Virtual History

[chickenfeet]

Recently read and recommended Virtual History ed. Niall Ferguson.

This project consists of a series of essays on counterfactuals ranging from Charles I defeating the Covenanters to 1989 without Gorbachev, bracketed by an essay by Ferguson justifying the project and a rather startling summary of four centuries of Stuart rule closing it.

There is plenty in the book to provoke and to amuse and, if nothing else, it acts as an antidote to some of the more deterministic theories of history. There is one counterfactual that is mentioned in passing in the introductory essay that particularly intrigued me; if Marc Bloch had lived longer would Les Annales have evolved a less deterministic historiography?

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Is this the one that was first published about 6 years ago? I read most of it then, if it is. (It was a Niall Ferguson, it had roughly the same premise and title, but there was a recent-ish promotion of another one that made me wonder if there are two very similar books.) I love virtual history writings, from a fictional/literary perspective and from an amateur historian's, too. Unfortunately LEB has the copy of the book I remember (well, I bought it for him so that's only fair) so I will have to look at getting myself a copy too, I think, since I do want to (re)read it.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

This one came out in 1997.