After a little hiatus around my trip back to the UK, where I didn’t feel I had a spare waking hour, I’m going to try and get back on the daily writing wagon as it was a habit which I was enjoying and, for the most part, keeping up with quite well.
During my flight back to Washington DC I finally managed to finish Hero of Two Worlds, a rather good biography of Marquis de Lafayette by Mike Duncan. Aside from mentions in other books I’d read on the period and his appearance in the musical Hamilton, I didn’t know much about Lafayette. It was therefore quite remarkable to find out just how much the man achieved.
Reading and reflecting on the book, I do return to questions over historical figures and how much of their achievements are down to their innate gifts and actions and how much are down to circumstances and context. Lafayette had plenty of advantages in life which gave him the opportunities to make his historical mark, but he certainly didn’t have to do any of the things he achieved. He was clearly driven by values and principles, namely of liberalism, democracy and the rule of law. To hold those views and seek to enact them so fervently was at odds with the interests of those of a similar background to him. While he could be argued that he’d be alright anyway, he still took on many risks, of all varieties, in an action-filled life during which he never shied away from principled positions.
Another reason I enjoyed the book was the vast historical canvass which Lafayette’s life was set against: revolutionary America, revolutionary France, the Napoleonic era and then the later French revolutions of 1830 and 1832 of which less in widely known. Indeed, it is that last revolution which most people also have reference to only through a musical, Les Miserables, although I would hazard a guess that most watchers of the musical don’t appreciate that the uprising revolving around the barricades was in 1832 and not the earlier French Revolution which is more commonly known about.
Whenever I read biographies like this, I consider what contemporary equivalents might look like. Without the benefit of a passage of time, it is unfair to try to make comparisons of great leaders today, not really knowing how their actions and achievements will withstand the test of time. It is also not clear what spheres the great actors and actions of today will be when reflected upon by future historians. While Lafayette and his contemporaries were doing battle, both literally and politically, with issues on the stage such as democracy, slavery and the like, today our challenges are perhaps around socioeconomic inequality, the climate crisis and and so. Actors nowadays are going to be media celebrities and entrepreneurs rather than those of aristocratic privilege. The actors, the stage and the issues are somewhat different. Have socioeconomic structures changed beyond those which were shaped and mastered by the great men and women of history? Is there still the same potential for change? Is it maybe (even) more about movements rather than individuals now, although there has always been an interplay between the two. Perhaps romantically, I’d like to hope there was still an opportunity for people today to have those kinds of impacts which merit biographies written two centuries down the line.
Commonplace 