I’ll excuse monarchs of England, since I don’t think they’d be so different than monarchs of any other major country. But I assume (correctly?) that English wasn’t really considered a language of arts and sciences at a time when French or German was.
Shakespeare might have had a great impact in the English language, but was he really well known in the rest of Europe? So who would it be? Newton? Locke?
And what about America? Other than presidents, who might the average European heard of? Anyone before, let’s say, Edison?
For America, Franklin was quite popular in Europe, especially France. But I doubt the “average European” knew very much of anything at that time outside of what happened in their village or town.
I think you may find that this depends on the country. For instance, there is absolutely no question that the first famous American as far as Japan is concerned was Admiral Perry. He’s a massively important historical figure here but I doubt all that many people know about him elsewhere.
That is not accurate on two counts: he was not English, he was Scottish; both Englilsh and Scottish kings had been first-language English for some centuries at that point. James IV of Scotland is widely cited as the last Gaelic-speaking king, but he wasn’t a native speaker of Gaelic, and he was the great-grandfather of James VI / James I of England.
On the English side, the kings had been English speaking since the mid-Henrys. By the late fourteenth century, English was pretty solidly ensconced.
But nobody was reading Bede in English. His influence on the international community was via Latin.
I think the answer to the OP is somewhere in the 16th century, in the Elizabethan age, but I don’t know who to suggest.
Edit: because of the combination of political and economic factors in England and on the Continent, plus the stability of Elizabeth’s reign.
Double-Edit: I mean, Bede didn’t consider English a language of arts and sciences.
One of the first international celebrities from America was Daniel Boone. A biography pulished in 1784 (during Boone’s lifetime) was incredibly popular in Europe and was translated into French and German. European tourists in the U.S. considered it a huge deal to get a chance to meet Boone.
Oh well, if you’re “serious,” I’ll give you a serious answer.
Peter the Great imposed a program on of deliberate modernization and westernization on Russia. He built a city called St. Petersburg starting in 1703 and proclaimed it the capital. He brought in experts in all subjects from the “West,” i.e. western Europe. It developed into the cultural and industrial capital as well as the political one, and was also the major trading port. A large percentage of the population were foreign-born, almost unheard of in other parts of Russia, and since Britain was the dominant trading nation in the 19th century, lots of Brits lived in, traded with, and sent books to St. Petersburg.
After the Tsar was disposed in 1917, Russians downgraded St. Petersburg in all ways and built up Moscow as a native Russia exemplar. Except that they did it in the name of Marx and Engels, a couple of guys who knew and wrote in several languages but spent many years writing and publishing in … wait for it … English.
Seriously, your answer isn’t within miles of the question the OP asked. I can’t imagine what question you thought you were answering. It’s not even correct. Nobody seriously believes that The Beatles were the cause of Communist dissolution, although rock music as a whole as a symbol of Western life did play a role in discontent, although not a major one.
And I’ll throw out Chaucer (d. 1400) as someone well-known, especially after the printing press was developed.
Asking who the average European would know is very different question than asking who educated Europeans would know, as John Mace noted. The average European was illiterate until well into the 19th century. They probably wouldn’t know much about anybody from other European countries except for a few kings and warriors. It took the rise of mass printing and universal schooling to make the outside world known, and that limits it to after, say, 1850.
Or Saint Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 21 April 1109), inventor of the ontological ‘proof’ of the existence of God. A very important theologian in an era when theologians were the shit! (He was born in France, though, so he may not count. He might not have spoken English, despite being based in Canterbury.)
Or Thomas Becket, saint and martyr (c.1118-1170). After his death pilgrims would come to his shrine from many parts of Europe.
Or Saint Patrick, who was certainly famous in Ireland when he was there in the mid 5th century, but was actually English.
Fame of course, is a relative and contextual matter. How famous? Where? Amongst whom?
As for Americans, I would suggest Benjamin Franklin, whose work on electricity (especially coming up with the idea of negative and positive charges) was very important to European scientists, even if (as may or may not have been the case) some of them had little awareness of his other achievements. If we go back before Franklin, we are not really talking about Americans.
In what sense was St. Patrick English? There is no evidence that he was from what is now England (as opposed to what is now Wales or what is now Scotland: all of them are possibilities). He did not have an English name, there is no evidence that he spoke English, and (despite his wacky chronology) by all accounts he was already in Ireland before the English expanded their conquest beyond Kent and SE England. He was unambiguously British (i.e. Romanized Celt from the island of Britain) but beyond that his ethnic identity is not possible to fix.
“Not Irish” does not equal “English”!
Could curwin please clarify whether he (she?) meant “famous English speaker whether they spoke English to anyone outside of England or not,” in which case I think Bede is an excellent answer, or “famous AS an English speaker”.
Benjamin Franklin was also American Ambassador to France, where he was widely known, very popular and cited as an inspiration by several of the early revolutionaries.
If you’re looking for Medieval Englishmen known outside England, you could also go for Roger Bacon (13th century) or William of Ockham (14th). Of course, like all other scholars in Western Europe at the time, they would have taught and written in Latin.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read about the Soviet Union here on this board. No one in their right mind believes that The Beatles had anything to do with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. You shouldn’t post blatant lies in GQ.
I guess I meant (although I admit I didn’t think about it all that much) someone famous to people outside of England (or its colonies), who people would have known spoke English (or was English/British/etc) - even if they didn’t write in English (or didn’t write at all).
And regarding the Beatles: even though I agree that reply didn’t really have anything to do with my question, I think in terms of the impact on the Soviet Union, he was relating to the book described here:
