From Colonial Subjects to Heads of State: Ten Leaders of Asia and Africa

Rizal is where the path begins. His novels exposed abuses of Spanish colonial rule and the church, and his execution in December 1896 for sedition, although he had no direct part in the Katipunan revolt, convinced many Filipinos that independence rather than reform was the only way forward.

Sun Yat-sen organised the movement that overthrew the Qing dynasty in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution and served as first provisional president of the Republic of China in 1912. His Three Principles of the People, nationalism, democracy and people's livelihood, became the new republic's guiding doctrine.

Kimbangu shows resistance without an army. His healing ministry began in April 1921, Belgian colonial authorities treated it as a threat, and he was arrested that September, sentenced to death, and had the sentence commuted to life; he died in prison in 1951 without being released.

Chiang led the Kuomintang after Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925 and launched the Northern Expedition that unified much of China under Nationalist rule by 1928. After defeat in the civil war he moved the government to Taiwan in 1949 and ruled there under martial law until 1975.

Sukarno led the independence movement against Dutch rule and was Indonesia's first president from 1945, recognised internationally in 1949. He set out the state philosophy Pancasila in June 1945, later moved toward Guided Democracy, and was eased from power by the military under Suharto in 1966.

Nasser founded the Society of Free Officers in 1942 and led the 1952 coup that ended Egypt's monarchy. He nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 and joined Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic in 1958, which Syria left in 1961, while banning opposition parties at home.

Nyerere led Tanganyika to independence and was Tanzania's first president from 1961 to 1985, then stepped down voluntarily for Ali Hassan Mwinyi. His Ujamaa policy moved most Tanzanians into planned villages by the mid-1970s, but compulsion followed and the scheme collapsed by the late 1970s.

Park seized power in a bloodless coup on 16 May 1961 and was elected president in 1963. He drove state-directed industrialization through nationalized banks and export investment, while governing under the 1972 Yushin constitution until his assassination in October 1979.

Lee led the People's Action Party and served as Singapore's prime minister from 1959 to 1990. Per capita income rose from 443 dollars in 1960 to over 6,600 dollars by the mid-1980s, alongside detention without trial and defamation suits against opposition politicians.

Suharto ruled Indonesia from 1967 to 1998 after the army crushed an alleged communist coup attempt in 1965, a reprisal that killed at least 500,000 people by one account. His New Order averaged about seven percent growth a year but was marked by the East Timor occupation and corruption, and he resigned in May 1998.