ABOUT CONTRAFACTUAL HISTORY - ABOUT WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN


MAY 26:
Today I will write about something, which might bring me difficulties ☹   My two sons are professional historians.  They will definately criticize my topic.  I want to write about something, which never happened.
My topic is:  If … history. Some people call it alternative history.  It is description of what might have happened, if what actually happened had not happened. It is called Contrafactual History – the history about what did not happen.
You may start with yourself:  What might have happened, if your wife had not chosen you?  Or your husband did not choose you at the time? Or what might have happened, if you had chosen to do or study something very different than you did? Or if things had turned out differently at occasions, when you were close to be involved in an accident of some sort?   Our life is certainly full of unplanned coincidences.
Try to take a short break and think about 3 concrete moments in your life, where things very easily could have turned out very differently than they did!
You can do the same with history in general:
What might have happened, if the Romans had not been defeated in the Battle of Varus near Osnabrück in year 9 AD?  Would we all have been descendants from the Romans today?   Or if Napoleon had won all the wars ?  An English historian said some years ago:  Then the English trains might have been punctual today!  Or if the Serbian student Gavril Princip had not killed the Austrian-Hungarian archduke in Sarajevo in 1914 ? Or if Hitler had been killed, when he during World War I was a German soldier in West Flanders?
This is, of course, all speculative history. There are no real sources, which you can use as background. On the other side there are actually serious historians, who consider it useful to a certain extent. Many authors have written book, essays, novels about the future, etc.  Films have also been made.
This website UCHRONIA has 3.400 books, essays, etc. from around the world:

http://www.uchronia.net


All this work is at least stimulating for your imagination – and for a good discussion 😊  


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