I am not really sure on which subforum I am supposed to post this in, and also sorry for the confusing title because my inner ESL is kicking in, I am having some difficulties in describing what I have in mind, but anyways, I want to look for examples of important historical figures who were important leaders, sometimes even national heroes of countries, but they were from a different ethnic group that was either a minority in that country, or outright foreign, I will also post their "original" names on their native language in parenthesis, if these are available or needed.
I may or may not edit this list as users keep posting recommendations, since I want to make this a comprehensive list right on the first page for convenience.
In this list, I do not plan to count:
Overall I am mostly searching for historical and modern examples of people who have little to not "native blood" of the country that they are a leader of, I was thinking of not counting people who have a single parent that is not from their country's native ethnic group(s), making them half-blooded, because there are plenty of these individuals, but I might make an exception for convenience, so if you want to post examples, then go on, for example, Anwar Sadat (Egypt) was of mixed Sudanese/Egyptian heritage, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Iran) is half-Azeri half-Persian.
Either way, some examples to start the list and discussion:
Most of Europe's royal dynasties:
I may or may not edit this list as users keep posting recommendations, since I want to make this a comprehensive list right on the first page for convenience.
In this list, I do not plan to count:
- People from "Conquest dynasties", like the Hellenistic kingdoms, the non-Han dynasties of China, etc.
- People from countries that are extremely diverse and at least de-jure do not have a single dominant ethnic group that outnumbers all the others.
- Countries where having leaders and national figures of various different ethnic groups was never a big deal to begin with (i.e. India, Pakistan, Nigeria, pretty much all countries in the Americas, etc.)
Overall I am mostly searching for historical and modern examples of people who have little to not "native blood" of the country that they are a leader of, I was thinking of not counting people who have a single parent that is not from their country's native ethnic group(s), making them half-blooded, because there are plenty of these individuals, but I might make an exception for convenience, so if you want to post examples, then go on, for example, Anwar Sadat (Egypt) was of mixed Sudanese/Egyptian heritage, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Iran) is half-Azeri half-Persian.
Either way, some examples to start the list and discussion:
Most of Europe's royal dynasties:
- The British, Belgian, Danish, Norwegian, Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Greek royal families were/are German (let's get the German monarchs out of the way of this topic)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (Napulione Buonaparte) was Corsican and Italian
- Abram Petrovich Gannibal was Sub-Saharan African (it is debated if he came from what is now modern-day Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad or Ethiopia and Eritrea), he was also the great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin.
- Ivan Abramovich Gannibal was Sub-Saharan African, Swedish, and German (son of Abram Gannibal above)
- Mikhail Bogdanovich Barklayi de Tolli (Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly) was Baltic German and Scottish
- Leonty Leontyevich von Bennigsen (Levin August von Bennigsen) was Baltic German
- Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration (Petre Bagrationi) was Georgian
- Roman von Ungern-Sternberg (Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg) was Baltic German and Hungarian (possibly Estonian heritage as well, he also claimed to be a descendant of Genghis Khan)
- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) was part-Kalmyk Mongol part-German part-Swedish
- Joseph Vissarianovich Stalin (Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili) was Georgian
- Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky (Konstanty Konstantynowicz Rokossowski) was Polish
- Ivan Bagramyan (Hovhannes Kristapvori Baghramyan) was Armenian
- Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was Georgian and Mingrelian
- Baldur von Schirach was Sorb (note: Nazis did not considered Sorbs to be Slavs, although Sorb culture was to be eradicated and Sorbs fully Germanized)
- Francisco Franco was Galician
- Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was Swedish (but also of German origin)
- Hendrik Verwoerd was Dutch
- José de Anchieta (his name is the same, but in Portuguese José is pronounced as "Djusé" instead of "Hoe-zeh" like in Spanish) was Spanish and Basque
- Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães) was Portuguese
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