Great man theory

The great man theory is a 19th-century approach to the study of history according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect.

Quotes

• It is of course possible to take the view that “great men” are mostly the products of circumstance. In the late 1790s the French had just lived through a revolution that left the country bitterly divided and the political class mostly discredited and ineffective. The only thing going well for France was a European war in which a mass of fervently patriotic citizen-soldiers regularly routed their opponents. Generals enjoyed far more prestige than politicians, and the latter came to rely on the former for political support. Under these circumstances, was it not extremely likely that someone like Napoleon Bonaparte would seize control of the nation, even had it been a military leader less brilliant and charismatic than the diminutive Corsican officer? Was it a stroke of extraordinary good luck that Nelson Mandela, a shrewd, widely revered, and generous leader, was at hand to oversee South Africa’s transition out of apartheid in the early 1990s, or was the historical moment just right for such a figure to emerge? “Personality or circumstance?” is a traditional topic for classroom debate, an ultimately unanswerable question that is good for getting students to line up social and political conditions on one side and personal traits on the other, and to think about the connections between them.
  • Sarah Maza, Thinking about History (2017), Chap. 1 : The History of Whom?