Trump is a test for the 'Great Man theory'

Modern historians are wary of ascribing change to individuals. Could that be about to change?

- Simon Kuper

Every day, the journalist's worldview clashes with the academic historian's. Journalists tend to emphasize 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".

Modern historians tend to be wary of ascribing change to individuals. They are more likely to identify "the fish that changed the world" (to quote the subtitle of Mark Kurlansky's book Cod) than a human who did. Most historians prefer impersonal structural forces: geography for the French Annales school, economics for Marxists, technology for others, while there's been a recent surge of interest in climate change and pandemics.