That teacher was condemned by the school curriculum of the province of Alberta to teach us that history was mostly made by Great Men, although when we got to all the Corn Laws and Reform Laws of C19 England, we were also required to admit the possibility that history was sometimes made by The Advance of the Law.

But our teacher obviously didn't quite believe what he was teaching, and I should have thought that most of us, in the HALF-CENTURY intervening, would have been provoked to think through the underlying assumptions that he asked my grade seven class to recognize and question.

In the immediate, I was provoked to start this thread because I am irritated at this very moment by what I feel is the ridiculous, patently obviously ridiculous, respect/interest accorded to "leaders" in a number of discussions going on on this board.

Who actually still believes in leaders? Who believes that any of the clowns we all still talk about as leaders are doing much leading, are much more than front-men for large and complex networks of power?

And more deeply: distressed though we may be by those networks of power, who believes that they actually make history?

They can obviously make the lives of many human beings miserable in the short term. Especially by ending many human lives, they can make them miserable.

But lots of us have started to read different kinds of history, history written from the careful examination of the way that masses of people lived at any given time, of the things they responded to or refused to respond to, of the ways they suddenly moved in their convictions, en masse, often without much leadership at all and without leaving articulate rationalizations of why they changed their lives.

I can write more about the social-historical writing that disrupted my own conventional training, but enough from me for now.

I am particularly interested in those shifts of thought - the move towards fundamentalism in several religions at the same time, the shift to the idea of companionate marriage in many parts of the world at the same time - and one my father contributed recently - the sudden creation of groups of people who challenged general thought about people with disabilities.

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I certainly wouldn't put in "far-left" thinking. As somone who aspires to be a social historian, I certainly find that kind of history much more interesting than the "great men" type.

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I hated hated hated history in school, precisely because of the phoniness of the Great Men theory. Even when social history was thrown in, it seemed bric-a-brac. One of the favourite jokes when I was twelve (I know I'm weird) was chanting "Rep by pop! Rep by pop!" As it was presented, it seemed completely meaningless, but had dadaist chant charm to it.

The best school experience I had with history was with a pretty wacky Grade 8 geography teacher. I was very keen on modernist art, so for my class project I wrote reams on the influence of African art on European and American modern art. Luckily, she thought it was cool. She also quit teaching whihc was too bad, but she seemed too imaginative for humdrum schooling.

Just started Craig Heron's Booze. It seems quite great from the first thirty pages or so, and it seems richer and more thoughtful than other writing of his. I don't know much about Heron, but I'd think it would have a lot to do with the expansion (?) of social history.

I think that was a fair statement, and certainly the analysis of social and economic forces (which are due to the sum total of the actions of many humans) has an important role to play in understanding historical change, instead of simply assuming that "Great Men" (rarely women, as implied by the sexist nature of the phrase) grab hold of history in their hands and wrench it from one place to another.

We speak, nowadays, of Bush the Younger as if he were single-handedly rearranging the globe.

Yet, if only the majority of USian women had been more concerned about their own reproductive rights than power over other people's domestic lives, GWB would already be a tiny footnote of History.

History is not made by the Great Men - nor the Boudiccas, for that matter. It's made by unemployed tinsmiths and irate fishwives.
Too bad they're not very nice.

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But lots of us have started to read different kinds of history, history written from the careful examination of the way that masses of people lived at any given time, of the things they responded to or refused to respond to, of the ways they suddenly moved in their convictions, en masse, often without much leadership at all and without leaving articulate rationalizations of why they changed their lives.

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You're still looking for a reason to hope, aren't you? It's a hard habit to break.

When these shifts occur, though, there always is leadership. Only, it comes in a more subtle guise than fancy, braided uniforms, or expensive suits with some kind of square hump in the back. If you stand in a crowd and listen very carefully, you can catch the beginning of a mass shift: "Hey, waiddaminnite... Sure, I was born a lemming, but does that mean I got to jump?"

That's why the guys in the uniforms are always in a big hurry to burn books and the people who write them.

YPK:

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"social history" (i.e., what not-so-great men do) always plays out in a political context,

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PS - Dr. C, i'm sorry: the juxtaposition was purely accidental.

[ 19 November 2004: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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What, pray, is History, if not political context?

