Despotism in the context of "Dictator"

Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French judge, intellectual, historian, and political philosopher.

He is the principal source of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for doing more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon. His anonymously published The Spirit of Law (De l'esprit des lois, 1748) first translated into English (Nugent) in a 1750 edition was received well in both Great Britain and the American colonies, and influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States in drafting the U.S. Constitution.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (né Dzhugashvili; 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. His rule oversaw mass atrocities that caused an estimated 20 million deaths, and he is widely considered one of the most brutal despots of the modern era. He held office as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as premier from 1941 until his death. Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he eventually consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, and his version of it is referred to as Stalinism.

Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through bank robberies and other crimes, and edited the party's newspaper, Pravda. He was repeatedly arrested and underwent several exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin served as a member of the Politburo, and from 1922 used his position as General Secretary to gain control over the party bureaucracy. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin won the leadership struggle over rivals including Leon Trotsky. Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country became central to the party's ideology, and his five-year plans starting in 1928 led to forced agricultural collectivisation, rapid industrialisation, and a centralised command economy. His policies contributed to a famine in 1932–1933 which killed millions, including in the Holodomor in Ukraine. Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin executed hundreds of thousands of his real and perceived political opponents in the Great Purge. Under his regime, an estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and more than six million people, including kulaks and entire ethnic groups, were deported to remote areas of the country.

The conspiracy of Gaius Calpurnius Piso in 65 CE was a major turning point in the reign of the Roman emperor Nero (reign 54–68). The plot reflected the growing discontent among the ruling class of the Roman state with Nero's increasingly despotic leadership, and as a result is a significant event on the road toward his eventual suicide and the chaos of the Year of the Four Emperors which followed.

The Despotate of the Morea (Greek: Δεσποτᾶτον τοῦ Μορέως, romanized: Despotâton toû Moréōs) or Despotate of Mystras (Greek: Δεσποτᾶτον τοῦ Μυστρᾶ, romanized: Despotâton toû Mystrâ) was a province of the Byzantine Empire which existed between the mid-14th and mid-15th centuries. Its territory varied in size during its existence but eventually grew to include almost all the southern Greek peninsula now known as the Peloponnese, which was known as the Morea during the medieval and early modern periods. The territory was usually ruled by one or more sons or brothers of the current Byzantine emperor, who were given the title of despotes (in this context it should not be confused with despotism). Its capital was the fortified city of Mystras, near ancient Sparta, which became an important centre of the Palaiologan Renaissance.

Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr; 25 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian politician, revolutionary, and dictator who ruled the communist state of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 until his overthrow in 1979. During his reign, his administration oversaw mass atrocities and he is widely believed to be one of the most brutal despots in modern world history. Ideologically a Maoist and Khmer ethnonationalist, Pot was a leader of Cambodia's Communist movement, known as the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981, during which Cambodia was converted into a one-party state. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5–2 million people died—approximately one-quarter of the country's pre-genocide population. In December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge from power. Within two weeks Vietnamese forces occupied most of the country, ending the genocide and establishing a new Cambodian government, with the Khmer Rouge restricted to the rural hinterlands in the western part of the country.

Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's most elite schools. Arriving in Paris in October 1949 on an academic scholarship, he later joined the French Communist Party in 1951 while studying at École française de radioélectricité. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he involved himself in the Khmer Viet Minh organisation and its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government. Following the Khmer Viet Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of Cambodia's Marxist–Leninist movement. In 1959, he helped formalise the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party, which was later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). To avoid state repression, in 1962 he relocated to a jungle encampment and in 1963 he became the CPK's leader. In 1968, he relaunched the war against Sihanouk's government. After Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk in a 1970 coup, Pol Pot's forces sided with the deposed leader against the new government, which was bolstered by the United States military. Aided by the Viet Cong militia and North Vietnamese troops, Khmer Rouge forces advanced and controlled all of Cambodia by 1975.

Abdur Rahman Khan GCSI (Pashto; Persian: عبدالرحمن خان, between 1840 and 1844 – 1 October 1901), also known by his epithet, The Iron Emir, was Emir of Afghanistan from 1880 to his death in 1901. He is known for perpetrating the Hazara genocide, and suppressing Hazara rebels in the most brutal ways, while uniting the country after years of strong centralization, internal fighting, and negotiation of the Durand Line agreement with British India.

Abdur Rahman Khan was the only son of Mohammad Afzal Khan, and grandson of Dost Mohammad Khan, founder of the Barakzai dynasty. Abdur Rahman Khan re-established the writ of the Afghan government after the disarray that followed the second Anglo-Afghan war. He became known as The Iron Amir because of his government's military despotism. This despotism rested upon a well-appointed army and was administered through officials subservient to an inflexible will and controlled by a widespread system of espionage.

Enlightened absolutism, also called enlightened despotism, refers to the conduct and policies of European absolute monarchs during the 18th and early 19th centuries who were influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, espousing them to enhance their power. The concept originated during the Enlightenment period in the 18th and into the early 19th centuries. An enlightened absolutist is a non-democratic or authoritarian leader who exercises their political power based upon the principles of the Enlightenment. Enlightened monarchs distinguished themselves from ordinary rulers by claiming to rule for their subjects' well-being. John Stuart Mill stated that despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

Enlightened absolutists' beliefs about royal power were typically similar to those of regular despots, both recognizing that they were destined to rule. Enlightened rulers may have played a part in the abolition of serfdom in Europe. The enlightened despotism of Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire is summarized as "Everything for the people, nothing by the people".

The Ottoman Empire developed over the years as a despotism with the Sultan as the supreme ruler of a centralized government that had an effective control of its provinces, officials and inhabitants. Wealth and rank could be inherited but were just as often earned. Positions were perceived as titles, such as viziers and aghas. Military service was a key to many problems.

The expansion of the Empire called for a systematic administrative organization that developed into a dual system of military ("Central Government") and civil administration ("Provincial System") and developed a kind of separation of powers: higher executive functions were carried out by the military authorities and judicial and basic administration were carried out by civil authorities. Outside this system were various types of vassal and tributary states. Most of the areas ruled by the Ottomans were explicitly mentioned in the official full style of the sultan, including various lofty titles adopted to emphasize imperial rank and show the empire as being "successor-in-law" to conquered states.