mark in the years following the war.
The German military was limited to no more than 100,000 men. This would neutralize their offensive capability. Their navy was only allowed six pre-dreadnought battleships, and the rest of their fleet was brought to Scapa Flow in Scotland, where the Germans would attempt to sink it to prevent the British from using it against them.

The terms of the Treaty of Versailles are the perfect example of “either too harsh or not harsh enough.” They didn’t go too far in either direction, and left Germany with enough struggles to be bitter and desperate for revenge, but also left them with enough capacity to wage war for revenge. The terms of this treaty were the birth of the “stabbed in the back” theory, and it gave all Germans something they could uniformly despise.

Basically, it ensured that the Second World War would happen in the truly devastating form that it took. Had the terms been more lenient, Germany may have been content to become something similar to the modern German state, and had the terms been harsher, Germany would be so weakened that it would never rise again.

1. Life of Jesus Christ (4 BCE - 30 CE)

Jesus Christ is perhaps the single most directly influential individual to ever walk the planet. The religion he founded, Christianity, has had an immense impact on all corners of the globe. 2.2 billion people around the globe are adherents of Christianity. Without Christianity, no Islam, and the two religions together make up more than half of the world’s total population.

Christianity has influenced practically all of everything in the Western world after 312 CE. It was the basis on which Medieval kings were legitimized: divine right to rule. Wars were fought in the name of this man, Jesus Christ, or even over what form his religion should take. I guarantee you, 90% of the people on this planet older than five years old know who Jesus Christ is.

Perhaps the most famous man ever, and the single most directly influential man ever.

But there is another, perhaps more influential than Jesus himself.

1. Reign of Cyrus the Great (559 BCE - 530 BCE)

Ahh, Cyrus. The greatest conqueror the world had ever seen. Ruler of the largest Empire ever up to that point. King of the Four Corners of the Earth.

King of Kings.

And the best part is, you’ve probably never heard of him.

He started his reign as a lowly king of Anshan, a region in Southern Persia, under the hegemony of the Median Empire. By the end of his reign, his Empire stretched from the Indus River to the Hellespont, from Kazakhstan to Kuwait. It was the most dominant empire the world had ever seen, with a population numbering in the tens of millions, with armies so large they drank rivers dry.

He was a pragmatic conqueror, at least compared to the Medes and Babylonians and Assyrians that had preceded him. The people of the Middle East were unhappy with the rule of their kings, and Cyrus spread propaganda promising that he would restore displaced peoples to their homelands and grant them rights that they had never before had. And he followed through on this promise, gaining universal acclaim from everyone.

The Babylonians called him “The Liberator.” Other conquered people called him their “father.” What other conqueror could boast that all the people they conquered would think him a hero, a father, a liberator?

He built up strong political infrastructure, allowing the Achaemenid Empire to flourish long after he was gone. He spread Persian culture to the Middle East region for the first time, and Persia would play an important role in world history up until the Arab conquests more than a millenium later. Persian culture was so strong, in fact, that it persists today, even after centuries of Arab rule.

The Achaemenid/Persian Empire was the worlds first superpower in it’s purest form, ruling over 49.9 millions subjects, or 44% of all humans who were alive at that time, making it the largest empire of all time by share of population, a feat never repeated again.

But what makes me put Cyrus’ reign as the most important event in human history?

Among the persecuted groups he allowed to return to their homelands were the Jews, who had been persecuted heavily by both the Assyrians and the Babylonians who came after them. He even appropriated royal funds to help reconstruct their temple in Jerusalem.

Without his generous aid and patronage, the Jews might not have survived as a religious and cultural group. Thus, Jesus is never born, and Christianity, Judaism, and Islam do not exist.

It is impossible to predict the implications of this, so I’m not even going to try. Suffice it to say, the world would be completely unrecognizable to our modern eyes.

I’ll end this with what Cyrus had inscribed on his tomb in Parsagadae. The Spartans might get a lot of credit for cool one-liners, but I think this is as good as any.

Here I lie, Cyrus. King of Kings.