"If
Lee Had NOT Won the
Battle of Gettysburg" by
Winston Churchill: This essay is written from the viewpoint of a
historian in a world where the
Confederate Army won the Battle of Gettysburg and the
Civil War, and the narrator frequently asks what would have happened if this event had not occurred. The essay is an exercise of counter-counter-factual
irony. Although the Confederacy achieves independence, the
British Empire becomes a broker between the United States and
CSA, resulting in an eventual unification of all three as the "English Speaking Association", which prevents World War I.[3][4]
"If Louis XVI Had Had an Atom of Firmness" by
André Maurois: As with
Hilaire Belloc's essay above, the main story posits
Louis XVI as averting his
1793 death in the
French Revolution, but the
point of divergence happens in the 1770s rather than 1791, and leads to a more optimistic outcome. In a
frame story, a recently deceased historian is escorted by an
angel to a great
library in
Heaven, 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 as
King of France, dying of a
lung 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 of
France as a
constitutional monarchy into the twentieth century. Louis refuses to sponsor the
American Revolution and later builds an alliance with
Great Britain; the United States never exists, but the
Thirteen Colonies get the representation they desired from the
British Parliament, so the expanding America effectively controls Britain. The 1790s and 1800s are relatively peaceful decades for
Europe, and all nations live happily ever after.
"If
Byron Had Become King of
Greece" by
Harold Nicolson. The fun-loving
poet and
playwright recovers from his 1824 illness, becomes chief military strategist in the
Greek War of Independence against the
Ottoman 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 to
a different monarch 30 years later.
"If It Had Been Discovered in 1930 that
BaconReally Did WriteShakespeare" by
J. 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 new
slang terms to the
English 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.
"If
Booth Had Missed
Lincoln" by Milton Waldman: Booth's gun fails to fire at
Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, so he isn't able to
kill Lincoln. He is later put in an
insane asylum. Lincoln is charged with mismanaging the recently concluded
Civil War, and there is repeated friction between Lincoln and a hostile
United 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 successor
Andrew Johnson in real history.
Revised edition
A revised edition with the alternate title If: or, History Rewritten was also released by the American
Viking Press in 1931, deleting the General Strike essay and adding one new essay along with reprints of two older but previously uncollected ones:
"If: A
Jacobite Fantasy" by
Charles Petrie (1926):
Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") wins the
Battle of Culloden in 1745, resulting in
George II of Great Britain's exile to his ancestral home in
Hanover, Germany. The "Old Pretender" (
James Francis Edward Stuart) of the
Stuart 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 the
American Revolution through sharing his own dislike for the
House of Commons with the American intelligentsia.
Henry Benedict Stuart, who in this timeline did not enter the
Catholic 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]
"If
Napoleon Had Won the
Battle of Waterloo" by
G. M. Trevelyan (1907): Following the titular event, the exhausted, demoralized
British Empire becomes a reactionary dictatorship wracked with political instability, and harsh
censorship which suppresses much of English
Romanticism.
France governs much of
Europe, 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]
See also
Among many other works of alternate-history
science fiction: