The study of imperialism speaks to the reality that great man theory, in its emphasis on the talents and volitions of a handful of individuals in determining events, is the foremost historiography. National borders are shaped by individuals and small groups of particular note, not the people at large. This strikes in contradiction to history from below, which considers ordinary people in societies to be the crucial factor for the development of historical events. In applying history from below to events, historians tend to favour social histories to biographies as historical accounts. While history from below is useful in reframing our reaction to historical events, great man historiography is far more useful when answering questions like, “Why was this empire able to acquire this territory?” and “Why was this state unable to maintain control of these territories?”
It is difficult to support the notion that the ordinary people in the nations of Europe drove the division of Africa. The territories of the African continent were formally divided between the European colonial powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, a convention attended by just twenty plenipotentiaries from fourteen countries. Just one Briton, Sir Edward Malet, could count himself among the twenty. The fact that the governance of hundreds of millions of people lay subject to the volitions of just twenty people evidences the notion that it is individuals, not masses, who are crucial in driving the wheels of history.
Even if we are liberal in our understanding of who was responsible for the decisions made in Berlin, we find that the decisions made reflected the will of a small class of people. It might be argued that in the United Kingdom, given the House of Commons, all those eligible to vote were responsible, to some degree, for Berlin, in that they contributed to the shaping of the British colonial state. Such a perspective does not, however, lend itself to oppressed people driving history. In the General Election of 1880, the Election immediately prior to the Berlin Conference, a minimum annual rent of £10 (around £810 in 2022 terms) was required to vote. The Act stipulating voting rights, the Representation of the People Act 1867, intended to ensure that “the middle classes” had “the preponderance of power”.This Election returned William Ewart Gladstone, the son of a slave-owning baronet, as Prime Minister. Under Gladstone’s direction, British foreign policy was developed. Gladstone’s distinguished social background demonstrates that the somewhat exclusive class of franchise-holding Britons had elected an even more exclusive class to represent them. It is therefore difficult to argue that ordinary people in Britain were at the heart of the decision to carve up Africa. It is even more difficult to argue that the ordinary people on the continent of Africa were somehow responsible for their colonisation.
The British Empire’s acquisition of the Indian subcontinent supports the notion that territory acquisition is driven by the abilities and volitions of exclusive groups. Historians generally agree that formal British rule in India began with the British defeat of the Franco-Mughal coalition in the Third Carnatic War. The Treaty of Allahabad in 1764 granted the British East India Company the right to rule over 20 million Indians. In all, less than 60, 000 men were involved in the War’s decisive battle (the Battle of Plassey). The diminutive size of the forces compared to the contemporary populations of Great Britain and the Indian subcontinent already delegitimises the view that history is driven by masses; the men at Plassey would have been considerably better trained in warfare than a sample of ordinary men.
We can specify the factor integral to British victory further. Great Britain would not have defeated the Mughals at Plassey if not for the defection of Mir Jafar. General Robert Clive had arranged an alliance with Mir Jafar, a demoted Mughal general, in his attack on the Mughals. Mir Jafar’s camp consisted of thirty-five thousand infantrymen and fifteen-thousand cavalrymen in all, considerably outnumbering the forces of both the Nawab (~5,000) and Clive (1,000). Had Mir Jafar fought alongside the Nawab and the Mughal Empire, the British would have faced a vast material disadvantage at Plassey.
How might Edward P. Thompson, the man who popularised history from below in academia, ascertain the crucial factor for this battle? In History from Below, an article published in Times Literary Supplement, Thompson advocates for the history of oppressed groups to be synthesised with more orthodox narratives, considering it “peculiar” that the history of common people be considered “distinct from … History Proper”.Thompson would be sure to mention the contributions of non-leadership figures, ranging from bullet manufacturing workers to infantrymen. None of these descriptions would be able to provide a name other than Mir Jafar as crucial for victory.
