Rewriting History: what one decision would you go back and have someone change?
I like thinking about alternative history. There are people like Harry Turtledove who write extensive alternative histories based on whether the South's main general's war plans got to the Northern armies' general in time for the Battle of Antietam. For me there's something appealing about thinking back through complex events in world history and finding critical moments and critical decisions that might have gone another way. I'm also quite taken with the idea that some historical events end up in hindsight looking like perfect storms, where a number of complex variables make the world we now know, but where any one of those variables would have produced a massively different result.
But I'm less interested in thinking about waving a magic wand to change the weather of some day or to change facts on the ground or morale or something like that. What I'm most interested in are situations where someone's individual decision might have dramatically altered the world. Can you identify one decision that happened in the past that you would have that person making it change? How might that set us up in a different reality?
A small note on housekeeping before I let you go. I know this might be a type of topic that walks the fence between something designed for ~talk and something best suited in ~humanities. I think of this as kind of an experiment to see how best to handle topics that straddle two different tildes.
If a young Gaius Octavius had not decided to avenge his great-uncle's murder, we would live in a very different world.
In 44BC, the Roman Republic was falling apart. For the past few decades, it had become more and more prone to civil disputes, even the beginnings of civil war. Gaius Julius Caesar had the intention of trying to restore the Republic (just like others before him, including Lucius Cornelius Sulla). However, to do so, he had to have total control - so he got a compliant Roman Senate to make him dictator in perpetuum. A group of Senators disagreed with this and they killed him on the Ides of March in 44BC.
Upon his death, his 17-year-old great-nephew Gaius Octavius inherited his massive fortune and his clientele (all leading Romans had a network of lesser Romans who owed them allegiance and/or favours: their clientes). Julius Caesar also posthumously adopted Octavius as his son (a common practice for wealthy Romans who had no sons of their own).
At that time, Octavius was the son of a minor Senator with some rural holdings. If his mother hadn't happened to be the daughter of Julius Caesar's niece, he'd've been a nobody. Suddenly, he became one of the richest men in Rome, commanding one of the largest clienteles, and inheriting the name of one of the most famous Romans of all time (due to the adoption, he became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus). Everyone around him (bar one) advised him to just lay low. His late adoptive father had been murdered, and he was only 17 years old. The expected outcome would be that he would play it safe, count his blessing (and his fortune!), enter politics when he was about 20, and work his way up through the cursus honorum to become a consul at the standard age of 40, and be one of the richest and most powerful men in Rome - but still within the system.
Instead, he decided to avenge his adoptive father's death.
Over the next 20 years, he defeated, exiled, or killed almost all the men who murdered Julius Caesar. These were many of the most powerful or influential men in Rome. So, to stay alive, he had to use his adoptive father's power and wealth to protect himself. He took control of Caesar's legions. He utilised Caesar's clients. He spent Caesar's fortune. And, in doing so, he became the single most powerful man in Rome's history. He became an emperor in everything but name (he always observed the forms, and pretended not to be becoming Rome's new king).
Gaius Octavius almost singlehandedly created the Roman Empire.
If he had not decided to avenge his adoptive father's death, Rome would have torn itself apart within another generation. The internal strife leading up to 44BC was just getting worse and worse. Rome was overstretched. It couldn't effectively govern its provinces. Its elite was locked in a struggle for power. It was rife with corruption. It was going to eat itself up from the inside.
The only thing that saved it was Octavius wiping out the elite and becoming the one and only ruler of Rome.
Without a Roman Empire, we wouldn't have western civilisation as we know it now. I can't even begin to describe just how much Europe, and later the world, owes to the Roman Empire (as opposed to the Roman Republic).
The most obvious effect would be that Christianity would not have taken over the western world. No Roman Empire means no Emperor Constantine to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Christianity would have remained a minor religion, kind of like Judaism, instead of the civilisation-shaping force behind Europe's Middle Ages (and, later, the European colonies).
Great comment, but one nitpick:
Theodosius I was the one that made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine "just" legalized it.
Thanks for that. My speciality is the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. After the last Julio-Claudian Emperor, I'm lost!
Without the Roman Empire to back it, I think Christianity would have had about as much impact in history and the modern day as Judaism has. It would have a core of devoted followers, but it wouldn't have been the primary religious influence on Europe for a whole millennium, and then spreading out to Europe's colonies.
