Given the recent resurgence of populism throughout Western democracies, it seems timely to reflect on the role of charisma in politics. “Charismatic leadership” is something many people might associate with authoritarian regimes — in Nazi Germany, for instance, a direct emotional bond between Adolf Hitler and his followers was a cornerstone of Nazi rule. Yet charisma also plays a key role in democracies, even if democratic societies tend to have a more ambivalent relationship with charismatic leaders.
That complex relationship between charisma and democracy is at the heart of David Bell’s excellent new book, Men on Horseback. Bell seeks to explain the paradox of why societies began to long for charismatic leaders during the very same period that saw the birth of modern democracy: the “age of revolutions” in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Between 1775 and the 1820s, when revolutions reshaped much of the Western world, charismatic leadership became more important than ever, Bell suggests.
Bell tells the story of how charisma shaped major revolutions in the United States, France, Haiti, and South America. The book does not offer a total history of these revolutions but tells their story through the lives and deeds of some of their key figures, namely George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture, and Simon Bolivar.
These revolutionary leaders were all charismatic. But what exactly is charisma, a word that traces its origins to ancient Greece? For St. Paul, to possess charisma was to be blessed with divine grace. The German sociologist Max Weber, who studied charismatic leadership extensively, described it as a “certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men.” Charismatic leaders, so Weber suggested, tend to emerge in times of crisis or upheaval. In its contemporary meaning, charisma describes a relationship between a leader and his followers, an emotional bond that inspires the latter to follow the former.
In the case of Bell’s protagonists, their charisma tended to derive from military success. All of them were military leaders who rose to prominence in times of crisis and revolution, when armed conflict and the emergence of nation-states required a specific set of skills, including courage. All of them were conscious of their charisma and spent considerable time and energy shaping how they would be perceived by the public. Bonaparte, in particular, spent “almost as much energy celebrating his victories as he did winning them.”
In order to demonstrate how leaders such as Bonaparte connected with their followers, Bell draws on a wide range of sources designed for public consumption: newspaper articles, hagiographies, speeches, and visual sources such as portraits or engravings. Most of them were specifically created to enhance the reputation of the individual in question.
Bell claims that the leaders in question were perceived as “saviours” who rescued their nations from disarray and chaos. Washington was credited with single-handedly saving the newborn United States from defeat at the hands of the British. Bonaparte rescued France from the deep societal divisions left by the French Revolution of 1789 and conquered half of Europe. Haiti’s Louverture, the “Spartacus of the Caribbean,” saved his fellow former slaves, who had carried out the largest and most successful slave revolt in history, from defeat and reenslavement. Bolivar defended South America against the Spanish and restored internal peace. In each case, Bell writes, salvation was credited not only to the men’s supposedly extraordinary military skill but also to their ability to inspire and unify entire populations behind them; they became the “father figures” of emerging nations.
The leaders discussed in Bell’s book shared other characteristics, too. Most of them, with the exception of Louverture, who was born a slave, came from a background of wealth and status. Bolivar, Louverture, and Washington were all renowned horsemen, while Bonaparte, although not a particularly good rider himself, preferred his portraits to show him on horseback. Each of the men had a reputation for outstanding military talent, and each consciously constructed a public persona to attract popular support.
Bell is particularly insightful on the connections among his protagonists. Not only were they fully aware of each other’s existence, they often modeled themselves on one another. Bonaparte compared himself to Washington on many occasions, Louverture was frequently called the “Bonaparte of the Antilles,” and the young Bolivar took a close interest in Bonaparte. Later in life, after his military successes, contemporaries tended to refer to Bolivar as “the Washington of South America.”
The near-simultaneous emergence of these charismatic leaders in very different geographical settings was not a coincidence. Although Bell acknowledges that political charisma has existed throughout history, he argues that the advent of the Enlightenment, the rise in democratic government, and the increasing popularity of newspapers created ideal conditions for the rise of leaders with apparently superhuman qualities. In previous centuries, political power was largely concentrated in kings and queens whose legitimacy derived from divine right rather than charisma. Monarchs such as Elizabeth I of England or Louis XIV of France may have been charismatic, but their rule did not depend on it. Their authority came directly from the will of God, or so it was widely believed at the time.
After the Enlightenment and the age of democratic revolutions, however, leaders needed other sources of legitimacy. The emerging states needed to be “governed more by sentiments and affections than by orders and laws,” as a follower of Bonaparte put it. They needed what Bolivar called “acclamation,” a collective enthusiasm that served, in his view, as “the sole legitimate source of human power.” By exploring these emerging bonds, Bell places his own work in the tradition of histories of emotion, which originated in France decades ago and have become fashionable again today. More specifically, he wants to show how “the emotion of love” between leaders and their people “and claims about it powerfully contributed to the development of modern charismatic leadership.”
The book succeeds in delivering on that promise, and in so doing helps us better understand the complex relationship between charismatic leadership and democracy. Charismatic leaders may not ride horses anymore, but as the last decade of politics has shown, they are still very much in demand.
Robert Gerwarth is a professor of modern history at University College Dublin and director of the Centre for War Studies. He is the author of The Vanquished: Why The First World War Failed to End.
