History Activity 2 – Sample Response
Time and Counterfactual History
History and understandings of time divide East and West. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 is
known by Indian historians as ‘The First War of Independence’ or the ‘Great Rebellion’,
the Boer Wars (1880 -1881, 1899-1902), known as such by generations of British
schoolchildren who knew exactly who to blame, is now called the South African Wars.
The Arab-Israeli war in 1967, known alternatively as the ‘Third Arab-Israeli War’, the ‘Six
Days' War’ or the ‘June War’, is labeled by historians from the Middle East as the
an-Naksah, or ‘The Setback’. The 1967 war was followed by another war in 1973 which,
in turn, is known by protagonists on opposite sides as either ‘The Yom Kippur War’, the
‘Ramadan War’ or, more simply, ‘The October War’. Labels matter when we research
and write history and so do chronologies. Who knows what we shall eventually call the
First Gulf War in 1991 (which in any case always suggested a second). In a similar way
that the Great War (1914-1918) morphed into the First World War, the Glorious
Revolution in 1688 was called first ‘Great’ in 1689, ‘Happy’ in 1690 and then ‘Wonderful’
in 1693, taking time to settle into its current name. Indeed, in England it did not become
‘Glorious’ until 1715, but in Scotland it was always referred to as ‘The Killing Time’. The
Football War of 1969 between Honduras and El Salvador, so called because it erupted
over a few days during qualifying matches for the 1970 World Cup, may be rather more
stable. The Allied war against Iraq, however, will may yet become known as the ‘First
Energy War’ or the ‘First Islamist War’. Niall Ferguson (b.1964) argues in his book War
of the World: History’s Age of Hatred (2006), the West should not treat the First and
Second World Wars as separate phenomena at all. They have precisely the same cause
and one overwhelming and continuous effect apparent across the period: a racial hatred
where whole continents of people were considered ‘sub-human’. He takes his cue from
the science fiction of H.G Wells. (1866 - 1946), where the enemies of ‘civilization’ are
aliens from another planet, Ferguson’s predictions for the future of the West (particularly
America) and the prospects for peace in the World (especially in the West’s dealings
with the East) make dismal reading.
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It is surely legitimate for historians to consider watersheds in history or ‘turning
points’; counterfactual histories that work along different timelines. What would have
happened, for instance, if the British had prevailed at the battle of Saratoga in 1777 and
the American colonists failed to raise a coalition of major European powers against the
colonial power? Not only would this momentous event have failed to constitute part of
the American War of Independence – known universally as the American Revolution in
the United States – but also that the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s
would have been radically altered.
Would the British prime minister, Winston Churchill (1874-1965), in 1940, with
the retreating armies of Britain and France barely in one piece after the evacuation at
Dunkirk, needed to have pledged that each minister around the cabinet table would
‘choke on his own blood’ before they would accept surrender to Nazi Germany? Simon
Schama has called this particular watershed ‘something momentous [which] happened
to change British history’. There is evidence to suggest that Churchill himself selfconsciously recognised that meeting of the Cabinet on 28 May two years before
America had entered the war, as an ‘historical turning point’. Churchill’s only weapon
against overwhelming odds on the battlefield was, not infantry massing on the Southcoast of England as a buffer to the advancing might of Germany, but his own ‘golden
words’ and a passionate sense of what he liked to refer to as (evoking a popular strand
of Edwardian school history) ‘Our Island Story’. He spoke as an experienced and
seasoned politician but also as a figure profoundly aware of the judgments of posterity:
I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to
consider entering into negotiations with That Man. But it was idle to think that, if
we tried to make peace now, we should get better terms than if we fought it out…
The Germans would demand our fleet.. and much else. We should become a
slave state, though a British Government which would be Hitler’s puppet would be
set up – under Mosley or some such person – And I am convinced that every
man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one
moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to
end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the
ground. (Simon Schama, A History of Britain, vol. 3 (BBC, 2002), p.520)
With an alternate timeline that has Britain prevail against the American rebels in 1777,
Britain and America are already in alliance, an alliance that may have prevented the
outbreak of war in 1939. On the other hand, without independence from Britain or its
independence gained at a different time and in a different way, it would have been a
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different kind of America than we know today. The historian J.C.D. Clark (b.1951) is
right to urge caution when thinking about counterfactual or ‘what if’ histories:
Analysts of the counterfactual must beware of that easy escape which is offered
by the argument that, but for some initial mistake, some tragic error, all would
have been well, and mankind released from avoidable conflicts into a golden age
of peaceful progress. From the perspective of 1914 or 1939, British observers
might easily look back regretfully on the great opportunity missed, the opportunity
to create a peaceful and prosperous North Atlantic Anglophone polity, united in its
commitment to libertarian and commercial values. The Whig-Liberal tradition of
English historiography could make such a course seem plausible by ascribing the
American Revolution to easily avoidable errors of British policy, especially the
failings of George 111. This explanation has become increasingly unlikely,
however. Even if the conflict had been avoided in the 1770s, as it well might, this
would not have guaranteed future tranquillity. J.C.D. Clark, ‘British America: What
if there had been no American Revolution’, in Niall Ferguson, Virtual History.
Alternatives and Counterfactuals (1997), p171
Counterfactual history may be useful then, as a questioning device, almost as
mental gymnastics that allow history to thought of as existing along different imaginative
tramways. Learn how to switch tracks then it becomes easier to achieve dexterity in
constructing ‘real history’. Indeed, Niall Ferguson describes these ‘what if’ histories as
an exercise in ‘imaginary time’ but in any case these scenarios are sparingly used
among historians and probably rightly.
You may have discerned from your own reading that Ferguson objects to
determinism both secular and religious, not least the Judeo-Christian historical
chronology that so troubled Wells - Creation, the Fall, the election of Israel, the age of
prophets, exile, the rise of Rome, Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection and the promise
of return - puts history on a straight and ‘determined’ track . To this extent, he has a very
serious point to make:
The past, like real-life chess, or indeed any other game, is different; it does not
have a pre-determined end. There is no author, divine or otherwise, only
characters, and (unlike a game) a great deal too many of them. There is no plot,
no inevitable ‘perfect order’; only endings, since multiple events unfold
simultaneously, some lasting only moments, some extending far beyond an
individual’s life. Niall Ferguson, Virtual History. Alternatives and Counterfactuals
(1997), p.68
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