4 ms·

Really well done! Though for me this also underlines how ambiguous terms like "ruler" can be. For example, at the very end, it shows "Willem Alexander" as the "

Really well done! Though for me this also underlines how ambiguous terms like "ruler" can be. For example, at the very end, it shows "Willem Alexander" as the "ruler" of the Netherlands. He's the ceremonial king with virtually no political power. Yet, Germany is shown to be ruled by Angela Merkel, the political leader of the federal government. Yet, despite not being a monarchy, Germany has a person with a role very similar to Willem-Alexander: President Steinmeier. Unless you're German, you have probably never heard of him, for good reason. The video should've probably either replaced Merkel with Steinmeier, or Willem-Alexander with the Merkel of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte. This is not to nitpick on this excellent video: it's to illustrate how hard to is to explain, analyze and visualize history. This stuff is nuanced! Pick any random date in the past in this video, and there may well be something similarly "wrong-ish-but-not-entirely" somewhere on there.

azernik 8y ago
I've heard of him... from when he was Foreign Minister. I had no idea he'd made it into the presidency.
isostatic 8y ago
I was thinking the same about the UK, where the Queen also has no power. But then I thought someone like Murdoch or Dacre would be appropriate as they have more power than May (but who doesn't)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
henrikschroder 8y ago
Yeah, putting Merkel and other Bundeskanslers for Germany at the end was weird, they're not Heads of State, they're Heads of Government, and in all other regards the video picked the Head of State. And as you say, back in the days of absolute monarchs, it was easy to know who was "ruling", but in modern democracies there's a lot more people involved with ruling. I think every modern democracy has the Head of State above the Head of Government, but especially in the constitutional monarchies of Europe, the monarchs have been all but stripped of their powers, and the title is merely ceremonial. At least the US makes it simple, the President is both Head of State and Head of Government. :-)
pradn 8y ago
Along the same lines, even kings didn't exercise absolute power. One of the recurring themes in the history of the Persian empire before Alexander was how frequently the far off governors of Egypt and Anatolia would rebel. How much control does a king have if their governor and their own army and were two months away by letter? The Macedonian warlords who took control of Alexander's territory actually had to negotiate with cities like Athens and Rhodes. The cost of attacking them to get them to obey was too high. It was better to negotiate reasonable taxes. If a king can't set tax rates unilaterally, they aren't very powerful either. Power exists along a long continuum.
- cletus 8y ago
  I think you're slightly missing the point. Absolute power doesn't mean your subjects won't rebel. Nor does it mean there are people beyond your sphere of influence. The likes of Cyrus the Great by any reasonable measure had absolute power but obviously no influence over, say, China. Absolute power here really means that the ruler's power is unchecked. In the US for example, the president's power is checked by Congress and the courts. This is really the rule of law. The typical model for monarchs of old was quite simple: whatever the monarch said was absolute. As an aside I recently listend to Dan Carlin's 3 part series on the Achaemenid Persian Empire titled the Kings of Kings (~20 hours of listening) and thoroughly enjoyed it. It spans a ~200 year period from Cyrus the Great to Alexander the Great and it covers subjects such as the Egyptian rebellion and how harshly the Persians came down on the Egyptians (if you believe Heroditus). What's interesting about the Persians is just how critical this period was to the development of Western civilization. He raises the point with something like the light bulb if Edison hadn't invented it, someone else would've. But there are two events in this period that changed history in ways that could've had completely different outcomes. Cyrus the Great reportedly freed the Jews and rebuilt the Temple and it can be argued if that hadn't happened, it may have spelt the end for Judaism and all the offshoots (so Christianity and Islam too). The second was the Battle of Marathon, which was a turning point that stopped the Greeks being ruled by the Persians and probably greatly influenced Western civilization ever since.
rsynnott 8y ago
And Ireland is ‘ruled’ by Michael D Higgins, who has a similar role to Steinmeier, rather than Leo Varadkar, who has a similar role to Merkel. Odd.
interfixus 8y ago
A large majority of Dutch as well as German legislation is dictated from the EU, to which all member-states have outsourced great swathes of national sovereignty. So it migth at least be argued that their common ruler is Jean-Claude Juncker or some similar unelected bureaucrat or sinecurean.
zaarn 8y ago
I think the best option, tbh, would have been to just put in "Democratic". Neither federal chancellor nor the president hold any significant amount of power (except emergency situations). While the chancellor is the most powerful position, it's still rather powerless in total and the president is above them in the ranks. I think you could also summarize; in the past governments were simpler and you could definitely say "X was ruler of Y" Nowadays it's complicated and checks and balances make it almost impossible to say who is the top of the food chain in a government (atleast in title)
nl 8y ago
Amusing (?) anecdote: It used to be (perhaps still is) that if you queried DBPedia for the "Ruler of the United States" one of the many answers was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

azernik 8y ago

I've heard of him... from when he was Foreign Minister. I had no idea he'd made it into the presidency.

