Temporal Prejudice

I have been reading Toussaint Louverture by Madison Smartt Bell. It, of course, deals with the racism of the time of its protagonist, in which Europeans found it very difficult to believe that an army of ex-slaves, most of whom were born in Africa, lead by black men, could successfully challenge armies of Europeans.

I find I have a prejudice, of which I had not been aware, that people who have not benefited from modern educational systems would not be as capable as we beneficiaries. Thinking about it, it occurs to me that the leaders of the revolution that created the United States also had not received much formal education. Indeed, classical leaders such as Alexander and Caesar were what we would call "home schooled". Lincoln had very little formal schooling.

I should have been immune. I have read the materials by Douglas Hyde (the former President of Ireland) which pointed out that Blind Raftery, my ancestor from the early 1800's, had been very underestimated by the British in his own time, and was in fact quite knowledgeable about history and culture, as well as a master of the complex conventions of the Gaelic poetry tradition.

Many of the American revolutionary leaders were well read if not long schooled. Lincoln too must have been deeply steeped in great books, or he could not have written as well as he did. Thus, obviously tuition by a brilliant scholar or a lifetime of ambitious reading can educate a person well.

In the case of Blind Raftery, that education must have been accomplished by talking, and societies which had little access to books must often have had venues for discussion, even learned discussion, in which important ideas were considered and transmitted and people prepared for important leadership roles.

It also seems that when circumstances permit anyone to rise to leadership roles by ability, great leaders sometimes emerge from what our prejudice would see as unlikely places. Napoleon's rise from petty nobility in Corsica would not have been predictable by the French aristocracy, any more than Toussaint's rise from Haitian slavery. Indeed, the system for selection of leaders in the production of scientific knowledge, which is pretty egalitarian, sent some very interesting people to advisory posts in the aftermath of World War II.

Sometimes, of course, the hereditary aristocracy also produces a great leader, but my reading of history suggests that all too often that trajectory produces lackluster leaders.