All the various peoples of Europe and the Near East would have kept their various local religions: mostly animism (e.g. Druids) and polytheism (e.g. Greeks). This would also have been the case for the areas colonised by Europe (assuming Europe still did colonise large chunks of the rest of the world!): the Native Americans, the Aboriginal Australians, the various African nations, and so on, would all have retained their native religions.
Basically, there'd have been a lot more variety of religion across Europe and the world, without Christianity intruding itself everywhere.
I'm not sure about what would have happened to Muhammed and Islam. Supposedly, he was a member of a tribe that already practised a monotheism which was probably connected to the Jewish monotheism. So... did he develop Islam from Judaism, or was it a reaction to the Christians in Syria? If the latter, then Islam never happened. If the former... then maybe we're all Muslims now. Islam spread itself through conquest, and was held back from dominating Europe by the existing civilisation there. With no Roman Empire to seed that civilisation, it's possible that Europe would have been easy pickings for the Islamic soldiers. And, being uncontested and also quite proselytic, maybe Islam spread itself around the world.
It's probably a bit too romantic to believe that without Christianity but with Islam that Europe would have fallen to the Islamic military hordes. Europe (and elsewhere, like Mesopotamia) had already long showed its ability to endure and absorb the raids and invasions of ideas and tribes, particularly from the steppes. It isn't necessarily true that Islamic forces would progress until there was a force strong enough to fight them, because military infrastructures take a lot of resources even in the 700s (and maybe Islam wouldn't explode exactly then either, impacting military history depending on when).
For example, when the Umayyads crossed into Hispania, the kingdom they were invaded was particularly unsuited to combat. In a world where their safety was less guaranteed by their association with the Roman Empire for centuries, or where their neighbors showed more interest in their lands, would this still be the case?
What religions might have been in the area at this time? I would think some form of Celtic Paganism in the westernmost parts of Gaul. Perhaps a Norse religion would be still holding in Germany and among the Franks. In Spain and Italy, perhaps the Roman pantheon would still be popular. These aren't necessarily religions that are without civilization, and the challenges they may have experienced and grown through if not snuffed out by the overwhelming weight of Imperial minded Romans is an open question.
If there's one thing I've noticed from the history I've studied, it's that hierarchies in a region almost always tend to sort out from the competent, powerful forces, to lesser, relevant forces, to irrelevant client states. Given the nature of the Umayyad campaigns (that is, quite similar in how it spreads to a religiously motivated form of Persian expansion back to Assyrian expansion), I'm pretty confident the question is not whether the Umayyads would have reached a point at which their military fortunes ran out, but when. You roll the dice enough time with organizing these battles then you're risking getting burned, especially when there's relative parity between the quality of fighters and leadership (the Franks were not known as Christians as little as four centuries earlier; they converted as they integrated into the decaying empire).
Okay. This'll teach me to stray out of my areas of historical expertise! :)
I'm a tragic generalist when it comes to most areas of history. I know a little bit about a lot, and not a lot about anything outside of, like, US presidential history (and seriously, who wants to read about what pet Millard Fillmore brought with him to the White House1). I think the fun about questions like these is that they basically force you (meaning me) to stretch a bit to learn more about some other time than what I already know a bit about.
I'm terribly weak on the particulars of most periods, so it's really rewarding to read off-the-hip takes about periods I know fairly little about. You just chose one of the largest hornets nests in history, with one of the most far reaching consequences. To look forward at some of the things it would foreseeably impact requires a bit of uncomfortable stretching that I'm more than happy to do what I can to help with.
1 - Two ponies btw, Mason and Dixon; this being the heat of the debate over slavery, and Fillmore's reputation for trying to find common ground and compromise between pro- and anti-slavery groups.
Can you elaborate on this? How do you adopt someone after you've died?
"I, Lucius Litigus, hereby declare that Gaius Genericus shall be my son and heir. He shall carry on my family's name, and he shall be considered my son at law."
After the reading of the will, Young Gaius Genericus would then take himself off to a magistrate and a priest to change his name to Lucius Litigus Generican, to go through the appropriate rituals, and thereafter to be legally and religiously recognised as a member of the Litigus family.
Thanks! I can't believe I forgot wills were a thing.
Yes, even the Romans had wills! :P Even the poorest Roman with only one slave to his name would scrape together the few denarii required to lodge his will. It was the right of a Roman citizen to do so, and most Romans did so.
Fun fact: the Vestal Virgins were the holders of all Roman wills.
