Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures
By Jeremy Black
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About this ebook
What if there had been no World War I or no Russian Revolution? What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo in 1815, or if Martin Luther had not nailed his complaints to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, or if the South had won the American Civil War? The questioning of apparent certainties or "known knowns" can be fascinating and, indeed, "What if?" books are very popular. However, this speculative approach, known as counterfactualism, has had limited impact in academic histories, historiography, and the teaching of historical methods. In this book, Jeremy Black offers a short guide to the subject, one that is designed to argue its value as a tool for public and academe alike. Black focuses on the role of counterfactualism in demonstrating the part of contingency, and thus human agency, in history, and the salutary critique the approach offers to determinist accounts of past, present, and future.
Jeremy Black
Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter, UK, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, USA.
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Reviews for Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Somewhere between an extended essay and a survey of how counterfactual history has been handled over time, Black champions asking the question "what if" as a means of unpacking one's own assumptions, as his general feeling is that the academic practice of history has become too set in its assumptions of authority for its own good, and needs reintroduced to notions of narrative and contingency. On the other hand, Black also has little use for the rhetorical cry "if only" that tends to be the foundation of alternative history for the losers; one learns no lessons going down that path.