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Trump is a test for the ‘Great Man theory’
Modern historians are wary of ascribing change to individuals. Could that be about to change?
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A man showing support for US President-elect Donald Trump near his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Dec 14.
PHOTO: AFP
Simon Kuper
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Every day, the journalist’s worldview clashes with the academic historian’s. Journalists tend to emphasise the role of individuals in making history. Perhaps that’s because no storyteller ever thought: “The thing that would really drive this narrative are some impersonal structural forces.”
The focus on individuals used to be called “Great Man theory”. Its chief proponent, 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle, wrote: “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch of Oxford university has proposed removing the sexist and approbatory labels by renaming it “Big Beast history”. But historian Jane Ridley straightforwardly dismisses “Carlyle’s great man theory” as “a piece of romantic claptrap”.
