Histories, Alternative

The literary category of alternative histories is also known as alternate histories, uchronias, allohisto-ries, or counterfactual histories. The last term is often used for serious studies from a historical perspective. Historians run experiments of a sort in complex areas such as economic history by imagining all events that shape an outcome are static except for one change. For example, consider a counterfactual study in which Calvin [Page 667]Coolidge and a conservatively controlled and business-favoring Congress did not lead the way to a huge difference in wealth between the very rich and the middle class during the 1920s. Economic historians believe this was one major factor that led to overspeculation and then a Depression. In this situation, would the Great Depression have occurred, and if it did not, what major changes would this cause? Would Roosevelt have been elected in 1932?

Besides historical counterfactuals, a good deal of alternative history falls into the fiction genre, and in particular, science fiction. These stories begin with the premise “What If” some single significant event in history either did not happen or happened differently and then go on to explore possible developments. This genre is found in many different languages besides English.

Examples of alternative history appeared in Western literature as early as 1836 with the publication of Louis-Napoléon Geoffroy-Chateau's Napoléon et la conqute du monde, 1812–1832, Histoire de la monarchie universelle. This novel tells the story of Napoleon crushing all his enemies and ending as emperor of the whole world. Far earlier in time, Herodotus, in the 5th century BCE, looked at the consequences had the Persians defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. Livy's Ab Urbe Condita (history of Rome, c. 29 BCE) is considered to have some alternative history aspects.

There were sporadic additional writings now considered to be alternative history during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Examples include a story by Edward Everett Hale in the March 1881 Harpers titled “Hands Off.” This tale imagined Joseph was not sold into slavery in Egypt, leading to an eventual conquest of the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians.

In 1899, Edmund Lawrence published It May Happen Yet: A Tale of Bonaparte's Invasion of England. H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia (1905) falls into one of the subgenres of alternative history, the parallel or alternative Earth plot. In this work, the point of divergence from actual history is the complete skipping of the Dark Ages. In 1926 Charles Pétrie published “If: A Jacobite Fantasy,” in the Weekly Westminster, exploring the idea the Hanoverians fled from Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 and the Stuarts were restored to the throne.

More stories and books appeared during the 1920s and mid-1930s. In December 1939, a short story by L. Sprague de Camp titled “Lest Darkness Fall” appeared in the magazine Unknown. This story, later published as a novel, is generally credited with the beginning of alternative history as a distinct part of science fiction. “Lest Darkness Fall” involves an archaeologist, Martin Padway, who, while visiting the Pantheon in Rome in 1938, is suddenly transported to the 6th century BCE. There Padway recreates some 20th-century inventions and eventually succeeds in averting the Dark Ages. Although the plot is similar to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), what distinguishes the two is Twain's focus on social inequities and de Camp's exacting historical accuracy in his details. An alternate candidate for this honor is the 1934 short story “Sidewise in Time” by Murray Leinster. However, Harry Turtledove, who has written a number of alternative history novels, as well as some other authors, credits de Camp with getting him interested in this genre.

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