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History records the actions of men (and women) at a given time.

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History records nothing. History doesn't have a face or a bias; it doesn't choose or focus; it just unrolls, like a carpet. History is recorded - by people. (Okay, usually men, and men usually prefer the video-game version: lots of explosions.)
No man is great by birth or even character. The son of a galley-slave may have overcome immense obstacles and made substantive changes in his village, but if Persia didn't burn as a result, nobody bothered to record his achievement. A man becomes great only in retrospect, because he got shoved out front when lots of explosions happened.

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No man is great by birth or even character. The son of a galley-slave may have overcome immense obstacles and made substantive changes in his village, but if Persia didn't burn as a result, nobody bothered to record his achievement. A man becomes great only in retrospect, because he got shoved out front when lots of explosions happened.

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Alexander burned Persepolis, after a good party.

It's about power, not manhood. (I know, that damned testosterone...!)

Power is additive, even Alexander needed an army. No one is without power.

An individual leader may focus an idea, a feeling, like a lens, to great effect.

In my (always fallible) memory, that is what happened with the series of Morgenthaler juries, and in two provinces, yes? Quebec and ?

Those repeated acquittals surprised elite opinion-makers at the time, owed little to them,* and while they obviously owed a good deal to Dr Morgenthaler's own heroism, it seems to me that it is the juries themselves that are of most historical interest.

Describing how several random collections of citizens had all moved farther and faster in their views than elites expected or knew, figuring out how that happened and describing it carefully -- that is social history, and an interesting small example of the people leading the leaders, I think.

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I need a lawyer (again). What is the term we use to describe juries who refuse to apply a law as written? Who vote in defiance of a law? There is a term ...

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IANAL and all, but you may be thinking of "jury nullification."

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Are you being serious, or is this post some bizarre parody of far-left thinking?

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Hardly. My own thinking, for example, barely qualifies as "left," certainly not "far left," and yet I agree with just about everything skdadl has written here.

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Much more interesting, yes, but "social history" (i.e., what not-so-great men do) always plays out in a political context, and so will always remain a footnote to what those boring great men did (and will, I assure you, continue to do).

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I am reminded of two quotations, both by "great men". The first quotation we've all heard, but unfortunately the second sentence is usually dropped. That's too bad, because I feel it's just as true and as vital as the first one.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
— Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton

The second quote, most of us have never heard, which is also too bad, because I feel it's every bit as important and noteworthy as the one above. But just because Lord Acton was an author, statesman, scholar and a 'Lord High Mucky-Muck' people place more emphasis on his words. I'd like to give equal billing, though...

"I sing a lot about the past, about the times and people who came before us, and I have some people ask me, why do you always have to sing about the past, you know? This is the eighties, or the ninties, or whatever. Why do you have to sing about the past? The past is gone.

Well, one of those friends, I went outside and found a rock, a big ol' rock, and I came back inside and dropped it on his foot. [laughter] And he said 'OW!! What did you do that for?!' And I laughed [chuckle], and I told him, 'That rock is old. It's ancient. That rock is older than you and me and everything we know, all rolled together. But it was sitting right outside my door.' You see, the past didn't go anywhere. It's still right here, right now...

[Beginning to softly strum...] You see, time is an enormous long river, and we are all standing in it."

— Utah Phillips, from The Past Didn't Go Anywhere by Utah Phillips and Ani Difranco.

Acton was only correct if you view rich, powerful men as "great" (which I suspect is how he meant it). But, for my money, Utah Phillips is a "great" man, too. And he is not a bad man.

[ 20 November 2004: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

One of my favourite essays on this topic is Georgy Plekhanov's On the Question of the Individual's Role in History . Permit me to share a quotes......... (Plekhanov uses sexist language typical for writers of his time.)

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A great man is great, not in his personal features lending an individual complexion to historic events, but in his possession of traits which make him the most capable of serving his time's great social needs, which have arisen under the influence of general and particular causes. In his well-known book on heroes and hero worship, Carlyle calls great men Beginners . This is a very apt description. A great man is precisely a Beginner because he sees farther than others do and his desires are stronger than in others. He solves ...problems raised by the previous course of society's intellectual development; he indicates the new social needs created by the previous development of social relations; he assumes the initiative in meeting those needs. He is a hero, not in the sense that he can halt or change the natural course of things, but in the sense that his activities are the conscious and free expression of that necessity and unconscious force. Therein lies all his significance, all his power. But it is a vast significance, and and awesome power.

