On Using Counterfactuals to Learn History
It's an essential tool, says military historian
"Counterfactual history routinely gets a bum rap, mostly from people who haven’t taken time to explore it and reject 'what if' scenarios out of hand," wrote Dr. Mark Grimsley on the Society of Military History website.
"When historians explain why things happen they are implicitly employing a form of 'might have been' history, for whenever they touch upo…
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