(120BC-70BC) Spartacus according to Roman historians, was a gladiator-slave who became the alleged leader of an unsuccessful slave uprising against the Roman Republic.

(165BCE-63BCE) The Maccabees were Jewish rebels who fought against the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty.

(8–2 BC - 29–36 AD) Jesus. Most scholars in the fields of history and biblical studies agree that Jesus was a Galilean Jew, was regarded as a teacher and healer, was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on orders of the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate under the accusation of sedition against the Roman Empire.

(570) Muhammad was the historical founder of the religion of Islam, considered by Muslims to be the last messenger and prophet of God. He expanded his mission as a prophet, publicly preaching strict monotheism, condemning against the social evils of his day, and warning of a Day of Judgment when all humans shall be held responsible for their deeds. After ignoring Muhammad's preaching, the elites in Mecca, feeling threatened by his message, harassed Muhammad, and persecuted his followers. Eight years of war between Muhammad and Meccan forces followed, ending with the Muslim victory and conquest of Mecca.

(1359–c. 1416) Owain Glyndwr He instigated an ultimately unsuccessful revolt against English rule of Wales.

(1450-?) Jack Cade was the leader of a popular revolt in late medieval Europe in the 1450 Kent rebellion which took place in the time of King Henry VI in England.

(1573) Ambroz Matija Gubec was a Croatian peasant and a revolutionary, best known as the leader of Croatian and Slovenian peasant revolt.

(1722-1803) Samuel Adams was an American leader, politician, writer, political philosopher and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Adams was the chief Massachusetts leader who garnered the support of the colonies in rebelling against Great Britain, ultimately resulting in the American Revolution.

(1732-1799) George Washington led America's Continental Army to victory over Britain in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and was later elected the first President of the United States. He served two four-year terms from 1789 to 1797, having been reelected in 1792. Because of his central role in the founding of the United States, Washington is often referred to as the "Father of his Country". His devotion to republicanism and civic virtue made him an exemplary figure among early American politicians.

(1736-1799) Patrick Henry was a prominent figure in the American Revolution, known and remembered primarily for his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech.

(1743-1793) Jean-Paul Marat was a Swiss-born French scientist and physician who made much of his career in the United Kingdom, but is best known as an activist in the French Revolution. A fiery journalist, an advocate of such violent measures as the September 1792 massacres of jailed "enemies of the Revolution," and a member of the radical Jacobin faction (though never a member of the Jacobin Club as such) during the French Revolution, he helped launch the Reign of Terror and compiled "death lists." He was stabbed to death in his bathtub by self-proclaimed Girondist Charlotte Corday.

(1758-1794) Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known leaders of the French Revolution. His supporters knew him as "the Incorruptible" because of his austure moral devotion to revolutionary political change. He was an influential member of the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror that ended with his arrest and execution in 1794. He was also a lawyer.

(1761-1811) André Rigaud was the leading mulato military leader during the Haïtian Revolution. Rigaud aligned himself with revolutionary France and with an interpretation of the Rights of Man that ensured the civil equality of all free people.

(1770-1843) Theodoros Kolokotronis was a Greek general in the Greek War of Independence against the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

(1800-1831) Nat Turner, was an American slave whose failed slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, was the most remarkable instance of black resistance to enslavement in the antebellum southern United States. His methodical slaughter of white civilians during the uprising makes his legacy controversial, but he is still considered by many to be a heroic figure of black resistance to oppression

(1805-1881) Louis Auguste Blanqui was a French political activist. The theory of Blanquism is attributed to him. Blanquism holds that socialist revolution should be carried out by a relatively small group of highly organised and secretive conspirators. Having taken power, the revolutionaries would then use the power of the state to introduce socialism or communism. It may be considered a particular sort of 'putschism' - that is, the view that socialist revolution should take the form of a putsch or coup d'etat

(1814-1876) Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary, and often considered one of the “fathers of modern anarchism".

(1815-1875) John Mitchel was an Irish nationalist activist and political journalist, and also became a public voice for the pro-slavery viewpoint in the United States in the 1850s and 1860s before ending up elected to the British House of Commons, only to be disqualified because he was a convicted felon. His Jail Journal is one of Irish nationalism's most famous texts.

(1818-1895) Frederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. Called "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia," Douglass was one of the most prominent figures of African American history during his time, and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history. Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, American Indian, or recent immigrant. He spent his life advocating the brotherhood of all humankind. One of his favorite quotations is: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

(1823–1867) Thomas Francis Meagher was an Irish revolutionary, who also served in the United States Army as a Brigadier General during the U.S. Civil War.

(1824-1872) Avram Iancu was a Transylvanian Romanian lawyer who played an important role in the local chapter of the Austrian Empire Revolutions of 1848-1849. He was especially active in the Ţara Moţilor region and the Apuseni Mountains. The rallying of peasants around him, as well as the allegiance he paid to the Habsburgs got him the moniker Crăişorul Munţilor ("The little Emperor/King of the Mountains".

(1831-1890) Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man. He is notable in American and Native American history in large part for his major victory at the Battle of Little Big Horn against the 7th Cavalry, where his premonition of defeating them became reality.

(1842-1921) Prince Peter (Pyotr) Alexeyevich Kropotkin was one of Russia's foremost anarchists and one of the first advocates of what he called "anarchist communism": the model of society he advocated for most of his life was that of a communalist society free from central government.

(1847-1922) Georges Eugène Sorel was a French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism. He rejected those Marxists who believed in inevitable and evolutionary change, emphasising instead the importance of will and preferring direct action. (He may even have coined the phrase, "direct action".) These approaches included general strikes, boycotts, sabotage, and constant disruption of capitalism with the goal being to achieve worker control over the means of production.

(1850-1928) Pavel Borisovich Axelrod was a Russian Marxist revolutionary. Influenced by Mikhail Bakunin in his youth, he remained an Idealist even after adopting the Marxist philosophy of historical materialism. Axelrod co-founded the Marxist group Emancipation of Labor in Switzerland with his lifelong friend Georgi Plekhanov and Vera Zasulich in 1883. In 1900, Axelrod, Plekhanov and Zasulich joined forces with younger revolutionary Marxists Julius Martov, Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Potresov and the six edited Iskra, a Marxist newspaper, in 1900-1903. When Iskra supporters split at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, Axelrod sided with the Menshevik faction against Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks.

(1863-1897) Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro was one of the chief leaders of the revolution of the Philippines against Spanish colonial rule. The 1896 Philippine Revolution was the first revolution in Asia against European colonial rule.

(1867-1919) Kurt Eisner was a German and Bavarian politician and journalist. Kurt Eisner, as a German socialist journalist and statesman, organized the Socialist Revolution that achieved the overthrow of the monarchy in Bavaria (in 1918).

(1868-1916) James Connolly was an Irish socialist leader. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents.

(1869–1940) Emma Goldman was a Kaunas, Lithuania-born anarchist known for her writings and speeches.

(1869-1964) Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy was a Filipino general, politician, and independence leader. He played an instrumental role in Philippine independence, essentially in the Philippine Revolution against Spain, as well as in the Philippine-American War that resisted American occupation.

(1870-1924) Lenin (alias) Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was a Russian revolutionary, a communist politician, the main leader of the October Revolution, the first head of Soviet Russia, and the primary theorist of the ideology that has come to be called Leninism, which is a variant of Marxism.

(1870-1919) Karl Liebknecht was a German socialist and a co-founder of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. Liebknecht was arrested and sent to the eastern front during World War I for the group's echoing of Russian Bolsheviks' arguments for a Proletarian Revolution; refusing to fight, he served burying the dead, and due to his rapidly deteriorating health was allowed to return to Germany in October 1915.

(1870-1871) Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish-born Marxist political theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary. She was a theorist of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland, later becoming involved in the German SPD, followed by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany.

(1875-1907) Qiú Jǐn (秋瑾) was a Chinese female anti-Qing Empire revolutionary killed after a failed uprising. After the Xu Gao-led uprising failed, Qiu was tortured by Qing officials in order to make her reveal secrets. However she did not succumb, and she was publicly executed at 32 years old in her home village, Shānyīn .

(1878-1923) Pancho Villa, Doroteo Arango Arámbula was one of the foremost leaders and best known generals of the Mexican Revolution, between 1911 and 1920

(1879-1919) Emiliano Zapata Salazar was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910, and which was initially directed against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. He formed and commanded an important revolutionary force, the Liberation Army of the South.

(1881-1970) Alexander Fyodorovitch Kerensky was a Russian revolutionary leader who was instrumental in toppling the Russian monarchy. He served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin seized power following the October Revolution.

(1888-1934) Nestor Ivanovich Makhno was an anarcho-communist Ukrainian revolutionary who refused to align with the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. He is credited with organizing an enormous experiment in anarchist values and practice, one which was cut short by the consolidation of Bolshevik power.

(1890-1969) Hồ Chí Minh was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman, who later became Prime Minister (1946–1955) and President (1955–1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. He is most famous for leading the Viet Minh independence movement in 1941, establishing the communist-governed Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Empire in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.

(1890-1974) James Patrick Cannon was an American Communist and Trotskyist leader. Cannon was the founding leader of the Socialist Workers Party. Born in Rosedale, Kansas, James P. Cannon was first a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and then of the Socialist Party of America. He was personally trained by Bill Haywood, a prominent IWW leader

(1890-1922) General Michael John ("Mick") Collins was an Irish revolutionary leader, Minister for Finance in the Irish Republic, Director of Intelligence for the IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations, both as Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-Chief of the National Army.

(1892-1980) Josip Broz Tito was the leader of the Second Yugoslavia, which lasted from 1943 until 1991. Tito is best known for organizing the anti-fascist resistance movement known as the Yugoslav Partisans, founding Cominform, along with defying Soviet influence, and founding and promoting the Non-Aligned Movement.

Despite his devotion to Islam, Khomeini also emphasised international revolutionary solidarity, expressing support for the PLO, the IRA, Cuba, and the South African anti-apartheid struggle (Moin, Khomeini, (2000), p.228 ). See

(1907-1931) Bhagat Singh was an Indian freedom fighter, considered to be one of the most famous martyrs of the Indian freedom struggle.

(1911-1969) Carlos Marighella was a Brazilian guerrilla revolutionary and Marxist writer. Marighella's most famous contribution to guerilla literature was the Minimanual Of The Urban Guerrilla, consisting of advice on how to disrupt and overthrow authority with an aim to revolution. He also wrote For the Liberation of Brazil. The theories laid out in both books have greatly influenced modern ideological activism. Unlike Che Guevara who proposed guerilla activity taking shape in the villages, Marighela's theories on guerilla warfare envisaged cities as the spring of rebellion.

(1911-1995) Milovan Đilas was a Montenegrin Serb Communist politician and theorist in Yugoslavia. He was a key figure in the Partisan movement during the World War II as in the post war government, and became the best known and most determined critics of the system, in his country and in general.

(1915-1947) General Aung San was Burma's national hero, revolutionary, nationalist, general, and politician. He also became a founding member and first secretary-general of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in August 1939. Shortly afterwards he co-founded the People's Revolutionary Party, renamed the Socialist Party after the Second World War.

(1918) Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was the first President of South Africa to be elected in fully-representative democratic elections. Before his presidency, Mandela was a prominent anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress (ANC), and was sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage after he went underground and began the ANC's armed struggle.

(1928-1965) Malcolm X was a Black Muslim Minister and National Spokesman for the Nation of Islam. He was also founder of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. During his life, Malcolm went from being a drug dealer and burglar to one of the most prominent black nationalist leaders in the United States; he was considered by some as a martyr of Islam and a champion of equality.

(1928–1967) Ernesto Guevara de la Serna known as Che Guevara or el Che, was an Argentine-born medical doctor best known as a Marxist, politician, and leader of Cuban and internationalist guerrillas.

(1929-1983) Ana Maria was the "nom de guerre" of Mélida Anaya Montes, the second in command of the FMLN, in El Salvador. An intellectual, she was considered as an icon among revolutionary women in the region. Eventually she was killed by her own comrades on April 6, 1983 in Managua, Nicaragua, after having made many sacrifices during her life as a guerrilla.

(1932-1959) Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán was active in underground activities against the Cuban President Fulgencio Batista and played an important role in the Cuban Revolution. Along with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Raúl Castro, he was one of the main leaders of the revolution.

(1934-1957) Frank Pais was a Cuban revolutionary who campaigned for the overthrow of General Fulgencio Batista's government in Cuba. Pais was a key organizer within the urban underground movement during the Cuban revolution, collaborating with Fidel Castro's guerilla forces which were conducting activities in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Pais was killed in the streets of Santiago de Cuba by the Santiago police on July 30, 1957

(1936-1976) Carlos Fonseca Amador was a Nicaraguan teacher and founder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Fonseca was later killed in the mountains of Nicaragua, one year before the FSLN took power.

(1939- )José María Sison is a writer and intellectual who reorganized the Communist Party of the Philippines by combining elements of Maoism. On December 26, 1968, he formed and chaired the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), an organization founded on Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought, stemming from his experience as a youth leader and labor and land reform activist. This is known as the First Great Rectification movement where Sison and other radical youth criticized the existing Party leadership and failure. The reformed CPP included Maoism with the political line as well as the struggle for a National Democratic two-stage revolution, constituting a National Democratic Revolution through a Protracted Peoples War as its first part, and to be followed by a Socialist Revolution.

(1942-1989) Dr. Huey Percy Newton was co-founder and inspirational leader of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, a black nationalist/racial equality organization that began in October 1966.

(1944-1983) Maurice Rupert Bishop was a Grenadian politician and revolutionary. He was educated at the London School of Economics and had an extensive background in studies of the black power movement. Returning to Grenada, he became active in politics. In 1973 he became head of the Marxist New Jewel Movement political party.

(1947-1977) Assata Shakur is an African-American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. In 1977 she was convicted of several felonies in relation to the 1973 slayings of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster and fellow activist Zayd Malik Shakur.

She escaped from prison in 1979 and has been living in Cuba with political asylum since 1984. Since May 2, 2005, she has been classified as a "domestic terrorist" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has offered a $1 million reward for assistance in her capture.

(1957) Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos spokesperson for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) but, due to his prominence in the EZLN, he is considered by many to be one of its main leaders.