A slightly underwhelming, probably controversial, and not altogether well-researched attempt on my part to talk about an event that has majorly influenced China's approach to foreign affairs. I am not a historian and it is hard to get solid facts on this since many related documents are probably not declassified yet, so take all this with a spoonful of salt.
During the Kosovo war, China was supporting Yugoslavia while NATO was supporting Kosovo.
The United States declared the bombing an accident. Defense Secretary William Cohen said: "One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map." However, most people in China, including the Chinese government, believed the attack was intentional, a suspicion not without reason.2
Outraged, Chinese people gathered at US embassies in China to protest. In Beijing, rock-throwing crowds kept American staff trapped in the embassy, while in Chengdu people tried to set fire to the buildings. Thankfully, there were no reported injuries.3
Recently there has been much speculation on Chinese internet on the reason of the bombing, with the most popular being the F-117 wreckage story. 4 5
The F-117 Nighthawk was at the time America's most sophisticated stealth aircraft, and it was deployed in the war to bomb Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavian military managed to shoot down an F-117 plane - the only one ever to be lost in combat. The pilot ejected and narrowly escaped capture. He was rescued by an American search and rescue team.6
The theory goes that the Yugoslavia government has salvaged the wreckage and sold important parts of the aircraft to China. At the time China has not developed stealth technology and seeks to gain insight into the workings of the F-117 by studying the wreckage. The parts were hidden inside the Chinese embassy; however, a tracking beacon inside the Inertial Navigation Unit alerted US military about the location of the F-117 wreckage. Five bombs were sent to the embassy to destroy the F-117 parts, but they were not successful. The bomb meant to blow up the basement did not blow up.
People speculated that China managed to smuggle the parts back by hiding it on the plane carrying the remains of the victims. According to the words of an officer:
The theory and speculation ends here. Whatever the truth may be, this event caused a rapid rise in tension between the two countries. China's relationship with the US - which has been gradually improving in the last two decades before 1999 - rapidly stalled and cooled down. The event made the Chinese government suddenly and painfully aware of its military inferiority and the fact that having a strong economy means nothing if there is no military to back it up. It strengthened China's resolve to stop relying on imported technology and ramp up its military. It changed the world view of many Chinese people. As a student interviewed in 2009 said:
I'm curious of what would happen if the US did not bomb the embassy. Perhaps China would be less militarized, maybe it would have pursued a more democratic, western path. Would the US and China be in such antagonizing positions right now? Would the trade wars still happen? Who knows? However, it is said that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall. The incident certainly pushed China further away from the US.
To whomever made it this far: I was hesitant to post this, having a feeling this will not be received particularly well. I have tried to portray the events in an objective manner, but unconscious bias is unavoidable, and this was all written in a few hour's research. I am not a historian, nor do I study history, so if anyone sees an error in this feel free to correct me, but don't forget to provide sources.
Sources:
I love the structure of how you approached this question, and I love the details you brought too. This comment, I think, is an ideal example of what I was hoping for.
It's really kind of baffling to remember sometimes just how recently Russia and China in their current forms have entered the world stage, and how US conduct post-Cold War has influenced much of their behavior in ways we might not normally highlight on a regular basis. Chinese and Russian diplomats alike seem particularly sensitive to what I've heard them often describe as American moralizing, the idea that there is a standard we hold the world to and then conveniently ignore when it's time to apply the same to ourselves.
This particular incident may seem small to many (and I think I'd be among them), but it's hard to know what sort of example setting this whole incident actually turned out to be. In one of China's first real forays in international affairs in almost a century (and one of the first of the modern Chinese communist state), it saw itself attacked by the main superpower of the world, the very same one that claimed to be the international order's guarantor. It's not hard to imagine this as another nail in the coffin of the idea that if China is to regain or gain some status as a global superpower, the international order as it stood in the 1990s does not favor Chinese interests.
Thank you! I typed this up late at night and almost deleted it because it seemed a little rushed and a bit conspiracy theory-ish. I was a bit worried that this will attract some negative comments like "those damn commies", as many posts related to China on the internet often do, but it seems that the worry was unnecessary. If you do want to learn more about this, the fifth link above is a very great read that goes a bit more in-depth on the whole thing.
It is. I think computers only started becoming commonplace in China in the 90s, and many people didn't own one until the turn of the century. China has developed extraordinarily quick, but standards of living are still very unequal between urban and rural areas. I have hope that things will get better though.
