Power - Hilary Term 2026
What is power? Does it corrupt, and in absolute form corrupt absolutely? Is it not a means, but an end? Is it something one has to dare to grasp? Is what you do when granted it the measure of you? Is it knowledge? The ability of the strong to do as they wish? Or is it just an aphrodisiac?
This term, The Herodotian invites you to join the serried ranks of the great thinkers above (Lord Acton, George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Plato, Francis Bacon, Thucydides and Henry Kissinger) and consider power and its role in history. To do so is not just to make a small contribution to an intellectual debate that has over the course of its impossibly long and impossibly broad life embroiled some of the finest minds in history; it is also to grapple with a reality of daily life for the great and the small alike. The emperor and his humblest subject are locked into a power dynamic that includes both; the relationship, though not equal, joins them with an invisible, unbreakable thread that endures from birth to death.
Power, then, is a subject you could write about almost infinitely. You could choose to focus on the intellectual explorations of power dating back to works like Plato’s Republic and running via works like The Prince, Das Kapital or Anarchy, State, and Utopia to the present day. You could choose to focus on those individuals or groups who have actually wielded power, for example the Emperors of Rome, the medieval clergy, the Indian Princes or the Janissary corps. You could choose to focus on the Louis XIV’s of history – those who have brazenly boasted of their power – or the du Tremblay’s, those who have preferred to keep their lamp under their bushel. You could focus on the thalassocracies that have ruled the waves or the sprawling land empires that have dominated within impossibly vast borders. Or you could invert the theme entirely and focus on the powerless, the victims of history who have been at the mercy of those more powerful than them; Santa Anna in 1846 or the Byzantine and Persian empires in the seventh century. Or you could ignore this paragraph entirely and come up with another way of discussing power not mentioned here.
The possibilities are endless; the choice is yours. Once again, the editors place only two limitations on you; your article must be historical and plausibly connected to the theme of power. Aside from that, the power is in your hands. Handle this honour with care, for as we all know:
“With great power comes great responsibility.” (Uncle Ben, Spiderman)