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When John Turner denounced Brian Mulroney for abandoning the economic levers of power in that debate in '88, and asserted that the political levers of power would surely be lost, he was asserting the basic thesis of historical materialism (from Marx) which now constitutes "common sense" for all of us. Historical materialism is still the best antidote to clap-trap about "great individuals", the best and most enduring part of Marxist theory, and it is as easy to find as your nearest library. And check out old Georgy...especially in the analysis of more difficult social phenomena: the individual, artistic trends, etc., etc..

[ 20 November 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

The two best teachers I ever had taught social studies in junior high; the senior high teachers were pretty good. I think we studied mostly North American history; the colonies, the expansion west and native peoples. There was some genealogy and local history, some projects about African countries, ancient cultures, the October Crisis; and in grade 12 we studied World War II. Those are the things that stand out for me 30 years later.

There was a great variety of history courses in university in the 1970s-80s; but I tended to choose Western Canadian courses which tended to focus on social history. We discussed various theories of history; but I've always preferred the practical aspects; first find out the facts, then figure out what they mean. A theoretical model may be helpful in interpretation, but if you start with a model, you are apt to impose it on the facts and thus distort them.

An historical event is complicated; it's the historian's job to look at the evidence and find more where possible; and to focus on what seems to be important; it's a judgment call and the historian brings her own knowledge, experience and ability to question her own assumptions to it.

Great Man history is easier to do; you can focus on a specific person during a specific lifetime and hang everything else on that; explain him in the context of his times and explain how he affected the times. A Great Man is someone who has left his own records, or who has been noticed by other people who left records. They exercised their own judgment of who was significant; a choice which can be argued for and against.

Sometimes a Great Man's choice does affect the course of history, but you have to think about the entire context: what circumstances put the Great Man in a position to make that decision; would a different person in the same position have made the same choice; why did people support this decision; why was opposition to it ineffective; did it accomplish what the Great Man wanted or something unforeseen; what were the short-term and long-term results.

Social history is more difficult to do because you are trying to explain the actions of hundreds or millions of people. Recent developments, such as statistical analysis of the records and more widespread literacy, help. A social movement is made up of individuals who choose to act together or to move in the same direction. They may have chosen the same thing for different reasons. It is impossible to know every reason for each person's choice; you have to just try to find the most widespread reasons.

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Originally posted by Contrarian:
We discussed various theories of history; but I've always preferred the practical aspects; first find out the facts, then figure out what they mean. A theoretical model may be helpful in interpretation, but if you start with a model, you are apt to impose it on the facts and thus distort them.

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Like any other intellectual endeavour...if the conclusion is thought of in advance...then what gets investigated gets narrowed down to substantiate that result. Historians, of whatever ideological point of view, aren't the only ones who make that mistake. But...and it is a big BUT.....

The selection of facts is animated by a theoretical model...whether one acknowledges it or not. I'm personally more comfortable when people actually DEFEND the theoretical view that is implicit, and sometimes explicit, in their work. And the one aspect that convinces me that historical materialism is still the BEST approach is the evidence from the periodization of history.

Bourgeoie historians are notorious for breaking up history into arbitrary periods, having very little to do with anything but laziness (18th century, 19th century, blah-blah), or obvious but useless (separating WW1 from the preceding period that directly led to the war), and so on. In the field of aesthetics...some bourgeois theoreticians no longer even TRY to substantiate their point of view. They just throw information at you and hope that some sticks. (See E.H. Gombrich in The Story of Art for example.) This is intellectual eclecticism that I find very ugly and not compelling at all. Historians should be recognizing patterns, where they exist. I like the approach that separates material culture from spiritual culture and tries to elaborate BOTH on their own terms. never forgetting that they are, of course, connected.

A good topic, however.

