The Problem With Great Men

by Hallie Rubenhold

In this essay, specially written for the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Rubenhold offers a powerful critique of the idea that history is only the story of ‘heroes’ – often wealthy, educated men. Instead, she argues, social history can be a form of activism, grabbing us by the lapels and taking us into the fascinating lives of our forebears regardless of rank, class, creed, colour or gender.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

24 pages, Unknown Binding

First published August 1, 2020

Reviews

[Kate Levett]

I love Hallie Rubenhold's passion and am after being truly immersed by The Five and keen to read more of her work. I bet she is amazing to listen to.

[vicky]

“Somehow, in the current age (...), history is seen as something static. It happened and is gone. History lies beyond us, something deposited on the landscape by long dead hands; the rows of white headstones that rise from the green and yellow fields of Northern France, the wartime pock-marks that scar the walls of Europe’s great stone buildings. It drew borders along our maps and scattered fortresses, places of worship and houses of government across the land. Although our streets were trod by earlier feet and our dwellings contained lives that came before ours, history still does not appear real or present to most of us. We rarely think of it as a living part of our environment, or that we have inhaled its particles. We have also swallowed many of its so-called ‘truths’ without question (...) Most of us are uncertain from where or when we picked up certain fixed beliefs, they just became lodged in us.”

“The reason that Great Man Theory has persisted for all these years, is because he has faded into the background. History feels inactive and dead, and so we have left him standing, a rusting monolith, unmolested, unacknowledged, but continuing to cast a long shadow over how we view our history. Great Man’s presence is felt at our national anniversary celebrations. Great Man is the reason we memorialise certain historic figures or turn their births and deaths into year-long commemorations. Great Man’s influence in the public sphere has been to reduce the vast expanse of history into a handful of notable personalities and important dates. It gives the impression that history happened to someone else, to a chosen collection of individuals who Carlyle would define as ‘heroes’ (...) It is about wars, dynastic power struggles, and the enactment of laws and rights, many of which often changed life only for a minority.”

“The problem with perpetually giving people what they know, is not only that we never challenge biases and obsolete concepts, but that we never expand our knowledge. There is security and comfort in the familiar, and we have allowed popular history to become just this, an anthology of bedtime stories. But history, which should be regarded as an account of our human experience, is not a place of safety.”

“When I alight at my underground station, I can see my slumbering neighbours who sought shelter there during the Blitz. I know the names of people who slept in my house in 1911. These were the individuals who shared my physical space before I arrived here, whose feet touched paving stones beneath mine. However brief, fraught or fortunate their time here, they have left us a legacy of stories to consider and explore, and yet Great Man history has conditioned us to believe that these lives are unworthy, that their personal or even collective experiences have nothing significant to say about our past.”

[Rachel]

“History should teach us something about ourselves, it should encourage us to examine our prejudices and to understand our communities.” We need more social history.

[Lou Lou]

This essay needs to be read widely

[Katie]

The Problem with Great Men hits on so many of the things that are bothering me professionally these days and reminds me why I got into the work of public history in the first place.

Rubenhold lays out how nearly 200 years ago (1840 to be exact) essayist Thomas Carlyle gave his lecture series “On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in Human History” and how that then turned into a published work, and became the root of the Great Man theory that has dominated the way we perceive history ever since. We our overly focused on the single “hero” of invention, of the elite, on anniversaries and other marks of importance. She also then, in a way I recognize from reading The Five, pulls apart how that doesn’t serve the actual work of history – how it removes the human from the equation and how putting people back into the narrative, of focusing on what can be learned in the gaps about regular people leading regular lives is crucial to making history real and relevant to people who are convinced that it is a static thing (and would have others believe the same).

full review: https://faintingviolet.wordpress.com/...

[Paola Adelina]

“But history, which should be regarded as an account of our human experience, is not a place of safety. It is at its best when it is potent, when it forces reflections, when it is unsettling, confrontational, or when it inspires wonder.”

[kenzie]

"Carlyle’s theories of greatness applied only to white, privileged men, though elite white women were also allowed to listen and to consider male heroism."

hallie rubenhold is so freaking cool