There are broadly speaking two schools of thought when it comes to the shape of history.
There is the “Great Man” school. This is taught typically by more right-wing historians. They would argue that Hitler changed the course of history, and that so did Churchill. That had Alexander the Great not existed there would not have been a Macedonian Empire. That the same goes for a character such as Genghis Khan and his rampage across the steppes to the gates of Vienna.
Others, and they tend to be more left-of-centre analysts, don’t see the world that way at all. They look beyond the idea of romantic individualism to more technical, economic, geographic, maybe even climatic reasons why events occur as they do. They’re prepared to concede that William the Conqueror might not have won the Battle of Hastings. It was a close-run thing. But they point out that, because England was behind the Normans from a technological point of view, because their cavalry was under developed and, crucially, because they didn’t have castles, England would have been invaded by a force from Europe sooner or later anyway.
I’m slightly more in the latter camp. Yes, individuals can exert a temporary difference. But usually there are bigger factors at play - the boring bits of the history text books which deal with iron ore, defendable geography, farming equipment and so on.
All that said, the “great men” of history make for better art, although McCarthy and the Gang of Four have made attempts to introduce Marxist critiques into their work. But even they and bands like the Au Pairs tend to individualise their themes (although Mdou Moctar gets us off to a rousing start with a great track concerning colonial oppression). There aren’t many songs about the economic dysbenefits of the Prohibition Era, but Al Capone is a colourful character who gave rise to not only Prince Buster’s tribute, but eventually Gangsters by The Specials.
Here then are some songs about history - but also the so-called “Great Men” (unfortunately it is almost exclusively men) who shaped it. A bit.
Tracklist:
Funeral for justice, Mdou Moctar
Al Capone, Prince Buster
Dance stance, Dexys Midnight Runners
Leyendecker, Battles
Fourth shot, Cabaret Voltaire
Columbus, Burning Spear
John Wayne Gacy Jr, Sufjan Stevens
Cortez the killer, Neil Young, Crazy Horse
The death of Ferdinand de Saussure, The Magnetic Fields
Ghosts of Cable Street, The Men they Couldn’t Hang
Bakunin, Alastair Galbraith
William B, The Durutti Column
Cloudbusting, Kate Bush