How Plausible is History?

[Legolas]

The Islamic world, having been the continuation of Greek civilization and its achievements, for the better part of the Middle Ages, lapsing to virtual stagnation and renouncment of said achievements in a very short period of time; and continuing to be a technologically/politically/culturally backwards region of the world for the rest of history. (I know I am generalising somewhat too much, but this was the overall trend)

 

[zoomar]

Looking at almost any specific historic event (as opposed to broad patterns), the case can be made that all history is implausible, especially when one focuses on details and specifics.

For example, few people in 1854 would have predicted the rise of Japan in less than 100 years to a position among the most powerful and advanced "western" nations. It is much easier to imagine a world in which Japan became just another asian victim of European colonialism and exploitation. The rise of Japan has an internal plausibility only when the unique sequence of events leading to it is understood. A fictional TL leading to the rise of, say, The Phillipines or New Zealand to the same level that Japan assumed in our world is no more or less plausible as long as it is constructed of fictional events which are internally coherent. Most good AH does this (this is in fact one of the fairly few things Turtledove almost always does well in his novels and series)

 

[metalstar316]

metalstar316 you are oversimplifing some things... In both situtations about the Americans they were helped a lot by the French and France at the time was a very strong power. In fact, although during the Revolution, France did suffer economically one could never say that it was a poor country, it still had enormous financial potential. A few decades before it had reached it's largest territorial extent yet and was by far the strongest continental power.
PS: i am not saying the American war was not a great achievement but don't make it sound like they beat the British by themselves..
And while Russia was not industrialised before communism it was never a 2nd rate power. From the mid 18th century to 1917 Russia was one of the strongest nations on Earth.
Although about Israel, i pretty much agree... The US and the Jewish diaspora helped them a lot, but still, the fact that it still exists and thrives in the middle of larger, more populous, antagonistic arab states really is a wonder.

I didn't oversimplify anything. All I did was state what essentially happened. I didn't mention how or why it happened.

Neither did I state or imply that Imperial Russia was a second rate power. What I said was that they were primarily agricultural. I was talking about their society and culture, not their world status.

I did perhaps use the wrong term when I said that France was poor as a monarchy.

My apologies to any Frenchmen. ;-)

 

[atreides]

I agree with Michael B: most history seems implausible, if you stay with at the detail level and don't examine ultimate causes. For example, WWI and WWII, the European colonial expansion, etc., are far from implausible. The particular details are almost random.

More interesting are events that are more random at root. For example, you could imagine that some kind of polity could rise in Western Europe in classical Greek times that could grow up to be a match to the Greeks and others, and perhaps that it would be more or less close to the Greek sphere of influence, perhaps Italy, or North Africa, the Balkans... but to have one of these polities to be as dominating as the Roman Empire, that was not a given at all!

 

[zoomar]

I agree with Michael B: most history seems implausible, if you stay with at the detail level and don't examine ultimate causes. For example, WWI and WWII, the European colonial expansion, etc., are far from implausible.

Well, sort of. I agree abour european colonial expansion and other very broad social/political/economic trends such as industrialization and the rise of popular revolutionary movements. I'm not so sure about "WW1" and "WW2". A war like WW1 would only be considered plausible when considering preceeding events (the Franco-Prussian War and the Anglo-German naval rivalry, for example). A second major european war became plausible because of WW1, the Versailles treaty, lax allied enforcement of treaty provisions, and the rise of Hitler, etc. It would be just as plausible to write an alternate history with a PoD begining with Bismarck's childhood death (or a French victory in the Franco Prussion War, perhaps) in which nothing remotely resembling our WW1 and WW2 ever occurred.

 

[Ridwan Asher]

The Islamic world, having been the continuation of Greek civilization and its achievements, for the better part of the Middle Ages, lapsing to virtual stagnation and renouncment of said achievements in a very short period of time; and continuing to be a technologically/politically/culturally backwards region of the world for the rest of history. (I know I am generalising somewhat too much, but this was the overall trend)

Uh umm... until maybe at least the early years of 18th century, only few loony-Europeans that would really dare to call the Ottomans, Persians and Mughals umm... backwards...

 

[atreides]

Well, sort of. I agree abour european colonial expansion and other very broad social/political/economic trends such as industrialization and the rise of popular revolutionary movements. I'm not so sure about "WW1" and "WW2". A war like WW1 would only be considered plausible when considering preceeding events (the Franco-Prussian War and the Anglo-German naval rivalry, for example). A second major european war became plausible because of WW1, the Versailles treaty, lax allied enforcement of treaty provisions, and the rise of Hitler, etc. It would be just as plausible to write an alternate history with a PoD begining with Bismarck's childhood death (or a French victory in the Franco Prussion War, perhaps) in which nothing remotely resembling our WW1 and WW2 ever occurred.

Correct. That's because the probabilities of x change according to whatever happened before, which in itself has another probability. What we're talking about is simple Bayesian probabilities: what is the prob. of x, given a certain previous event y with a probability p(y)? P(X|Y)?

So I think the interesting line would be to identify events that are reallly improbable, even considering past and concurrent events. Real oddities.

 

[pa_dutch]

Byzantine government and culture being entirely subplanted by that of Central Asian nomads is kind of incredible.

 

[Finn]

OTL Old World history is such a Central Asian Nomad wank.

 

[Nick Gotts]

Stalin vs Trotsky

That that blockhead Stalin could have outwitted Trotsky, by far the cleverest of the Bolsheviks, caused mass starvation, killed most of his army command, and then gone on to win a war with Germany!

 

[Codae]

The Dutch spent four generations revolting against the Spanish.