Counter-factual History


Counter-factual history is a fancy term for playing “What if?” with history: What if the Nazis had won World War II? What if the USSR had won the Cold War? And so on. Niall Ferguson wrote a book on many such counter-factual scenarios.

My reaction to all this? C’mon, the world is too complex. If you start your counter-factual with Hitler winning World War II, it can branch in a million different ways from that point onwards. As a character in the movie, The Counselor, said:
“Actions create consequences which produce new worlds, and they're all different.”
You just picked one branch; what about the others? How do you “know” which branch to pick?

Another question I have is Why? Why come up with counter-factuals? What’s the point?

Ferguson wrote that they help refute the “idea that events are in some way preprogrammed, so that what was, had to be.” C’mon, I thought: who believes history has a direction, other than Marxists? And hasn’t Marx lost all credibility anyway?

Salil Misra wrote of the scenario where Tipu Sultan would have created a coalition to fight the British. His reasons for doing that would make for a lively history class indeed (Misra teaches history at Ambedkar University)! How, you wonder? Mostly, he does that by asking a counter-question at each step and then answering it. For example, did Tipu fail to build a coalition because he was a Muslim fanatic? Or because others underestimated the scale of the British threat? Or because the concept of nationalism didn’t even exist in those days and most people didn’t see a difference between regional rivalries and the British? At the end of his article, the questions, answers and possibilities are a lot less important than having made one think. They help us understand (or guess?) the context and background, agendas and follies of the various actors of that stage.

All that reminded me of the movie, Troy. How could one woman, no matter how beautiful, lead to a full scale war of such proportions, I had always wondered? The movie gave one possible answer: everyone had a different agenda (revenge, expansion of the empire, a place in the history books, and prospect of riches).

Counter-factuals, if done the Salil Misra way in the classroom, would be like being the script writer for Troy! Now isn’t that worth doing to change history from being a dull, cram the dates subject to a lively, interesting and relatable subject?

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