List of Notable Dictators since 1800

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

If you have a school project, a personal research project, or want to learn about dictators over the past 200 years, you've reached the right place! Already, as I set out to compile a list, I realized the 19th century isn't as dictator-heavy as the 20th century.

Here are the requirements I used to compile this list.

1. No Monarchs or colonial authorities - there is an exception I included, Leopold II of Belgium, because the Congo has a story yet to be told.

2. I tried to cover various areas of the globe, rather than focusing solely on European-centric or WWII-centric perspectives.

3. I included modern-day even if they aren't **officially** called "dictators".

4. A Dictator is defined as someone who is "a ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained control by force" or "a person who behaves in an autocratic way."

5. This list is categorized by the year of first coming into power.

---

1800s

Napoleon Bonaparte - dictator of France (1800-1815)

Simon Bolivar - dictator of Gran Colombia (1819-1830)

José María Medina - dictator of Honduras (1864-1872)

Porfirio Diaz - dictator of Mexico (1884-1911)

Leopold II of Belgium - king of the Congo Free State (1885-1908)

1900s

Vladimir Lenin - dictator of Russia (1917-1924)

Josef Stalin - dictator of the USSR (1924-1953)

Benito Mussolini - dictator of Italy (1925-1945)

Hirohito - dictator of Japan (1926-1945)

Adolf Hitler - dictator of Germany (1933-1945)

Tiburcio Carías Andino - dictator of Honduras (1933-1949)

Francisco Franco - dictator of Spain (1939-1975)

Enver Hoxha - dictator of Albania (1944-1985)

Josip Broz Tito - dictator of Yugoslavia (1945-1980)

Mao Zedong - dictator of China (1949-1971)

Alfredo Stroessner - dictator of Paraguay (1954-1989)

Gamal Abdel Nasser - dictator of Egypt (1956-1970)

Fidel Castro - dictator of Cuba (1959-2008)

Nicolae Ceaușescu - dictator of Romania (1967-1989)

Muammar Gaddafi - dictator of Libya (1969-2011)

Guillermo Antonio Rodríguez Lara - dictator of Ecuador (1972-1976)

Augusto Pinochet Ugarte - dictator of Chile (1974-1990)

Saddam Hussein - dictator of Iraq (1979-2003)

Teodoro Obiang - dictator of Equatorial Guinea (1979 --)

Daniel Ortega - dictator of Nicaragua (1985--)

Ali Khamenei - dictator of Iran (1989--)

Isaias Afwerki - dictator of Eritrea (1993 --)

Aleksandr Lukaschenko - dictator of Belarus (1994--)

2000s

Vladimir Putin - dictator of Russia (2000 --)

Bashar al-Assad - dictator of Syria (2000-2024)

Ilham Aliyev - dictator of Azerbaijan (2003 --)

Kim Jong Un - dictator of North Korea (2011--)

Xi Jinping - dictator of China (2013--)

Nicolás Maduro - dictator of Venezuela (2013 --)

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan - dictator of Türkiye (2014 --)