isostatic 8y ago

I was thinking the same about the UK, where the Queen also has no power. But then I thought someone like Murdoch or Dacre would be appropriate as they have more power than May (but who doesn't)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

henrikschroder 8y ago

Yeah, putting Merkel and other Bundeskanslers for Germany at the end was weird, they're not Heads of State, they're Heads of Government, and in all other regards the video picked the Head of State. And as you say, back in the days of absolute monarchs, it was easy to know who was "ruling", but in modern democracies there's a lot more people involved with ruling. I think every modern democracy has the Head of State above the Head of Government, but especially in the constitutional monarchies of Europe, the monarchs have been all but stripped of their powers, and the title is merely ceremonial. At least the US makes it simple, the President is both Head of State and Head of Government. :-)

pradn 8y ago

Along the same lines, even kings didn't exercise absolute power. One of the recurring themes in the history of the Persian empire before Alexander was how frequently the far off governors of Egypt and Anatolia would rebel. How much control does a king have if their governor and their own army and were two months away by letter? The Macedonian warlords who took control of Alexander's territory actually had to negotiate with cities like Athens and Rhodes. The cost of attacking them to get them to obey was too high. It was better to negotiate reasonable taxes. If a king can't set tax rates unilaterally, they aren't very powerful either. Power exists along a long continuum.

cletus 8y ago
I think you're slightly missing the point. Absolute power doesn't mean your subjects won't rebel. Nor does it mean there are people beyond your sphere of influence. The likes of Cyrus the Great by any reasonable measure had absolute power but obviously no influence over, say, China. Absolute power here really means that the ruler's power is unchecked. In the US for example, the president's power is checked by Congress and the courts. This is really the rule of law. The typical model for monarchs of old was quite simple: whatever the monarch said was absolute. As an aside I recently listend to Dan Carlin's 3 part series on the Achaemenid Persian Empire titled the Kings of Kings (~20 hours of listening) and thoroughly enjoyed it. It spans a ~200 year period from Cyrus the Great to Alexander the Great and it covers subjects such as the Egyptian rebellion and how harshly the Persians came down on the Egyptians (if you believe Heroditus). What's interesting about the Persians is just how critical this period was to the development of Western civilization. He raises the point with something like the light bulb if Edison hadn't invented it, someone else would've. But there are two events in this period that changed history in ways that could've had completely different outcomes. Cyrus the Great reportedly freed the Jews and rebuilt the Temple and it can be argued if that hadn't happened, it may have spelt the end for Judaism and all the offshoots (so Christianity and Islam too). The second was the Battle of Marathon, which was a turning point that stopped the Greeks being ruled by the Persians and probably greatly influenced Western civilization ever since.

rsynnott 8y ago

And Ireland is ‘ruled’ by Michael D Higgins, who has a similar role to Steinmeier, rather than Leo Varadkar, who has a similar role to Merkel. Odd.

interfixus 8y ago

A large majority of Dutch as well as German legislation is dictated from the EU, to which all member-states have outsourced great swathes of national sovereignty. So it migth at least be argued that their common ruler is Jean-Claude Juncker or some similar unelected bureaucrat or sinecurean.

zaarn 8y ago

I think the best option, tbh, would have been to just put in "Democratic". Neither federal chancellor nor the president hold any significant amount of power (except emergency situations). While the chancellor is the most powerful position, it's still rather powerless in total and the president is above them in the ranks. I think you could also summarize; in the past governments were simpler and you could definitely say "X was ruler of Y" Nowadays it's complicated and checks and balances make it almost impossible to say who is the top of the food chain in a government (atleast in title)

nl 8y ago

Amusing (?) anecdote: It used to be (perhaps still is) that if you queried DBPedia for the "Ruler of the United States" one of the many answers was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.