1931 collection of counterfactual history essays
If It Had Happened Otherwise is a 1931 collection of essays edited byJ. C. Squire and published byLongmans, Green. Each essay in the collection could be consideredalternate history orcounterfactual history. Some of the essays were written by leading historians of the period, and one was written byWinston Churchill.
The original edition included the following essays:[1]
- "IfLee Had NOT Won theBattle of Gettysburg" byWinston Churchill: This essay is written from the viewpoint of ahistorian in a world where theConfederate Army won the Battle of Gettysburg and theCivil War, and the narrator frequently asks what would have happened if this event had not occurred. The essay is an exercise of counter-counter-factualirony. Although the Confederacy achieves independence, theBritish Empire becomes a broker between the United States andCSA, resulting in an eventual unification of all three as the "English Speaking Association", which prevents World War I.[3][4]
- "If Napoleon Had Escaped to America" byH. A. L. Fisher:Napoleon Bonaparte, fleeing from theBattle of Waterloo, avoids surrendering to the British Empire and catches a ship sailing toNew York City. The essay is written from the perspective of a New York scholar who becomes a personal assistant of the formerEmperor of the French. Napoleon travels south to joinSimón Bolívar in liberating most ofCentral America andSouth America fromSpanish andPortuguese rule.
- "If theMoors in Spain Had Won" byPhilip Guedalla: IslamicGranada survives as a separate political entity, weakening Spain from the late 15th century onward, but resulting in a liberal humanist brand ofIslam, the adoption ofconstitutional monarchy, and Spanish participation on theCentral Powers' side duringWorld War I against Granada and theEntente Powers.
- "If theGeneral Strike Had Succeeded" byRonald Knox: This essay is in the form of an article fromThe Times of 1931, which describes aGreat Britain undercommunist rule.
- "If the Emperor Frederick Had Not HadCancer" byEmil Ludwig:Kaiser Friedrich III survives past 1888, and with his wife,Empress Victoria, rules a liberal humanistGerman Empire where their sonKaiser Wilhelm II never succumbs tomilitarism, due to the long-term benign effects of this scenario, leading to 1914 being a year of peace.
- "If Louis XVI Had Had an Atom of Firmness" byAndré Maurois: As withHilaire Belloc's essay above, the main story positsLouis XVI as averting his1793 death in theFrench Revolution, but thepoint of divergence happens in the 1770s rather than 1791, and leads to a more optimistic outcome. In aframe story, a recently deceased historian is escorted by anangel to a greatlibrary inHeaven, where he gets to read history books of possible worlds that did not come to be. His eye is caught by a book whose cover states that Louis XVI had a 46-year reign asKing of France, dying of alung disease in 1820. In the main story, the young king, shortly after coming to power in the mid 1770s, makes necessary financial and constitutional reforms beforehand that prevent the necessity for the Revolution, resulting in the survival ofFrance as aconstitutional monarchy into the twentieth century. Louis refuses to sponsor theAmerican Revolution and later builds an alliance withGreat Britain; the United States never exists, but theThirteen Colonies get the representation they desired from theBritish Parliament, so the expanding America effectively controls Britain. The 1790s and 1800s are relatively peaceful decades forEurope, and all nations live happily ever after.
- "IfByron Had Become King ofGreece" byHarold Nicolson. The fun-lovingpoet andplaywright recovers from his 1824 illness, becomes chief military strategist in theGreek War of Independence against theOttoman Empire, and is chosen to be the new nation's first monarch in the 1830s. He is referred to in the story as George I of Greece, a name which in reality was given toa different monarch 30 years later.
- "If It Had Been Discovered in 1930 thatBaconReally Did WriteShakespeare" byJ. C. Squire. Not a true alternate history, this is a comic farce wherein cultural upheavals, acts of quick thinking in rebranding tourist attractions, and additions of newslang terms to theEnglish language occur when someone finds a box containing 17th-century documents proving that the plays generally accepted to have been written by William Shakespeare were in fact written by Sir Francis Bacon.
- "IfBooth Had MissedLincoln" byMilton Waldman: Booth's gun fails to fire atFord's Theatre on April 14, 1865, so he isn't able tokill Lincoln. He is later put in aninsane asylum. Lincoln is charged with mismanaging the recently concludedCivil War, and there is repeated friction between Lincoln and a hostileUnited States Congress. Before Congress can impeach him in 1867, Lincoln dies, discredited and castigated as a spendthrift warmonger. Lincoln's role in this story is similar to that of his successorAndrew Johnson in real history.
A revised edition with the alternate titleIf: or, History Rewritten was also released by the AmericanViking Press in 1931, deleting the General Strike essay and adding one new essay along with reprints of two older but previously uncollected ones:
- "If theDutch Had KeptNieuw Amsterdam" byHendrik Willem van Loon.
- "If: AJacobite Fantasy" byCharles Petrie (1926):Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") wins theBattle of Culloden in 1745, resulting inGeorge II of Great Britain's exile to his ancestral home inHanover, Germany. The "Old Pretender" (James Francis Edward Stuart) of theStuart dynasty is restored to the British throne as "James III of England and VIII of Scotland", but proves conciliatory in terms of religion and government, and is a great patron of arts and entertainment. When "Charlie" succeeds his father as Charles III in 1766, his adroit diplomatic skills prevent theAmerican Revolution through sharing his own dislike for theHouse of Commons with the American intelligentsia.Henry Benedict Stuart, who in this timeline did not enter theCatholic clergy, but instead married and had an heir, succeeds his childless brother in 1788 as "Henry IX of England and I of Scotland," reigning until his death in 1807. In the 1920s his descendant reigns as "James VI of England and XI of Scotland."[5]
- "IfNapoleon Had Won theBattle of Waterloo" byG. M. Trevelyan (1907): Following the titular event, the exhausted, demoralizedBritish Empire becomes a reactionary dictatorship wracked with political instability, and harshcensorship which suppresses much of EnglishRomanticism.France governs much ofEurope, and Napoleon eventually dies of natural causes in 1836, by which time he is somewhat senile due to ennui, being ill suited to life in a peaceful world.[6]
Among many other works of alternate-historyscience fiction:
