Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Niall Ferguson is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford. He recently published
Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927
which was shortlisted for the
History Today
Book of the Year award. He has also written numerous articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century financial history, including a critique of Keynes’s
Economic Consequences of the
Peace and is the author of a history of the Rothschilds. A prolific commentator on contemporary politics, he lives with his wife and two children in Oxfordshire.

Virtual History
was first published in hardcover in Great Britain by Picador in 1997. The Basic Books edition is reprinted by arrangement with Papermac, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

This collection copyright © Niall Ferguson 1997

Published 1999 by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299.

Typeset by CentraCet, Cambridge

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-10: 0-465-02323-1

eISBN : 97-8-078-67257-9

ISBN-13: 978-0-465-02323-3

NIALL FERGUSON is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford. He recently published
Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927
(1995), which was shortlisted for the
History Today
Book of the Year award. He has written numerous articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century financial history, and is currently writing a history of Rothschilds.

JOHN ADAMSON is a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and has published extensively on the political and cultural history of seventeenth-century Britain. He won the Royal Historical Society’s Alexander Prize in 1990, and is currently editing the official history of
The Commons: 1640-1660
for the History of Parliament Trust.

JONATHAN CLARK is Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of British History at the University of Kansas. His publications include
The Dynamics of Change
(1982),
English Society 1688-1832
(1985),
Revolution and Rebellion
(1986),
The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World
(1993) and
Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism
(1994). He has edited
The Memoirs and Speeches of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave 1742-1763
(1988) and
Ideas and Politics in Modern Britain
(1989).

ALVIN JACKSON is Reader in Modern History at the Queen’s University of Belfast, and has been Lecturer in Modern Irish History at University College Dublin and John Burns Visiting Professor of Irish Studies at Boston College. He is author of
The Ulster Party
(1989),
Sir Edward Carson
(1993) and
Colonel Edward Saunderson: Land and Loyalty in Victorian Ireland
(1995). He is at present working on the Blackwell History of Modern Ireland.

ANDREW ROBERTS was an Honorary Senior Scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His books include
The Holy Fox, A Biography of Lord Halifax
(1991),
Eminent Churchillians
(1994) and
The Aachen Memorandum
(1995). He is currently writing the authorized biography of the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury.

MICHAEL BURLEIGH is Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of Wales, Cardiff. His books include
Prussian Society and the German Order
(1984),
Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of ‘Ostforschung’ in the Third Reich
(1988),
The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945
(with Wolfgang Wippermann, 1991),
Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany, 1900-1945
(1994) and
Confronting the Nazi Past
(1996). His essays,
Ethics and Extermination: Essays on Nazi Genocide
will be published shortly. His award-winning Channel 4 Documentaries include
Selling Murder and Heil Herbie.

JONATHAN HASLAM is a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Assistant Director of Studies in International Relations at the Cambridge University Centre of International Studies. He is the author of
The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe 1933-1939
(1984) and
The Soviet Union and the Threat from the East 1933-1941
(1992). He has recently completed a biography of E. H. Carr and is currently writing
The Realist Tradition in International Relations: from Machiavelli to Waltz.

DIANE KUNZ is Associate Professor of History at Yale University. She is the author of
The Battle for Britain’s Gold Standard in 1931
(1987) and
The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis
(1991). Her most recent book is
Butter and Guns: America’s Cold War Economic Diplomacy.

 

MARK ALMOND is Lecturer in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford. His most recent book is
Revolution: 500 Years of Struggle for Change
(1996). His other books include
Europe’s Backyard War: the War in the Balkans
(1994) and
The Rise and Fall of Nicolae
and
Elena Ceausescu
(1992).

In a collaborative volume, it is for individual contributors to express their gratitude in their notes. The editor, however, has the right to a list of acknowledgements in a larger typeface. I would like to express my thanks to: the Modern History Faculty, Oxford; the Acting Principal and Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford; my agent, Georgina Capel, of Simpson, Fox Associates; Peter Straus and Tanya Stobbs, my editors at Macmillan; Glen O‘Hara of Jesus College, Oxford, for his indispensable assistance with the research for both the introduction and my chapter; and Vivien Bowyer at Jesus College, Oxford. I am especially indebted for their comments on my sections of the book to Dr Christopher Andrew of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Professor Jonathan Clark of the University of Kansas; Professor Roy Foster of Oxford University; Dr Jonathan Steinberg of Trinity Hall, Cambridge ; Dr John Stevenson of Worcester College, Oxford; and Professor Norman Stone of Oxford University. Many other friends and colleagues too numerous to name have assisted me by patiently fielding questions about the theory and practice of counterfactual history over coffee, lunch and dinner. Above all, I would like to thank my wife Susan for providing inspiration.

Niall Ferguson

Acted history ... is an ever-living, ever-working Chaos of Being, wherein shape after shape bodies itself forth from innumerable elements. And this Chaos ... is what the historian will depict, and scientifically gauge!

THOMAS CARLYLE

There is no privileged past ... There is an infinitude of Pasts, all equally valid ... At each and every instant of Time, however brief you suppose it, the line of events forks like the stem of a tree putting forth twin branches.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The enduring achievement of historical study is a historical sense - an intuitive understanding - of how things do not happen.

LEWIS NAMIER

The historian must ... constantly put himself at a point in the past at which the known factors will seem to permit different outcomes. If he speaks of Salamis, then it must be as if the Persians might still win; if he speaks of the coup d’état of Brumaire, then it must remain to be seen if Bonaparte will be ignominiously repulsed.

JOHAN HUIZINGA

 

What if there had been no English Civil War? What if there had been no American War of Independence? What if Ireland had never been divided? What if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Hitler had invaded Britain? What if he had defeated the Soviet Union? What if the Russians had won the Cold War? What if Kennedy had lived? What if there had been no Gorbachev?

The obvious objection to such hypothetical or ‘counterfactual’ questions is simple: why bother asking them? Why concern ourselves with what
didn’t
happen? Just as there is no use crying over spilt milk, runs the argument, so there is no use in wondering how the spillage might have been averted. (Even more futile to speculate what would have happened if we
had
spilt milk that’s still safe in the bottle.)

One easy response to that objection is that we constantly ask such ‘counterfactual’ questions in our daily lives. What if I had observed the speed limit, or refused that last drink? What if I had never met my wife or husband? What if I had bet on Red Rum instead of Also Ran? It seems we cannot resist imagining the alternative scenarios: what might have happened, if only we had or had not ... We picture ourselves avoiding past blunders, or committing blunders we narrowly avoided. Nor are such thoughts mere day-dreams. Of course, we know perfectly well that we cannot travel back in time and do these things differently. But the business of imagining such counterfactuals is a vital part of the way in which we learn. Because decisions about the future are - usually - based on weighing up the potential consequences of alternative courses of action, it makes sense to compare the actual outcomes of what we did in the past with the conceivable outcomes of what we might have done.