Virtual History Alternatives and Counterfactuals - Hardcover

Ferguson, Niall

3.44

689 ratings by Goodreads

9780330351324: Virtual History Alternatives and Counterfactuals

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 033035132X ISBN 13: 9780330351324

Publisher: Macmillan Pub Ltd, 1997

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What if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Germany had won the Second? What if the Soviet Union had won the Third?
Far from being the result of determinist laws, what actually happened in the past was only one of a number of plausible outcomes. Indeed, to contemporaries, it may not even have been the most likely. To understand what did happen, we therefore need to understand what might have happened.
Beginning in the seventeenth century with the English Civil War and ending with the collapse of Communism in the 1990s Virtual History explores what would have happened if nine momentous events had turned out differently. The answers it provides are not fiction because each solution is strictly based on the alternatives which we know contemporaries contemplated.
The result not only illuminates the actual course of events but also gives us a compelling glimpse of the 'parallel worlds' which could have been: An absolutist, Catholic England. An America opting for British rule instead of independence. A united but British Ireland. A Europe economically dominated by Germany as early as 1915. An England occupied by the Nazis. A world without the Cold War. An ageing Kennedy, bogged down in Vietnam. And a triumphant Soviet Union, gloating at the collapse of capitalism after 1989.

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Review:

This meaty, scholarly collection of essays by gifted historian Niall Ferguson tackles the controversial topic of counterfactual questions: What if Hitler had invaded Britain in WWII? What if JFK had survived his assassination? What if there had been no Gorbachev to usher in the collapse of Communism? What if there had been no American Revolution? Ferguson points out that while questions such as these are a vital part of how we learn as individuals ("What if I had observed the speed limit, or refused that last drink?"), there remains a great deal of resistance--even hostility--to such musings among professional historians. "[I]n the dismissive phrase of E.H. Carr, 'counterfactual' history is a mere 'parlour game,' a 'red herring.'" E.P. Thompson is less charitable, calling counterfactual histories "' Geschichtswissenschlopff', unhistorical shit."

But Ferguson and his distinguished collaborators (many of whom are also Oxford fellows) lodge some convincing counterfactuals of their own to counter this arguably blinkered notion, this "idea that events are in some way preprogrammed, so that what was, had to be." In addition to the what-ifs above, Ferguson and his comrades tackle eight questions in all, including "What if Charles I had avoided the Civil War?", "What if Home Rule had been enacted [in Ireland] in 1912?", and "What if Britain had 'stood aside' in August 1914?" Virtual History makes for a stimulating and intellectually rigorous trip, with Ferguson's own delightful afterword as the collection's crowning jewel, a brilliant--and often bitingly clever--timeline tying together all the threads from 1646 to 1996. --Paul Hughes

About the Author:

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has written fourteen books, including The House of Rothschild, Empire, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, The Great Degeneration and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. His many prizes include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013).

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