[ 20 November 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

For one example, the European system of land ownership developed out of the feudal system; but in North America the aboriginal people had different views about land; and while the governments imposed their European idea of land ownership they had to adapt it to the North American reality; so in Canada you had differences between regions; the prairies were surveyed and organized mostly as a grid, with lands reserved for Indians, large chunks of land set aside for the CPR and HBC, or for school lands which the provinces could sell to raise money for education, etc. Canada and the USA handled their definitions of land differently; Canada began to distinguish between surface and sub-surface rights, so that on the prairies most sub-surface rights belonged to the Crown but some went to early settlers, to some Indian reserves, or the CPR, etc. It gets more complicated as you learn more about it.

The thing is that social history is pretty new in Canada, maybe 35 years old or so. Certainly, for aboriginal history there is a mountain of data which has yet to be studied, published, argued about and corrected and re-interpreted and published; this process has only just started.

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In the field of aesthetics...some bourgeois theoreticians no longer even TRY to substantiate their point of view. They just throw information at you and hope that some sticks. (See E.H. Gombrich in The Story of Art for example.) This is intellectual eclecticism that I find very ugly and not compelling at all. Historians should be recognizing patterns, where they exist.

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This is true; you need to connect the facts and put them into proper context. There's an essay by William G. Perry which discusses the difference between "bull" and "cow": [looks like article was scanned and has at least typo: 11 instead of "]

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To cow (v. intrans.) or the act of cowing:

To list data (or perform operations) without awareness of, or comment upon, the contexts, frames of reference, or points of observation which determine the origin, nature, and meaning of the data *(or procedures). To write on the assumption that "a fact is a fact." To present evidence of hard work as a substitute for understanding, without any intent to deceive.

To bull (v. intrans.) or the act of bulling:

To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any. To present evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the reader may be deceived into supposing a familiarity with content.

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I have a tendency to "cow" too much; whereas many babblers tend to "bull" too much.
Perry argues the need to marry the two, using language that sounds alchemical:

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The masculine context must embrace the feminine particular, though-:itself "born of Woman." Such a union is knowledge itself, and it alone can generate new contexts and new data which can unite in their turn to form new knowledge.

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Great men aren't only boring in history, they're boring today, which is skdadl's point, I think.
Yes, there are a couple of current threads on babble that are gravitating towards discussions of great men, predicated on their position as leaders of this or that, that I'm finding are becoming rather useless.

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Aside from this or that, no one would accuse you of being a great man al-Qa'bong.

Gender wars?
Behind every great man there is a woman?
Hmnnh.

"Ah yes the wars they will be fought again..."

Bull: Don't miss the forest for the trees.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Bull: Don't miss the forest for the trees.

Cow: You cannot fail with detail.

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For the description of bull I'd rather say: Don't bother me with the facts. But yes, that's about it.

In Perry's essay, the definitions as nouns were:

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cow (pure): data, however relevant, without relevancies.
bull (pure): relevancies, however relevant, without data.

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Right now, there are those who would have John A. Macdonald as "the Greatest Canadian" because he "built" the trans-Canada railway.

But it was people just like you and I who built that rail road. It has a way of taking away our pride, our sense of importance, and makes us easier to manipulate.

The problem there (aside from, I don't think it's true) is that if those "great men" can't fundamentally affect the impersonal tides of historical forces, neither can anybody else. "Great man" theory may ignore the role of everyone else, but at least it admits the possibility of human agency having an impact. Much of the other stuff is basically the historical version of "TINA"--everything was (and therefore is and will be) inevitable, and so nothing anyone does can make a difference.

The truth, I think, is somewhere in between them all. Great people do have an impact, and while some people who seem great were really just doing what the situation demanded, others have successfully pushed things in new directions. And even simple events; what if William the Bastard had lost, or simply not convincingly won, the battle of Hastings? England would have turned out very different, quite possibly never developing full-fledged feudalism and presumably never developing the peculiar amalgam that is the English language, ending up with a quite different literary tradition, quite likely not nearly as rich (fond though I am of Old English poetry).

Some inventors and discoverers who seem awfully amazing turn out to have been mainly products of the state of the art, if you judge by independent discoveries of the same things at roughly the same time. On the other hand, others make a difference. The whole direction of inquiry into basic physics and cosmology has been massively shaped by the quest to bring about a unification between quantum theory and relativity. What if there had been no Einstein? Other smart people would have stepped up, but their theories regarding gravitation, lightspeed and energy might have been considerably different, and the directions of inquiry prompted also very different.

