The charm of... 'if'

IF CLEOPATRA HAD A LESS IMPORTANT NOSE and hadn't ensnared the most powerful men of the time with her beauty... If Lenin hadn't died so young, leaving the Bolshevik Revolution at the mercy of a fierce struggle for succession in which Stalin prevailed... If the 1944 assassination attempt had killed Hitler, or simply if he had been admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts a few decades earlier... If Alexander the Great hadn't died young, and if Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria hadn't died so old...

THE GAME WE ARE ENTERING IS CALLED "COUNTERFACTUAL HISTORY," and it can be defined as a uchronic version of reality. Uchronic history is a literary genre that offers alternative visions of the past, present, and future. A very interesting Amazon series, entitled The Man in the High Castle (inspired by a visionary novel by P.K. Dick), imagines, for example, the United States defeated in World War II. The story is set in the 1960s, after the explosion of nuclear weapons in 1945 destroyed several American cities, leading to the US surrender. The United States appears divided between the East Coast, held by the Nazis (who had meanwhile drained the Mediterranean), and the Pacific Coast, controlled by the Japanese.

ALL OF THIS IS VERY FUNNY, as the great British historian Edward Carr reminds us, because "it's always possible to toy with history made of 'what ifs.'" In the fourth of his Six Lessons on History, Carr delves into this theme, addressing the intricate relationship between causality and chance, starting with the famous "Cleopatra's Nose" to explore the impact of accidental events over time.

ACCORDING TO CARR, HOWEVER, HISTORY WITH 'WHAT IFS' IS NOT SERIOUS: it is primarily made up of large-scale structural processes—social, economic, and political—in which the impact of the individual, while significant, must be placed within broader contexts.
Individual decisions are part of countless dynamics that often elude the individual's capacity for action and comprehension. Consequently, attempting to predict epochal changes based solely on the election of one leader or another is an irrational approach.

CARR'S REFLECTION DEVELOPED IN AN OPEN POLEMICS WITH THE PHILOSOPHER KARL POPPER, who eschewed all forms of determinism and forcefully reiterated that "in human actions, anything is possible," urging us never to overlook accidental events or individual choices.

IN AN ERA WHERE HISTORY IS OFTEN USED AS A WEAPON to strike down adversaries, subjected to uncritical revisionism, or transformed into a narrative unconnected with the facts, it is helpful to revisit reflections, even conflicting ones, that encourage rigor and rationality. Then... you can root for Carr or choose Popper. But always with a grain of salt.

Renato Bonomo
NP March 2026