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No. 2: Joseph Francois Dupleix (1697-1763)
Governor General, French India
Eighteenth-century French East India Company officer who became governor of Pondicherry and thus ran French India. Believed that a small number of well trained and armed Europeans backing pliant local leaders of vassal states could create and rule an empire of hundreds of millions. The idea was so brilliant it was co-opted and implemented by the British.