Tolstoy downplayed the effects that so-called great leaders have on the course of events. Instead, the idea was that other things can't be ignored, like the accumulation of individual decisions and mistakes made by millions of people, and like luck in terms of weather, geography, events, etc.
History focuses on the "Great Men and Women," but perhaps Tolstoy was right, and much of the time the great leader is a product of the times, and other forces at work are more significant.
Thinking here of Columbus, Hitler, Lincoln, Washington, Tubman, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, King, Joan of Arc, Mandela, Genghis Khan... Then, my thoughts turn to Obama.
It seems that the times, the people, luck, and forces in motion for hundreds of years have put Obama into a situation where lots of people are considering him to be a "Great Man." But I don't know that he or any of those other people who I mentioned above did anything that might not have been done by some other person, given the same set of circumstances.
Some other things that struck me while reading War and Peace: How a battle or a war can turn on the most unforeseen incident, the most seemingly insignificant event. And how 50 people in any given battle can give you 50 different versions of what went down, and each of them could completely miss the the most important things that occurred, with not one of them providing any true insight as to why things turned out the way they did.
I was talking to a young college student not long ago who was studying for a History exam. He seemed shocked when I told him that my reading, so much of it focused on history, made me realize how little I and other people really know about history -- that in many ways I think I "know" less and less the more I read.
We only get what's written down by other people, and who knows how accurate that might be? How much can any one person actually see? When Napoleon invaded Russia, millions of people were involved, and countless little events took place that nobody remembers. You know how a single event can completely change the course of your life. What about all of those unknown, random events, things that have never been written about, that may have played a part in any of the great wars or invasions or changes in human society?
Can the flutter of a butterfly's wings in Arizona end up changing the course of the weather in India? Has the chance birth in 1961 of a boy to a white American woman and an African man resulted in a changed world order in 2009?
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