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Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History (The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures) Paperback – February 4, 2014

by Richard J. Evans (Author), Hedva Ben-Israel (Contributor)

5 customer reviews

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A bullet misses its target in Sarajevo, a would-be Austrian painter gets into the Viennese academy, Lord Halifax becomes British prime minister in 1940 instead of Churchill: seemingly minor twists of fate on which world-shaking events might have hinged. Alternative history has long been the stuff of parlor games, war-gaming, and science fiction, but over the past few decades it has become a popular stomping ground for serious historians. The historian Richard J. Evans now turns a critical, slightly jaundiced eye on a subject typically the purview of armchair historians. The book’s main concern is examining the intellectual fallout from historical counterfactuals, which the author defines as “alternative versions of the past in which one alteration in the timeline leads to a different outcome from the one we know actually occurred.” What if Britain had stood at the sidelines during the First World War? What if the Wehrmacht had taken Moscow? The author offers an engaging and insightful introduction to the genre, while discussing the reasons for its revival in popularity, the role of historical determinism, and the often hidden agendas of the counterfactual historian. Most important, Evans takes counterfactual history seriously, looking at the insights, pitfalls, and intellectual implications of changing one thread in the weave of history.

A wonderful critical introduction to an often-overlooked genre for scholars and casual readers of history alike.

Editorial Reviews

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“Evans makes a very good case for real history.”—Guardian

“[A] stimulating, thought-provoking and in places quite humorous book that will be of interest to professionals and lay readers alike.”—London Times

“Evans is at his best on questions of historical causation; what was necessary for events to happen the way they did? . . . Altered Pasts brings an impressive historical intelligence to bear on what are too often dismissed as parlour games. . . . Evans makes a bullishly enjoyable primer in the history of what might have been, but it seems unlikely to succeed in making subjunctive history a thing of the past.”—Telegraph

“Evans insists that some things are ‘speculation, not history,’ and generally useless—possibly fun, but a distraction from serious business. To those who enjoy such speculation, Evans will seem a bit of a killjoy, and he seems to be fascinated, perhaps in spite of himself, by the subject. His exploration of counterfactual history is in part a history of the topic.”—New Republic

About the Author

RICHARD J. EVANS is one of the most prominent and widely read historians working today. His distinguished career, capped by the recent completion of his three-part history of the Third Reich, has placed him at the center of many of the most important historical debates of the past forty years.

Series: The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Brandeis (February 4, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1611685389
ISBN-13: 978-1611685381
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 5 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,208,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #546 in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources > Essays
- #1105 in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources > Historiography
- #45530 in Books > History > World

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R. Albin

Moderately Interesting

February 20, 2016

Format: Paperback

This is the text of a series of lectures given by prominent historian Richard Evans. This is a historiographic discussion devoted to the question counterfactuals are useful for historical scholarship. Evans is careful to differentiate this concept from the literary genre of alternative history, which he sees as an enjoyable parlor game. His focus in on efforts by scholars to use counterfactual proposals to illuminate the actual human past. The scholarly proponents of counterfactual analyses claim that it emphasizes or even restores human agency and contingency to historical analysis. Evans strongly rebuts these claims. He argues strongly that only a very weak form of counterfactual claims is tenable and that use of counterfactuals adds little to historical analysis. He has a number of discussions of historians who recently made elaborate (and truthfully, rather preposterous claims) and shows them to be largely motivated and carrying out contemporary ideological, political, or personal agendas. This commentary is probably the best part of the book. The historian NIall Ferguson is a particular target. Like all of Evans' work, this book is well organized, argued well, written clearly, and civil in tone. Evans' arguments are generally very strong, though I don't think they completely rule out a successsful and useful ambitious counterfactual analysis. This would, however, be very difficult to achieve though Peter Bowler's recent book on a world without Charles Darwin may come close.

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J. Michael Innes

An insight into the real use of counterfactuals: Telling sense from nonsense.

July 6, 2015

Format: Paperback

This is a very important and delightful book. I have been an avid reader of alternate histories and have always been intrigued by the concept of the counterfactual and the insight that they provide into an understanding of causality, not only in history but in other social sciences. I was especially won over by the analyses in the volume by Tetlock et al (Unmasking the West) and I gave a full review of that work earlier. While still being persuaded by Tetlock and his co-authors, this book by Richard Evans places the whole business of alternate histories in a new light. Evans makes so clear the limits on what could happen in real time as opposed to virtual time when some alteration occurs in what are seen to be crucial moments in the course of historical events. The limits to change are quite strong and as there are multiple factors which come to bear on the progress of events and lives the size of the perturbations in a trajectory can be quite limiting. Evans places the arguments into a new context. As an introduction to alternate history, into an understanding of counterfactuals, one cannot do better than read this erudite volume.

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San Fran Sam

... academic lectures and not AH stories and you might like this book

February 24, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Bear in mind that these are academic lectures and not AH stories and you might like this book.

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Bacchus

Altered Pasts

May 15, 2014

Format: Paperback

I have admired Richard Evans since reading his account of his contribution to the Irving v Lipstadt libel trial. His book, Telling Lies about Hitler, gave me a fascinating insight into the work involved in being a professional historian.

When I studied history as school, I recall two bits of advice from my teachers in tackling the subject. The first was that no-one should assume that historical events are somehow inevitable and the second was that you should not speculate about what might or should have happened - stick to what actually did happen.

This is valuable advice if you are writing essays and trying to get good grades. However, there is much fun in asking yourself what might have happened if key events had happened differently. This goes back to the first piece of advice of not assuming that things are inevitable. Events often turn on the behaviours of individuals. Some of the key questions include the following:
- supposing Hitler won the Second World War
- supposing Hitler survived and escaped to South America
- supposing Franz Ferdinand of Austria was not assassinated in Sarajevo

Most counterfactuals (the term used for this kind of speculation) seem to concern war and indeed Hitler seems to feature in many of them. While such speculation has been a popular vein of fiction, Evans is more concerned about the practice of counterfactuals being adopted by professional historians. He mentions those of Geoffrey Parker, Niall Ferguson and Dominic Sandbrook.

Clearly some counterfactuals are ridiculous exercises in wishful thinking and Evans can't help but point out the flaws in many of them. I do wonder whether in engaging with counterfactual debate one ends up somehow legitimising the practice.

Evans, however, gave me one interesting insight into the work of professional historians in trying to explain the past; that is that historians tend to look for multiple causes and reasons for events rather than single ones. This for me explains the biggest flaw in counterfactual speculation. The removal of a single element may not be sufficient to make the complete about-turns that counterfactual historians imagine. An example might be the Battle of Waterloo. If Napoleon had won this battle, would it have changed the overall course of history and enabled Napoleon to continue his domination of Europe. Evans' guess is that it would only have delayed his downfall. The British forces were still stronger than the French and maybe Napoleon's depleted army would have suffered a crushing defeat months later. Similarly, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, which was the trigger for the start of the First World War, may not have been the underlying cause for the War and therefore there may have been other potential triggers.

I enjoyed reading this book although I did occasionally find the style a bit dry. However, it is not a long read.

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Alan from NYC

Not for the AH crowd.

June 28, 2015

Format: Paperback

Rather dull. Seems to be aimed at an audience of professional historians, rather than people interested in alternate history. Much of the text consists of sentences so long that the point being made gets lost. Pretty much a waste of my time and money.

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