Detractors may highlight the numerous empires served by large-scale armies. In 1793, Lazare Carnot of the French Revolution’s Committee for Public Safety implemented the first national conscription; since then, many states have operated under the framework that directing the entirety of a nation’s resources towards war was necessary for victory. As the number of participants in territorial conflicts increases, and the scale of contested territories expands, one might conclude that the influence that any one individual might have on the outcome of the conflict decreases. Such a view is proposed by historian Alan Forrest in the introduction to Napoleon; he writes that the Napoleonic Empire was a “collaborative enterprise that depended on the effort and vision of thousands of administrators, army officers, jurists and educators.”(Emphasis mine)
The Napoleonic Empire, in its invocation of the Revolutionary la patrie en danger and the duty of every citizen to serve the state, may erroneously be seen to embody the idea that national borders can be dictated by peoples rather than persons. The campaigns beyond the Rhine and on the Italian peninsula were not won by small bands of noble officers, as might have been the case in the days of the Ancièn Régime, but rather by large armies of common Frenchmen. The changed nature of the wartime state from an aristocratic venture to a more inclusive one might suggest that the contributions of any one man were not critical.
While it is true that far more ordinary men than before decided the outcome of military affairs (by way of enlistment to the army) in the days of Bonaparte than in the days of the Bourbons, it would be erroneous to consider this evidence for history from below. Napoleon Bonaparte, in his vision for a continental empire and his aptitude for military affairs, was the crucial factor in determining the borders of Europe. In the transformation of France from Republic to Empire, the French state was characterised by the concentration of rule in the hands of Bonaparte and his entourage. This is first demonstrated by his successful 1799 plot to overthrow the Directory; he replaced the institution with a triune consulate of which he was the first consul. In 1804, this transformation culminated in the implementation of an imperial constitution and Napoleon’s self-coronation as Emperor. While the sons of the old Third Estate were enabled to rise to the rank of officer and contribute to the expansion of French territory, they ultimately worked in service of Napoleon’s will and were loyal to the cult of personality created by Napoleon in the late 1790s and early 1800s.
Having been convinced that individuals act as the origins for empires, an advocate for history from below may remain convinced that empires fall in accordance with the efforts of oppressed peoples. Given that anti-imperialism is typically intertwined with calls for self-determination and more democratic governance, we might assume that it is the ordinary and oppressed who bring about the ends of empires. On these grounds, one might be convinced to look to historiographies other than great man theory to understand why empires fall.
This would be history-from-below-on-steroids; even the most acclaimed historian of this school, Howard Zinn, neglects to consider the involvement of oppressed groups in the American Revolution crucial to the outcome of events. In A People’s History of the United States, Zinn frames the American Revolution - the war and the political developments that followed - as a bourgeois revolution. In the chapter A Kind of Revolution, Zinn outlines that while the political developments ended British control over the Americans, wealth and power remained concentrated in the hands of a few white male property owners.
Vitally, however, Zinn does not suggest that the Native Americans enlisted by the Americans somehow changed the tide of war after early success for the Empire, or that the domestic labour of the wives of the American colonists brought about British surrender at Yorktown. He considers French involvement to be the crucial factor, writing that “aided by a large French army, with the French navy blocking off the British from supplies and reinforcements, [the Americans] won the final victory of the war… in 1781.” In his study of the end of the British Empire in what is now the United States, Zinn quietly accepts the limitations of history from below. Realising that his historiography fails to explain the American victory, Howard Zinn borrows from great man theorists in his implication that the decisions of Louis XVI of France won the war for the Americans.
It must be noted that the failure of history from below to explain the result of the American War for Independence does not render Zinn’s account of American history useless. A social historian, Zinn labours to detail the plight of marginalised groups and therefore successfully provides an alternative to “fundamental nationalist glorification of country”. Like all social histories, A People’s History does not, however, establish cause and consequence. Considering this, the study of empires demonstrates that history from below cannot supplant great man theory but may, at best, complement it.