As we know from reading Asser, and from Alfie himself, we know Alfred the Great codified Saxon law. It was Alfred's push to bring back education that really signified the start of England's climb out of the dark ages.

I think the Normans just climbed on board that train as it crept out of the station. There really weren't a whole lot of "Normans" who came along with William. Linguistically, and perhaps culturally, the Danes probably have more influence.

And yes, the "Normans" were Danes at one point, but Williams band of rogues were a Frankafied kind of Dane.

I'm far from an acedemic though, and my learning is incomplete, so you can beg to differ to your heart's content.

Culturally, the Frenchified vikings from Normandy were quite different from the Saxons, or for that matter the real vikings who were influencing them. For instance, king Harold Godwinson did not inherit the throne; the custom was that when a king died, the big nobles got together, did some horse trading, and voted on his successor. Harold was the toughest noble, and maybe stuffed a ballot or two, and he got in. For another instance, the Anglo-Saxon method of raising an army was somewhat different, and had a flatter organizational structure, than the feudal method of the French. Where the French and various other bits of ex-Roman territory had evolved a manorial system where much of the land was owned by lords and rented out to peasants who were quite firmly under their thumb, the Anglo-Saxons had a class of free farmers who provided much of the military muscle. They owed a certain amount of military service each year, and they were fairly well armed.
The Norman conquest made considerable progress in subjugating the farmer class and imposing mainland-style feudal relations. It's quite conceivable to me that an unconquered Anglo-Saxon realm would have remained less stratified and actually progressed towards some form of democracy faster than the actual England did.

There would have likely had to be some modifications to the system for raising armies eventually, mind you. The army of farmers owing military service was called the "fyrd". The fyrd system was clumsy, although powerful. It took time to raise the fyrd, and they tended to want to go home at inopportune times. Harvest time, f'rinstance. In fact, at the battle of Hastings, Harold had only his standing warband because there hadn't been time to call up the fyrd.

Which, again, suggests to me that if Harold hadn't just happened to be nailed with an arrow, since the battle was otherwise fairly close, it's likely that it would have been an indecisive contest. Harold would have withdrawn a little way, sent messengers off, and not given full battle again until he had his main army. Whereupon William would have become William the Crushed, because if he fought to a standstill against just Harold's warband, he would have had no chance against the full fyrd.

Did some quick reading/refreshing. Seems the Normans kept the Saxon "constitution" after the conquest. However, after some reflection, I remembered from my grade 9 history classes that the Normans instituted a kind of circut court or judges, who returned with recorded decisions, which enable precedent law, so that was certainly a change.

I was also inclined to think that the Saxon's for the most part must have tollerated their Norman artistocracy, but this wasn't the case. There were revolts, and it was only the Norman importation of Castle building that enabled them to keep the Saxon's down.

As for the pace of democracy, after some reflection I think that had much more to do with our good friend Johannes Guttenburg than it did with either the Saxons or the Normans.

Oh. And who is responsible for the Romanization of English Law? Even after the Norman Conquest, wasn't there still all that "trial by ordeal" stuff going on? I think the legal system we are familiar with didn't truly take shape until after William's dysnasty was gone.

....subject for tommorrow's google fest......

[ 23 November 2004: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

Yes, here's information.

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Henry's reforms allowed the emergence of a body of common law to replace the disparate customs of feudal and county courts. Jury trials were initiated to end the old Germanic trials by ordeal or battle. Henry's systematic approach to law provided a common basis for development of royal institutions throughout the entire realm.

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[ 23 November 2004: Message edited by: Contrarian ]

Take the Wapentake, for example.

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In some northern counties of England, a division, or district, answering to the hundred in other counties.
Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire are divided into wapentakes, instead of hundreds. [Written also {wapentac}.]
--Selden. Blackstone.

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but I digress: the great men thing is rubbish, surely, N.Beltov has nailed it with his Plekhanov quote.

Me, I'm tempted to analyze it first as a simplification which lends itself to historical storytelling - and must therefore have deep (oral history/narratives) roots of its own - you know, keep it 'personal', like 'Hi, My NameIs...Napoleon/Aristotle/Alexander/Pogwhistle,to personalize the broader historical tale and therefore make it easier to remember/imbibe;