In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Is the Dark Light Enough? Edward Ingram March 2004 · Historically Speaking1 5 How one envies Richard J. Evans his certainties, his Manichaean view of the world. For him, what happened is good: it happened. What did not happen is bad; not bad in itself, merely a quicksand wise historians will not tread in. And to be so certain that one knows what happened that one also knows what did not; that one can tell the one from the other. The difficultyfacing the rest ofus unfortunates in appraising the worth ofcounterfactuals lies not in working outwhat did nothappen, butwhatdid. Less obvious sleight of hand will be needed ifEvans is to find a part-time job as a conjuror. What pretends to be a discussion ofcounterfactuals is nothingofthe kind; neither theory nor method receives much of a mention. Evans ignores Philip E. Tetlock's work on the control ofcounterfactuals, even though few historians would challenge three ofits basic propositions: that one can avoid counterfactuals onlybyforgoingcausal inference ; that counterfactuals help to minimize the extent to which hindsight closes offlines ofinquiry; and that the principle ofthe minimal rewrite should govern their use.1 Evans merely uses one counterfactual proposition about Great Britain's role in the two World Wars as a weapon with which to attack a school of historians whom he calls "young fogeys." One of their faults, apparently , is a preference for event and individual to structure and process, for contingency to determinism. He rebukes them for believing in "butterfly effects": one classic illustration of chaos theory postulates that the chance beating of the wings of a butterfly up the Amazon river may result in a hurricane ravaging Bermuda. But chaos theory is determinist . Or so E. H. Carr thought. The car crash he uses as a metaphor for causation in WhatIsHistory? could easilyhave been determined by the wings ofa butterfly that happened , while beating, to catch the eye ofone of his drivers. Nobody would mistake Canfor a "young fogey," despite the pleasure he took in prolonging Lenin's life. The apparently sitting ducks at which Evans takes potshots peck him on the nose. How can it help us, he states, to ask what if Napoleon had won the battle ofWaterloo? Here is one answer: itwould have prevented Englishmen who write patriotic history in the style ofArthur Bryantfrom claimingthat the Duke ofWellington won. Victory is not the clear-cut phenomenon Evans implies. Noris anyothertype ofevent. The pasthappened . Butwhat happened, we do not know and cannot find out. We can only try to represent what may have happened. Thus the historian's rule: the more apparently incontrovertible the statement about the more apparentlyundeniable the event, the less one is likely to learn from it. The obvious example is the Holocaust. It happened. One may not say thatit did not. Butwhat does that tell us aboutit? To find outwhen, why, to whom, at what speed, and in what circumstances it happened, one has to state a series ofcounterfactual propositions. The best way to learn more about the past is by asking: what if something else? Evans pretends that for him, unlike the "youngfogeys," events do notmatter. Orthey matter less than structure and process, which cannot be counterfactualized. But they can, and theymust, because often theyturn outto be chimeras luringdevotees ofthelonguedurée into the desert. The Industrial Revolution used to be the most celebrated process in British history. It happened, and in the 125 years from themid-18thto the mid-19th centuryittransformed Britain's political and economic systems , social structure, and culture. But why maywenothave asked, whatifithad nothappened , when nowwe are told that it didn't? It may have begun in Britain (although continental Europeans have their doubts), but as it was never finished, it changed little. A relay race in which the baton of industrialization was passed earlyfrom Britain to the continent to the United States, left Britain on the sidelines , anchored in the ancien régime. Today's 19th-century Britainwould have been unrecognizable fiftyyears ago. When working outwhathappened, Evans recommends reliance on common sense applied to established facts. As we establish more facts, our account becomes more reliable . But facts have no existence independent ofus, or, if they have (in the sense...

pdf

Share