America has certainly done as many shady things as the rest of the world. I think the qualm those diplomats have is that the US tends to see itself in a better light than some other countries would. Incidentally, I recently found an excellently researched thread on America's foreign policy, posted in r/polandball of all places.
It is interesting to see what events that people from other countries deem important. For example, I was not aware of the battle of Vimy Ridge until I came to Canada. I am probably oblivious to so many more historical events simply because it does not concern me. I like seeing how different countries portray the same event, it gives a lot of insight into the truth versus what the government wants the population to believe.
Mitochondrial Eve is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor of all currently living humans on Earth. She is all of our Great-...-Great Grandmother. Eve lived somewhere in the East of Africa, roughly 100–230k years ago. This was a time when Sapiens still shared the Earth with other human species — H. erectus, neanderthalensis, floresiensis, and the Denisovans, at least.
She lived 20k years before something really special occurred in the development of our neocortices, and at least 80k before the first signs of the advent of agriculture. Her world was very old, and more alien than we could probably imagine.
If you wanted to cause the most dramatic change in the human reality, we look to Grandmama. Track her down before she's had a child, and bonk her on the head real good. If you're opposed to a murder, but will still allow the time-genocide of 108 Billion, maybe we could instead arrange for her birth to never occur.
This is the most dramatic alteration I can think of. This alternate 2018 will have an entire different set of humans, and all of recorded history will be written by different authors. Maybe this history invented the atom bomb 500 years before ours. Maybe they never master the fields and plow. Maybe that thing in our brains never happened at all. However that reality unfolds, it would be something entirely new.
I don't know that I would have somebody go back to make that change, but this would be undoubtedly a drastic alteration of the world.
That's not really a decision, though... is it? It's not a situation "where someone's individual decision might have dramatically altered the world".
However, you don't even need to kill Mitochondrial Eve to achieve this. Simply delay her fertilisations by a microsecond each time, so that she's impregnated by a different spermatozoa. That'll create different people.
You could apply this same thinking to most of our ancestors. Supposedly, 0.5% of all men alive today are direct male descendants of Genghis Khan (and it's certain that other people are descended from him through female lines). Statistically, if you go back far enough, we all share all our ancestors. If any one of those people had a microsecond delay in their sex, they'd produce a different child who would be a different ancestor for a significant portion of the human race.
But that's kind of a meaningless change. There's no benefit or fun in just saying "what if all humans ever were different people"? Part of the fun of alternative histories is to compare them to real history. If you totally obliterate all of history as we know it and create a totally new history with no connection to the old one, there's no basis for comparison.
That's fair, it's not really what OP was asking for. But I'm quite exhausted and my mind is wandering freely tonight.
I disagree on it not being any fun anyway — even if a bit off-topic — one of my primary interests is Anthropology. For me it's kind of a thought experiment. If we RNG the human genealogy a bit, before some key points in our evolution, how different would humans be? To say nothing about the history. Would we still have developed such a large neocortex, and potentially that 'spark' of being aware of our own awareness? Would our nature be very different? How much of history is a result of the people themselves, and how much of it is the result of how people interact generally? Human Group Dynamics have less to do about the individuals, and more about our nature. Maybe the broad strokes of our history would unfold in a very similar way. At the end of the day we're still very much just essentially chemical robots. Perhaps there is something to Determinism, and the concept of Free Will is an illusion produced by the brain and interpreted by our awareness. Could be that the human race is basically 'on-rails' and our development was 'decided' according the initial state of the Universe. Maybe no matter who we are as individuals, so long as the aggregate is unchanged, things would mostly unfold in a similar way.
That's getting more off-track but, that's what's fun for me.
I never could get into alt-history fiction or speculation. I always get wrapped up in the existential questions that naturally arise.
It wasn't what I was asking for, true, but I think it's still quite an interesting and related thought experiment, driven by what feels like the same sense of wonder about what all had to go exactly the way it did for us to be the way we are today. Thanks for sharing!
If you want existential questions... my big "what if" is "What if the Chicxulub meteor didn't hit Earth 65 million years ago?" There were human-sized, bipedal, omnivorous, large-brained dinosaurs called Troödon extant at the time. They had a lot of traits that our own primate ancestors had, and were excellent candidates to evolve into intelligent beings. What if they didn't go extinct? What if they became intelligent 60 million years ago, and our own ancestors remained small nocturnal shrews?
