The Three Greats of History

History is many times developed thanks to the efforts of the people, whether it is thanks to what one of them does, sometimes because of the collective will of the group. But one thing many people that work in the field of history (and in the field of alternative history) wonderis about the fundamental factor in how history passes. There are three theories about this that historians have been calling The Great Man, The Great Moment or The Great Motherland.

• The Great Man states that it is the person, the individual, the one that makes history change and directing it along a certain path or another. The Roman Empire would have never appeared if it weren't for the efforts of Gaius Julius Caesar and his adoptive son Octavius Augustus, Charlemagne was the perfect man to establish the Holy Roman Empire, the Catholic Monarchs were the only ones that could unify Spain, without Napoleon France would have continued to be a revolutionary republic, the United Kingdom would have not been able to resist the Nazi attacks if Churchill had died before his time. History is, basically, a biography of the people that control the destiny of all those that are under their rule. This theory, although once held in great estimation by historians (such as Plutarch, who implicitly believed in the idea), it has fallen in disuse.
• The Great Moment says that it is the situation that makes events go in one way or the other. The chaos during the death throes of the Roman Republic would have convinced someone to attempt to take absolute perpetual control and become Emperor, some noble or king would have managed to unify many territories in central Europe, Castile and Aragon would have unified in order to defend each other from other nations, some general or politician would have managed to impose his will on the others and would have crowned himself as France's sovereign, England would have resisted Nazism, no matter who their leader actually was. This means seeing history as sociology, where social changes happen because of the mass movements, and influential people are people that appear in the right place and the right time and who have the required abilities to play their role. Hegel and Marx are two of the writers this idea is most associated with.
• The Great Motherland states that the thing that drives history is the regional and continental ecology, that it is driven by the mass of events joined in one instead by the individual events. An island near to the sea, looking into a great ocean, with many coal and iron veins in its territory, would have become the United Kingdom. If it is about horses, coal, iron and barley, then it would probably become something similar to Prussia. Instead, if you have rice, silver, chickens and typhoons, then the natives will have to deal with China's foreign enemies. And if what you have is gold, no work beasts or infectious illnesses and no metalworking, then the thing that is going to happen is that a foreigner will come and steal your gold while you die because of smallpox. One book that works with this idea in mind is the famous Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.

There are many books that have been written about what actually makes history, and alternative history is not ignorant about this. COnsidering the fact that, within alternative history, the characters are what tend to be the ones everything written is concentrated on, so it is natural that, for them, the most popular theory is that of The Great Man. And, yes, I am a bit guilty about giving this impression, because most stories I have written about are based on The Great Man. Hey, there is a lot of historical (haha) influence in here. However, it is not always in this way, and sometimes a new story in which The Great Moment or The Great Motherland are the theories appears. I will not include stories where The Great Man is the one that makes the change, but I will about the other ideas:

• Making History by Stephen Fry, which I already spoke about in the post about Adolf Hitler, is a good example of a story that comes from The Great Moment. Hitler's non-existence not only does not prevent World War Two or the Holocaust, but it also allows someone more charismatic than Hitler to occupy his role in history, giving victory to the Nazis in World War Two (OK, there is a bit of Great Man in here, my apologies for that).
• The saga Command & Conquer: Red Alert is another demonstration of what The Great Moment can be, once more centered in Hitler. Hitler's disappearance in 1924 prevents the Nazi Party from taking control of Germany, but instead Stalin's Soviet Union becomes more powerful and begins a more brutal World War Two, and a Third World War follows several years later, a war far more deadly than the Second.
• However, Command & Conquer: Tiberium Series has much more to do with The Great Motherland: the appearance of the substance known as Tiberium on Earth radically changes the geopolitical situation, eventually destroying a good part of the planet due to the damaging effects it has in Earth life, changing the course of history forever (though, the individual known as Kane also has a lot of influence in the events...).
• Also, The Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling has things change because of an environmental development: the Northern Hemisphere is bombarded with several meteorites, forcing the survivors to evacuate towards the south (Africa, India, Oceania) in order to survive the enviromental problems caused by the meteorite fall. The British Empire becomes an even more powerful entity than in real life, and at the time the book takes place (the year 2035), it is lord and master of a good part of the planet, but their technological level remains at a level similar to that previous to the First World War, although with some things more advanced than in real life.

As you can see, it is not always a person the one that makes everything change around them. It is also the circumstances, or the natural events, that can change history radically. Now that you know all of this, I hope you will come back on next Friday, where I will speak about a certain, very interesting role-playing game that is based specifically in the idea of alternative histories...