Virtual History

Title: Virtual History – Alternatives and Counterfactuals

Editor: Niall Ferguson

Publisher:  Penguin, 2011 (First published 1997)

ISBN: 978-0-241-95225-2

Pages: 440

Niall Ferguson is one of the most renowned British historians. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines all over the world. He is a prolific author too, whose distinguishing characteristic is the clarity of thought as exemplified in many of his works, including The Ascent of Money (which was reviewed earlier in this blog). This book is a collection of would-have-beens of various crucial moments in world history, described by some of the prominent historians of today.

History is guided by critical events like wars, revolutions, popular unrest and such cataclysmic events which transform the policy of a government in a matter of very short time. It will then be forced to take sides on the burning question of the day and commit itself to the party they choose to make an ally. With hindsight, we are able to marvel at the seemingly trivial events which contributed to swing the outcome from one side to the other. Such hypothetical or counterfactual questions adds a lot of contemporary interest to the flow of events which actually did take place. It employes historians’ accumulated knowledge of facts and wise application of timeless wisdom to think about the repercussions of some very critical moments in history and wonder at the directions in which world history would have proceeded, had the outcome was somehow different. The book brings to focus several such forking moments in history like what would have happened if the revolutionaries lost the American war of independence, how Britian would have moved on along the route of parliamentary democracy had there been no Oliver Cromwell to finish of Charles I, and what would have taken place if Britain remained neutral during the First World War.

The book describes nine such episodes, beginning with 17^th century Britain, right up to late 20^th century USSR at its breakup. Every major event thought worthwhile by scholars – European scholars, rather – is covered in arduous detail. The subject matter is preceded by a lengthy and thoroughly off-the-track Introduction which tires the reader prodigiously. The treatment is unusually and unnecessarily pedantic, though written by Niall Ferguson himself. The author we gladly met in The Ascent of Money seems transformed to the role of a sadist who delights in the pain inflicted on hapless readers without much prior background of historiography of the variety Ferguson extols in the Introduction. The book should have been intended for light reading, considering the purely imaginary nature of events, but the author tries to build a grand edifice on quicksand. Anyone who manages to pass unscathed through the torturous 90 pages of the Introduction deserves to be congratulated for his heroic effort. Yes, the congratulations are due to me, as well!

Of all the counterfactuals and alternatives handled by various authors, the most relevant and close to readers’ minds are those related to events occurred in 20^th century, particularly the questions like what would have happened if Britain stayed out of the First World War, if the Germans defeated Britain in the Second one, and how things would have turned out had there been no cold war. The book presents spine-chilling details of Nazis’ racial agenda and their social resettlement programs in captured territories in which the racially ‘inferior’ native population would be relegated to the ranks for providing manual labour to German soldier-peasants who would occupy the prime land with he State’s full power behind their backs. Education and such cultural advancements would be denied to them. As one Nazi planner remarked, the only thing the native needs to know is to understand the German traffic signs, lest they be overrun by speeding vehicles. Such scenarios for an Axis victory would have eventually doomed the fate of the whole world as Hitler’s plans were global in spirit, if not in letter. We would be astonished to realize that the outcome of the war depended so crucially on the decisions of some minor German tacticians which were not taken at the right moment. It argues that had Germany invaded Britian in May 1940, instead of September 1940, the outcome would have been entirely different, with the British Isles completely overrun by Nazi forces.

The book is extensively researched. Able historians who are at ease with the complicated task assigned to them show their mettle. Historians write history, not make it. But these historians are compelled to make some of their own history, though persistently guided through the path by firm convictions about the inevitability of some of the strong currents flowing across centuries, which connects disconnected events through a common thread. The long Afterword penned by Ferguson is a splendid attempt to incorporate all the nine counterfactuals discussed in earlier chapters into a coherent, integrated narrative of imagined history of the world from 1646 to 1996. The author atones for his crime committed against the reader in Introduction with this enjoyable Afterword.

The book has several disadvantages too. The language is terse and unappealing to general readers having no solid background of some chapters of European and American history. The seriousness accorded to subject matter is at variance with the title. The easy and speculative nature of the treatment expected by most casual buyers of the book would be cruelly belied by its structure and those readers are in for the shock of their lives. The book follows a decidedly West-centric approach to history. Some of the nine described episodes do not warrant the careful scrutiny they managed to obtain. What would have happened if John F Kennedy was not assassinated is one such trivial question. The answer is also contained in the meticulous, but critical chapter penned by Diane Kunz – not much.

The book is recommended only for very serious enthusiasts and lay readers may quite profitably abstain from it.

Rating: 2 Star