I always find alternate history interesting to think about. So, I'm going to be fully in support of such topics and hope to see more of them. Now, one of my favourite periods of history is Anglo-Saxon England with all their in-fighting, influences of Irish Christianity, birth of English, birth of England, fighting against the Scandinavians over and over again, coming back from the near brink of annihilation only to be fully conquered then gaining their kingdom back. All this over a 600 year period, some of which is slightly mysterious, is just terribly exciting to me. Back to the topic, one of the key points that could have easily turned out different was the Norman conquest, we will first look at the backdrop, then the point of divergence, then the aftermath.
Background
Everyone knows that the fall of Anglo-Saxon England happened with the Norman Conquest by William the Bastard. With William claiming the throne of England on the basis that both the previous king Edward1 and Harold Godwinson2, had in, one way or another, promised the throne to him.
There a multiple possible points of divergence here:
Upon the return of the Godwin family to England, all their land was returned to them after their brief one year exile in 1051
Here they could have tried to wrestle away the throne of England from Edward, but thought it safer not to, besides Godwin's daughter was married to the king and they would have an heir sometime, right?
Harold could have not accepted the kingship
This isn't particularly exciting, but would lead to conflict between Harald the king of Norway and William of Normandy
Harold could have not tried to go and rescue one of his brothers and a nephew from the Norman court
In the original timeline Harold going to Normandy leads to him being captured, and having to swear future fealty (according to Norman sources) to William upon William's ascendance to the throne of England
The third point is interesting because we don't really know why Harold went to the European mainland in 1064-ish. What we do know is that he was shipwrecked and had all the wealth he brought along confiscated and he eventually returned to England. Now, if upon the Godwin family's return to England in 1052 they somehow managed a rescue of Wulfnoth Godwinson and Hakon Sweynson (the former being Harold's younger brother, the latter his nephew), the whole business with William the Bastard and Harold Godwinson may not have happened. Since, in 1064-ish, Harold was the second most powerful man in England, his oath was rather a powerful thing and would have helped William with his claim on the English throne, without it, I'm not sure William would have been so keen, and he might have sought other avenues of adventure, as did some of his subjects in the original time line. See Norman conquest of Southern Italy.
1 the king of England from 1042-1066, who had spent his formative years in the Duchy of Normandy court, note that he had no issue and no official heir
2 Harold had (according to the Normans) been shipwrecked off the coast of Normandy and only released on the pretense that he would support William the Bastard's tenuous claim3 to the throne of England, meanwhile denying his own claim4
3 In William's eyes his claim was fine because his great aunt Emma was Edward's mother, to him the throne was already partially Normanised, as Edward had brought lots of Norman French speaking advisors to the English court, which caused conflict with the Godwin family5 (including Harold)
4Harold was the brother-in-law of Edward and was closely related to the previous Scandinavian kings of England through his mother
5Basically the kingmakers for the last 50 years of Anglo-Saxon England.
Divergent Timeline
(in the style of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle)
Year 1052
The Godwin family returns from exile in Flanders and Ireland. Harold Godwinson rescues his kin from the retreating Normans.
Year 1053
Earl Godwin dies. Harold Godwinson becomes the new Earl of Essex.
Year 1055
Tostig Godwinson recieves the Earldom of Northumbria
Year 1057
Edward the Exile returns to England, declared potential heir to King Edward, promptly dies
Year 1063
Earl Harold and Earl Tostig attack Gruffydd ap Llywelyn the King of Wales, kill him and split Wales back into the smaller kingdoms of Powys and Gwynedd and are meant to faithfully serve King Edward
Year 1065
Tostig Godwinson is exiled from England
Year 1066
King Edward dies. King Harold is selected as king of England.
Tostig returns to England.
Tostig is defeated, joins with King Harald of Norway then both are defeated by King Harold
By the grace of God, Duke William of Normandy has received a papal blessing to rid Sicily of the Moors and return southern Italy to Christendom
Year 1067
King Harold declares that his claim on the throne of Norway and Denmark are valid and he also claims all lands in and around England currently held by the Danes and Norwegians. So, begins the conquest of the North Sea.
Year 1068
King Harold's fleet defeats the Norwegian fleet around Shetland
Earl Edwin of Mercia and Earl Morcar of Northumbria secure the Kingdom of the Isles for the throne of England
Year 1069
King Harold arrives in Norway after the death of King Magnus
King Harold receives hostages and gifts from the local earls and crown Harold King of Norway. King Harald betroths his daughter Gytha to Olaf, to secure the kingship. Earl Olaf is given the Earldom of Greater Norway and is tasked with keeping the peace.
Year 1070
King Harold declares his success in conquering the North Sea
Year 1074
King Harold receives word of lands further to the west called Greenland, Helluland, Markland and Vinland. King Harold declares an expedition to these mystery lands.
Year 1077
The people in Greenland now accept the throne of England and Norway as their rightful rulers
The expedition returns with word of green lands filled with wine, strange animals and even stranger people
Year 1078
King Harold sends another expedition to the West.
Year 1080
King Harold declares his son Harold as the heir to the throne of England and Norway
Year 1084
King Harold dies. His son Harold is made King of England and Norway
The future
The idea would be that England would probably find trade goods and willing converts over in the new world and would seek to secure those throughout the medieval warm period, but would probably lose contact with the colonies sometime in the early 15th century when there is more ice in the North Sea and the crossing is harder. And would later rediscover the colonies in the late 16th century.
Interestingly, the addition of the English to the new world this early would give the population of the Americas ample time to bounce back before the Spanish get the chance to come knocking. And there might even be gunpowder empires, if the English stay relatively friendly with the Natives, as they would probably have to as their technological difference is not that vast and the English would be rather outnumbered. See Leif Erikson's expeditions to the new world for historical parallels.
And William the Bastard, being rather ambitious, might even try to make a new Kingdom of Italy. Creating all kinds of new and interesting divergences.
That reminds me a little bit of the Midgard setting from GURPS Infinite Worlds, where more successful Vikings maintain their hold on Britain and properly colonize eastern North America. If you're interested in alternate histories, I would definitely recommend flipping through the alternate earths books, they're really something.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely have a look at them. Though, at first glance it seems the authors really enjoy world spanning empires, which runs counter to the general historical trend of empires falling under their own weight. That being said, I'll still read them even though I may disagree with the plausibility of some the included worlds.
Yeah, it's not extremely realistic, but what it lacks in realism it more than makes up for in creativity.
Very true. They're not so much alternate history as fantasy stories with a loose basis in historical happenings. Not that there's anything wrong with that, the stories are still enjoyable.
Off topic...
I wanted to write about how the world might be different if the Chinese navy could rival the British navy in the 1800-1900s. Empress Dowager Cixi's decision to divert 22 million silver taels from the Qing navy to the Summer Palace is infamous in Chinese history, and has often been regarded as a pivotal move to the fall of the Qing Empire (though it was definitely already in decline, in truth since the late 1700s). This supposedly prevented the modernization of the old Qing navy, specifically building ships from steel instead of wood.
However, after lots of googling, it turns out, as a reoccurring theme in Chinese history, a woman was just blamed for decades of poor decisions. She also really was a terrible person...but just not totally responsible for the Qing navy.
I think a bit too much Chinese drama shows mixed into my actual history knowledge.
Still, I wanted to add a comment to thank @BuckeyeSundae for this post anyway. I learned something, and other comments have been super interesting to think about.
I don't think this is off topic, actually! You've explored a question you thought might work but realized it doesn't. That seems like a pretty direct attempt to me, but maybe I'm just a bit more liberal with my understanding.
You often have situations in military history where the people most responsible for a failure are convincing in shifting the public blame for a particular disaster to scapegoats. At the end of the first World War especially, you have a ton of memoirs from generals trying to justify and rationalize their decisions in the moments they made them. Whether or not you think those explanations are successful can depend a lot on your background. Most famously, Erich Ludendorff would justify his loss at the very end of World War I by claiming the politicians had stabbed him in the back (even though he had almost total control of the German government at the time he was making those decisions, and the disastrous events on the ground during the Peace Offensive--the last serious German stab at victory--were almost certainly primarily a failure of his to find a suitable mobility replacement for horses when trying to go on the offensive).
Still, for veterans who were bitter, destitute, and experienced the horrors of an entire World War seeming for nothing, the idea that it was not the army (your people) who lost the war but the politicians who betrayed you was appealing. What good is the truth if a lie will save you or bring you comfort? If people already are primed to hate someone (especially if that person is a woman in a leadership position), why not leverage that hate when it would otherwise fall on you? I think it's sadly rarer to find examples throughout history where someone is willing to hold themselves accountable for their own failures when there are scapegoats that can be blamed. Off the top of my head I think Simon Bolivar in South America probably came the closest, but this was in the end of his life after being exiled for like the fifth time from his home country, when he believed he was one of the most hated men in his country. Rather than attack the people who exiled him, he just wrote as he died that he hoped the best for his country and that if his death would bring people closer to a unified and functional country, that would be enough to give him peace.
I guess what I'm saying is that I can definitely see how some people might have fallen for the myth that this Empress was the reason for the fall of China's fortunes. The old and traditional was increasingly a poor fit for the problems of the day, but the Empress herself may have represented for the people a similar role that Marie Antoinette played for the French in the run up to revolution there (for instance, she probably never actually said "let them eat cake," and yet many of us know the line as if it had happened): a compelling reason the blame is understandable and doesn't require them to walk back all their values to address it.
It was an interesting topic to think about. Thanks for writing up your attempt.
Thanks for understanding and the cool write up. It is really interesting that so many important moments in history, for better or for worst, are attributed to a single person, while we know how complicated the world is, and thus how likely that's true.
A few years I read 1421 - The year China discovered the world by Gavin Menzies. (It was published as 1421: The Year China Discovered America in the United States)
Historians weren't particularly keen on his take on things, but I found it enjoyable and easy to read.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1308
http://historycooperative.org/not-rewrite-world-history-gavin-menzies-chinese-discovery-america/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3557568/Gavin-Menzies-mad-as-a-snake-or-a-visionary.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies
Thanks for the suggestion. Not sure how much I buy, but it was really interesting.
I sometimes wonder how the Titanic affected history. That was one of those perfect storms where a number of conditions and decisions came to together to make it the disaster it was. Between influential people who died, influential people that survived but were changed by the experience, and others who weren't aboard but who were affected, how did it change the course of history?
But looking over a list of the most prominent people on the Titanic I'm not seeing a lot in the way of people that would have obviously had a direct hand in later major world events. Some, like William Stead, were highly influential earlier in life (he was a pioneer of investigative journalism and pushed to raise the age of consent in the U.K. from 13 to 16) but were past their hey-day by the time the Titanic went down. Elsie Bowerman was a survivor who was a notable suffragette and lawyer and helped set up the U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women. But she was a suffragette before the sinking, so it's hard to say how it affected her course compared to what she would have done had it not happened.
I would normally say that the Lusitania (the Titanic's sister ship) probably impacted world events more than the Titanic did, though the Titanic is much more romanticized. Every retelling I've ever heard of the Titanic focuses on class issues, and the horrible way in which class worked its way out to literally trap some passengers below deck as the ship sank. That image or horror very likely propelled a lot of safety standards in future shipping lines that saved lives. Would we have those standards eventually without the Titanic sinking? How long would it have taken?
One of the tricky things about the "what would have been" when it comes to human tragedy is that it's basically impossible to know without a lot of writing on the wall who would have dramatically changed the world if they had survived some event. Those dice rolls happen so often and so unpredictably that maybe some unnamed passenger on the Titanic might have exploded in brilliance if they had survived. Maybe some of these people you mentioned as having been in the reclining years of their careers would have found new life on some topic if they were alive to cover it. It's hard to know.
One thing I'm curious about here: Can you identify a decision related to the Titanic that might have kept it from becoming the human tragedy it was? Would that decision have kept the ship from sinking or just maximized the number of people who survived it? I'm not immediately all that familiar with the details (and it has been about two decades since I watched Cameron's romantization of it).
One of the most pivotal decisions was how the radio was handled. The Titanic's radio operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride were swamped with personal messages for the passengers. When the radio operator for the Californian, Cyril Evans, sent a message warning about ice, Phillips shot back "shut up". After being told to shut up Evans turned off his radio and went to sleep. The Californian was the closest ship to the Titanic but it didn't hear Titanic's distress call. It didn't find out what was happening and show up until six hours after the Titanic sank. By that time the Carpathia was on scene and almost done picking up survivors.
Had Evans left his radio on another half hour he would have heard Titanic's first distress call. The Californian could have gotten there before the Titanic sank and saved nearly everyone.
The ice warning Evans sent wasn't coded urgent so it didn't get to the captain, but an earlier ice warning did.
I'm not so sure that Princip would ever be in a position to decide not to want to kill Ferdinand if the opportunity arose. Maybe you would rather force Ferdinand not to be the idiot taking after the Russian tsar (Alexander II) 60 years earlier who insisted on traveling just after an attempted assassination failed? It's not like anyone chose for that car to stall out at that exact moment in front of Princip.
