Niall Ferguson - Virtual History: Alternatives And Counterfactuals

Table of Contents

Niall Ferguson is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford. He recently published Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 which was shortlisted for the History Today Book of the Year award. He has also written numerous articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century financial history, including a critique of Keyness Economic Consequences of the Peace and is the author of a history of the Rothschilds. A prolific commentator on contemporary politics, he lives with his wife and two children in Oxfordshire.

NIALL FERGUSON is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford. He recently published Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 (1995), which was shortlisted for the History Today Book of the Year award. He has written numerous articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century financial history, and is currently writing a history of Rothschilds.

JOHN ADAMSON is a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and has published extensively on the political and cultural history of seventeenth-century Britain. He won the Royal Historical Societys Alexander Prize in 1990, and is currently editing the official history of The Commons: 1640-1660 for the History of Parliament Trust.

JONATHAN CLARK is Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of British History at the University of Kansas. His publications include The Dynamics of Change (1982), English Society 1688-1832 (1985), Revolution and Rebellion (1986), The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World (1993) and Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (1994). He has edited The Memoirs and Speeches of James, 2nd Earl Waldegrave 1742-1763 (1988) and Ideas and Politics in Modern Britain (1989).

ALVIN JACKSON is Reader in Modern History at the Queens University of Belfast, and has been Lecturer in Modern Irish History at University College Dublin and John Burns Visiting Professor of Irish Studies at Boston College. He is author of The Ulster Party (1989), Sir Edward Carson (1993) and Colonel Edward Saunderson: Land and Loyalty in Victorian Ireland (1995). He is at present working on the Blackwell History of Modern Ireland.

ANDREW ROBERTS was an Honorary Senior Scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His books include The Holy Fox, A Biography of Lord Halifax (1991), Eminent Churchillians (1994) and The Aachen Memorandum (1995). He is currently writing the authorized biography of the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury.

MICHAEL BURLEIGH is Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of Wales, Cardiff. His books include Prussian Society and the German Order (1984), Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (1988), The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (with Wolfgang Wippermann, 1991), Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany, 1900-1945 (1994) and Confronting the Nazi Past (1996). His essays, Ethics and Extermination: Essays on Nazi Genocide will be published shortly. His award-winning Channel 4 Documentaries include Selling Murder and Heil Herbie.

JONATHAN HASLAM is a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Assistant Director of Studies in International Relations at the Cambridge University Centre of International Studies. He is the author of The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe 1933-1939 (1984) and The Soviet Union and the Threat from the East 1933-1941 (1992). He has recently completed a biography of E. H. Carr and is currently writing The Realist Tradition in International Relations: from Machiavelli to Waltz.

DIANE KUNZ is Associate Professor of History at Yale University. She is the author of The Battle for Britains Gold Standard in 1931 (1987) and The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (1991). Her most recent book is Butter and Guns: Americas Cold War Economic Diplomacy.

MARK ALMOND is Lecturer in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford. His most recent book is Revolution: 500 Years of Struggle for Change (1996). His other books include Europes Backyard War: the War in the Balkans (1994) and The Rise and Fall of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu (1992).

In a collaborative volume, it is for individual contributors to express their gratitude in their notes. The editor, however, has the right to a list of acknowledgements in a larger typeface. I would like to express my thanks to: the Modern History Faculty, Oxford; the Acting Principal and Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford; my agent, Georgina Capel, of Simpson, Fox Associates; Peter Straus and Tanya Stobbs, my editors at Macmillan; Glen OHara of Jesus College, Oxford, for his indispensable assistance with the research for both the introduction and my chapter; and Vivien Bowyer at Jesus College, Oxford. I am especially indebted for their comments on my sections of the book to Dr Christopher Andrew of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Professor Jonathan Clark of the University of Kansas; Professor Roy Foster of Oxford University; Dr Jonathan Steinberg of Trinity Hall, Cambridge ; Dr John Stevenson of Worcester College, Oxford; and Professor Norman Stone of Oxford University. Many other friends and colleagues too numerous to name have assisted me by patiently fielding questions about the theory and practice of counterfactual history over coffee, lunch and dinner. Above all, I would like to thank my wife Susan for providing inspiration.

Niall Ferguson

Acted history ... is an ever-living, ever-working Chaos of Being, wherein shape after shape bodies itself forth from innumerable elements. And this Chaos ... is what the historian will depict, and scientifically gauge!

THOMAS CARLYLE

There is no privileged past ... There is an infinitude of Pasts, all equally valid ... At each and every instant of Time, however brief you suppose it, the line of events forks like the stem of a tree putting forth twin branches.

ANDR MAUROIS

The enduring achievement of historical study is a historical sense - an intuitive understanding - of how things do not happen.

LEWIS NAMIER

The historian must ... constantly put himself at a point in the past at which the known factors will seem to permit different outcomes. If he speaks of Salamis, then it must be as if the Persians might still win; if he speaks of the coup dtat of Brumaire, then it must remain to be seen if Bonaparte will be ignominiously repulsed.

JOHAN HUIZINGA

What if there had been no English Civil War? What if there had been no American War of Independence? What if Ireland had never been divided? What if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Hitler had invaded Britain? What if he had defeated the Soviet Union? What if the Russians had won the Cold War? What if Kennedy had lived? What if there had been no Gorbachev?