What would you do if you had a time machine and wanted to change the world? Would you stop one event from happening? Prevent two people from meeting? Save a life? Take a life?

Killing someone important, before they did what they're famous for, seems like the easiest way to have a dramatic impact on history. You could kill Hitler and stop the rise of Nazism. Or kill Robert Oppenheimer to prevent the invention of nuclear weapons. If you killed Lenin would the October Revolution still happen?

This is the premise of the Terminator films: that you can change history by killing one person, because one person can change the world. However, that is based on the idea that history works a certain, very patriarchal, way.

"The history of the world is but the biography of great men"

This idea of history follows Thomas Carlyle’s “great man theory”. Thomas Carlyle was a 19th-century historian and philosopher, he came up with this theory, which is the idea that the course of history is changed by the actions of certain “great men” - and writing in Victorian times, he did mean men. In his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History he gave several examples of great men, from Oliver Cromwell to Dante, but no great women. In his book, Carlyle said: "The history of the world is but the biography of great me

If this is true then a time machine could easily be used to change history. You could identify the great men from history books (Carlyle provides helpful suggestions) and then you would know who to kill for your desired history change. Need to stop a war from devastating Europe? Then assassinate Napoleon. Want to stop people looking up the definitions of rude words? Then Dr Samuel Johnson is the great man to stop.

All this assumes that no one else could do what Napoleon or Dr Johnson did, which seems unlikely. Couldn't anyone have written the dictionary or risen out of the terror that followed the French Revolution to take control of a great army and then wage a war of conquest? If Skynet killed John Connor before he was born or when he was a teenager, wouldn't someone else emerge to meet the need for a leader to save humanity from Skynet? Is John Connor really necessary? What's important is the movement of people fighting the machines.

People's History

The opposite of Carlyle's great men theory is People's History or history from below. This theory states that history is changed by groups of people or mass movements. It emphasises the importance of marginalised and oppressed people in changing history. People's History holds that it's not John Connor’s leadership that makes the human resistance, but the need of humans to resist the machines. 

According to People’s History, if you had a time machine and wanted to change history then you would need to go back in time and build a movement or change an existing movement. You couldn't turn Britain back into an absolute monarchy by killing Oliver Cromwell. A groundswell of change in that direction is needed.

This is the premise of The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz, a novel about a struggle between feminist and misogynist time-travelers attempting to change women’s rights in the present by editing the past. The novel focuses on key points in feminists history, such as suffragettes in late 19th century times and the 90s Riot Grrrl scene. It also states the People’s History theory when the book’s narrator explains that you cannot use time-travel to kill a single person to change history. She cites an example from their world where the killing of the dictator Emmnaule led to the rise of Napoleon. In the novel, the time-traveling feminists debate the great man vs people’s history approach to history, which informs the actions the characters take against the men attempting to erase women’s rights from history.

Time-traveling feminists

The Future of Another Timeline is a feminist book, not just because it’s characters are suffragettes and Riot Grrrlz, but because of its focus on people’s history as opposed to the great Men of history. The great men theory leaves out the role of women and other oppressed minority groups. This is because women’s influence on history has been downplayed over time or has been subtle, unlike the attention-grabbing role that Napoleon played.

Great women of history

Despite the Terminator films following the great men theory it’s still a feminist film, partly because in the Terminator universe there are great women of history such as Sarah Connor in the original film or Dani Ramos in the most recent Terminator: Dark Fate. Their actions change history and the film shows that the history of the world is not just the biography of great men, but of great women as well. However, the film still overlooks the role that movements play in shaping history. John Connor or Dani Ramos cannot change history and fight the domination of the machines without a movement behind them.

How we would change history reflects how we think about history. Anyone who wants to go back in time and kill Hitler is not thinking about the conditions that created the demand for what Hitler was selling, ie Nazism. If we subscribe to the great men theory of history theory then we are overlooking the roles that women and other oppressed minorities have played.

So, if you ever get your hands on the key to a time machine, take a movement to think about what has changed history, before you decide how you want to change it.