But supposing Princip never succeeds, how do you see the world moving forward? Germany's rise was coming into ever increasing conflict with the United Kingdom; Russia's ruling conservativism looked ever more a mismatch for its society; the Ottoman empire had not been doing that hot for more than a century (Austro-Hungarian Empire too, no less).
How do these multiethnic empires transition into the 20th century if World War 1 doesn't happen to force the issue when it does? Do they just each fold in their own future crises? Does a future international crisis with the Bismarkian style alliance system with rather unimaginative people helming it explode into a different conflict?
I've listened to the Hardcore History episode you're talking about. But at the risk of sounding rude, I'm not talking with Dan Carlin at the moment. I'm talking with @Feureau. What do you think? I'm not going to jump down your throat for offering a stab at these difficult questions, I swear!
Carlin lists a lot of historical controversies swirling around the start of World War I, most especially how much to blame each of the participating powers. The questions I asked (and that you might ask) does depend a bit on how we see what was to follow. Do you believe that if Franz weren't killed that there would have been no Europe-shaking crisis that would have led the perilously positioned powers to war? That's not just a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely interested in your take.
Thanks for this! I think your thoughts about time travel are fun. I wouldn't really care if I survived in something as important as this, so I normally wouldn't think about time paradoxes. If the timeline changes and I no longer will exist in that timeline, that's a small price.
I'm not sure I necessarily have to adopt a deterministic understanding of reality to still wonder whether Russia's tsardom and Austrio-Hungary's empire survive without Princip being in the right place at the right time. The transition into the 20th century had already been signalling for some time that ethnic nationalism was going to be the primary pain point, and that was going to particularly present in the shaky multi-ethnic empires, each of whom had seen better days and were rife with exactly this sort of internal strife because of it.
I do think I agree that without the first World War ending exactly the way it did, you probably don't have the Ludendorff justification for his failures blaming everything on the politicians; and you certainly don't have a charismatic extremist latching onto that justification and leveraging it for his own political fortunes to only barely earn a plurality in elected government. Would that have been enough to stall out the particular rotten underbelly that was the Thucycides trap-styled mismatch between Germany's power and what it believed was its rightful place in the international order? If Germany lost the first world war anyway, but maybe didn't see as punitive a peace treaty? Maybe. But if that treaty were as or more punitive, where competing powers split Germany up the same way they had done to Africa, tried to do to China, and would (later) do to the Ottoman empire, that seems like an indignation that would be almost certain to rise up again in some form the moment the international order is weak enough to be exploited. The climate of ethnic nationalism, combined with the culture and resources of the German people, was probably too strong to punish the country and hope it goes away entirely.
The idea of country-funded sedition was one of the underpinnings of the first World War and remained a feature of it throughout. Rivals seeking an advantage on their opponents funded ideological rebels as firecrackers to try to weaken the unity in their opposing nations. Horrors experienced in one country were often suspected to be sedition funded by another country. It's a tactic we still see today. I think it might be too much to expect that to just go away if Princip doesn't succeed, but I also think the horrors of the first World War specifically are so unique that unless it goes exactly the way it did, with exactly the result it had, the second World War potentially doesn't happen at all.
Russia remains Tsarist, the British and French Empires continue to expand, maybe the Ottomans and Austro-Hungarians even survive. It would certainly be a different world.
Stopped the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and allowed the reconstruction to continue. I can't help but imagine that the US would be a much better place if things like voting rights were upheld in the south through federal force for a few decades.
Those are two separate moments, right? What decision would you have changed to stop the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? How could you have convinced such a stubborn fool without saying something like "I'm from the future and you're going to be killed here if you go"?
When it comes to ending reconstruction, at least that is something I can try to find a clear decision point around: the election of 1876 when Rutherford Hayes (Republican) was electorally tied with Sam Tilden (Democrat). The price Republicans paid to have their man as the president was the end of Reconstruction, which the Democrats in Congress (who were still in the majority at the time after the scandals of the Grant administration had simply crushed Republicans in the House). So do the Democrats trade two more years of reconstruction (a policy that they as a party loathe at this point) for Tilden or do they end Reconstruction now and get Hayes for president? This is the decision point, and unfortunately the people in charge of making this decision aren't lovers of the Reconstruction at all. So how do you argue to them that it would be best for them to have Tilden as president and to hold off on ending the Reconstruction?
Haha, what I thought I would change is the ending of Stephen Kings book, 11-21-63, which is itself about changing history. But I just re-read the end, hadn't looked at it since I finished the book about 2 years ago. And somehow it had already changed. Because I liked it now.