It is difficult to support the notion that the ordinary people in the nations of Europe drove the division of Africa. The territories of the African continent were formally divided between the European colonial powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, a convention attended by just twenty plenipotentiaries from fourteen countries. Just one Briton, Sir Edward Malet, could count himself among the twenty. The fact that the governance of hundreds of millions of people lay subject to the volitions of just twenty people evidences the notion that it is individuals, not masses, who are crucial in driving the wheels of history.
Even if we are liberal in our understanding of who was responsible for the decisions made in Berlin, we find that the decisions made reflected the will of a small class of people. It might be argued that in the United Kingdom, given the House of Commons, all those eligible to vote were responsible, to some degree, for Berlin, in that they contributed to the shaping of the British colonial state. Such a perspective does not, however, lend itself to oppressed people driving history. In the General Election of 1880, the Election immediately prior to the Berlin Conference, a minimum annual rent of £10 (around £810 in 2022 terms) was required to vote. The Act stipulating voting rights, the Representation of the People Act 1867, intended to ensure that “the middle classes” had “the preponderance of power”.This Election returned William Ewart Gladstone, the son of a slave-owning baronet, as Prime Minister. Under Gladstone’s direction, British foreign policy was developed. Gladstone’s distinguished social background demonstrates that the somewhat exclusive class of franchise-holding Britons had elected an even more exclusive class to represent them. It is therefore difficult to argue that ordinary people in Britain were at the heart of the decision to carve up Africa. It is even more difficult to argue that the ordinary people on the continent of Africa were somehow responsible for their colonisation.
The British Empire’s acquisition of the Indian subcontinent supports the notion that territory acquisition is driven by the abilities and volitions of exclusive groups. Historians generally agree that formal British rule in India began with the British defeat of the Franco-Mughal coalition in the Third Carnatic War. The Treaty of Allahabad in 1764 granted the British East India Company the right to rule over 20 million Indians. In all, less than 60, 000 men were involved in the War’s decisive battle (the Battle of Plassey). The diminutive size of the forces compared to the contemporary populations of Great Britain and the Indian subcontinent already delegitimises the view that history is driven by masses; the men at Plassey would have been considerably better trained in warfare than a sample of ordinary men.
We can specify the factor integral to British victory further. Great Britain would not have defeated the Mughals at Plassey if not for the defection of Mir Jafar. General Robert Clive had arranged an alliance with Mir Jafar, a demoted Mughal general, in his attack on the Mughals. Mir Jafar’s camp consisted of thirty-five thousand infantrymen and fifteen-thousand cavalrymen in all, considerably outnumbering the forces of both the Nawab (~5,000) and Clive (1,000). Had Mir Jafar fought alongside the Nawab and the Mughal Empire, the British would have faced a vast material disadvantage at Plassey.
How might Edward P. Thompson, the man who popularised history from below in academia, ascertain the crucial factor for this battle? In History from Below, an article published in Times Literary Supplement, Thompson advocates for the history of oppressed groups to be synthesised with more orthodox narratives, considering it “peculiar” that the history of common people be considered “distinct from … History Proper”.Thompson would be sure to mention the contributions of non-leadership figures, ranging from bullet manufacturing workers to infantrymen. None of these descriptions would be able to provide a name other than Mir Jafar as crucial for victory.
Detractors may highlight the numerous empires served by large-scale armies. In 1793, Lazare Carnot of the French Revolution’s Committee for Public Safety implemented the first national conscription; since then, many states have operated under the framework that directing the entirety of a nation’s resources towards war was necessary for victory. As the number of participants in territorial conflicts increases, and the scale of contested territories expands, one might conclude that the influence that any one individual might have on the outcome of the conflict decreases. Such a view is proposed by historian Alan Forrest in the introduction to Napoleon; he writes that the Napoleonic Empire was a “collaborative enterprise that depended on the effort and vision of thousands of administrators, army officers, jurists and educators.”(Emphasis mine)
The Napoleonic Empire, in its invocation of the Revolutionary la patrie en danger and the duty of every citizen to serve the state, may erroneously be seen to embody the idea that national borders can be dictated by peoples rather than persons. The campaigns beyond the Rhine and on the Italian peninsula were not won by small bands of noble officers, as might have been the case in the days of the Ancièn Régime, but rather by large armies of common Frenchmen. The changed nature of the wartime state from an aristocratic venture to a more inclusive one might suggest that the contributions of any one man were not critical.
