The 19th-century idea that great men – exceptionally talented, courageous, charismatic individuals – direct and change the course of history by the sheer force of their genius and personality is hard to shake. It has persisted despite the rise of egalitarian and Marxist social theory and the advent in the 1960s of EP Thompson’s levelling up school of “history from below”.
The Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle viewed figures such as Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Martin Luther and the prophet Muhammad as standout heroes of their time who fundamentally, permanently changed the world around them. The mass of mankind, he believed, could merely watch, marvel, admire and tamely follow these top-down makers and shakers of “universal history”.
