When Do Counterfactuals Work?

March 2004 · Historically Speaking1 9 When Do Counterfactuals Work? Robert Cowley I would like to begin myremarks with two observations. Richard Evans has written a dismissal ofcounterfactual history that is at once learned and elegant, reasoned and reasonable. In not a few points, if by no means all, I find myself agreeing with him. Butwhyhide my feelings? I am uneasy being set up as straw man in his essay, and I don't like being lumped, even by inference, with the New Right of history. The Right has never been my chosen refuge. Counterfactual historyis notjust the domain ofconservatively inclined thinkers, as many of the contributors to this issue oíHistorically Speaking should testify. Ideological pique aside, and it is mild at best, I should explain something that is relevant to this discussion . I wrote the introduction to What If? 2 (or More WhatIp as it is called in the UK) with anAmerican audience in mind. In this country our introduction to the study of history is rarely an enlightening experience. Below the college level, historyis taught abominably, to an extent that most historians in the UK probably don't appreciate. The result is a nation ofhistory illiterates . According to one recent survey—where do they get these facts?—when asked to pick from a list America's allies in World War ?, more than halfthe high school seniors questioned named Italy, Germany, and Japan. What is the significance ofMemorial Day? children touring Washington D.C. were asked. The most frequent reply: "The day when the pools open." Such answers can be easilymultiplied, and the reason for them has to do with the way history is taught in this country. As I wrote, "We are force-fed historyas social studies, an approach in which all races, nationalities, and sexes are given equal time: everyone must be included, no one can be offended. This surrender to special interests is not just distorting but boring." There is another unfortunate byproduct of the civics-cum-history approach, so deadening in its bland seriousness . Students—those few who have not already tuned out—are left with the impression thathistoryis inevitable, thatwhathappened could not have happened any other way. Where in their textbooks is the drama ofclashingwills, motives, and ideas, ofopposing economic and social forces, ofaccidents and contingencies? By the time they reach college, most American students are ruined for history. Human options may be limitless, but in the confrontations ofhistory possible alternatives are ordinarily not. The reason is simple. Decisions are limited by the lack ofimagination andaversion to risk taking ofmost decision makers. Politicians andgenerals tend not to be artists or madmen. Those fortunate to survive have a fair chance of encountering teachers who will, for the first time, make history exciting—unless, that is, they are not undone by the currently fashionable tyranny ofrace, gender, and ethnicity . But that is a matter I'd rather sidestep here. Where does counterfactual history fit into this too often doleful picture? Acentral concern oflegitimate historians it should never be. Still, it has earned a place considerably more elevated than E. H. Carr's "idle parlor game"—and even Carr, as Evans reminds us, allowed himselfto imagine whatwould have happened in the Soviet Union if Lenin had survived into old age. Counterfactual speculations can help to awaken and nourish our historical imaginations. Theycanhelp as well to involve people in the historical process and to transform its examination from drudgery to entertainment in its best sense. That has been my aim in the three WhatIp books I've edited—that, and the introduction of readers to some of the finest historians writing today. Historyis properly the literature ofwhat did happen; but that should not diminish the need for counterfactual speculation. It can be just as important to understand what did not happen aswhatdid. Arigorous counterfactual examination has a way ofmaking the stakes of a confrontation or a decision stand out in relief, to reveal their potentially abiding consequences. Too, it can focus on moments that were true turning points. Let me give an example from militaryhistory, which is my particular field of authority. A counterfactual scenario helps to pick out the moment when, at the Battle of Gettysburg, the...