While it is true that far more ordinary men than before decided the outcome of military affairs (by way of enlistment to the army) in the days of Bonaparte than in the days of the Bourbons, it would be erroneous to consider this evidence for history from below. Napoleon Bonaparte, in his vision for a continental empire and his aptitude for military affairs, was the crucial factor in determining the borders of Europe. In the transformation of France from Republic to Empire, the French state was characterised by the concentration of rule in the hands of Bonaparte and his entourage. This is first demonstrated by his successful 1799 plot to overthrow the Directory; he replaced the institution with a triune consulate of which he was the first consul. In 1804, this transformation culminated in the implementation of an imperial constitution and Napoleon’s self-coronation as Emperor. While the sons of the old Third Estate were enabled to rise to the rank of officer and contribute to the expansion of French territory, they ultimately worked in service of Napoleon’s will and were loyal to the cult of personality created by Napoleon in the late 1790s and early 1800s.
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| Coronation of Napoleon - Jacques-Louis David |
Having been convinced that individuals act as the origins for empires, an advocate for history from below may remain convinced that empires fall in accordance with the efforts of oppressed peoples. Given that anti-imperialism is typically intertwined with calls for self-determination and more democratic governance, we might assume that it is the ordinary and oppressed who bring about the ends of empires. On these grounds, one might be convinced to look to historiographies other than great man theory to understand why empires fall.
This would be history-from-below-on-steroids; even the most acclaimed historian of this school, Howard Zinn, neglects to consider the involvement of oppressed groups in the American Revolution crucial to the outcome of events. In A People’s History of the United States, Zinn frames the American Revolution - the war and the political developments that followed - as a bourgeois revolution. In the chapter A Kind of Revolution, Zinn outlines that while the political developments ended British control over the Americans, wealth and power remained concentrated in the hands of a few white male property owners.
Vitally, however, Zinn does not suggest that the Native Americans enlisted by the Americans somehow changed the tide of war after early success for the Empire, or that the domestic labour of the wives of the American colonists brought about British surrender at Yorktown. He considers French involvement to be the crucial factor, writing that “aided by a large French army, with the French navy blocking off the British from supplies and reinforcements, [the Americans] won the final victory of the war… in 1781.” In his study of the end of the British Empire in what is now the United States, Zinn quietly accepts the limitations of history from below. Realising that his historiography fails to explain the American victory, Howard Zinn borrows from great man theorists in his implication that the decisions of Louis XVI of France won the war for the Americans.
It must be noted that the failure of history from below to explain the result of the American War for Independence does not render Zinn’s account of American history useless. A social historian, Zinn labours to detail the plight of marginalised groups and therefore successfully provides an alternative to “fundamental nationalist glorification of country”. Like all social histories, A People’s History does not, however, establish cause and consequence. Considering this, the study of empires demonstrates that history from below cannot supplant great man theory but may, at best, complement it.
Bibliography
Ferguson, Niall. Empire: How Britain Made the Modern
World, London: Penguin Books, 2004
Forrest, Alan. Napoleon, London: Quercus, 2011
Smith, Francis Barrymore. The Making of the Second Reform
Bill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States,
New York: Harper Collins E-Books, 2009
de Paoli, Dino. “Lazare Carnot’s grand strategy for political
victory.” Executive Intelligence Review 23, no. 38 (September 1996)
Thompson, Edward. “History From Below.” Times Literary
Supplement 3345 (April 1966) 279
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