Historical knowledge claims must be based on a sound interpretation of evidence from historical sources.

Historians may use deductive reasoning (have a general hypothesis and look for evidence to support it) or inductive reasoning (use a piece of evidence to make a generalisation)

Their knowledge claims should be empirical (eg they rely on some sort of verifiable evidence)

But the selection of that evidence or the decisions historians make about the importance of evidence can lead them to different conclusions

Cause and effect

Pascal, Pensées (1662)“Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the face of the world would have been changed”

REASONING

• If Cleopatra had been less beautiful, Marc Anthony and Julius Caesar would not have fallen in love with her and the course of history would have been changed.

Key Question for Historians

• How do we evaluate the importance of specific events or individuals on the course of history?

What if Questions – Counterfactual History

• What no one was prepared for, however, was the invasion of Britain which followed almost immediately after the German occupation of Paris. In fact, Hitler had been secretly preparing this for some time, so that immense amounts of shipping had been concentrated in the Maas and the Scheldt estuaries by late May. When this naval force was unleashed, the antiquated destroyers of the Royal Navy, some of which had been commissioned when Churchill was still at the Admiralty, were overwhelmed. Confronted by the combined might of the Luftwaffe and an invasion force equipped with superior weaponry (including tanks, an innovation of the previous war with which the British were unfamiliar), the defending forces stood no chance. The thirteen German divisions which landed on the morning of 30 May swept through the 1st London Division defending the vital line between Sheppey and Rye, and by 7 June had reached the outskirts of London.

• Niall Ferguson (ed.) Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (London: Papermac, 1997) pp.430-1

CommentaryFerguson is teasing for a British audience. The knowledge that Britain successfully defied Hitler in 1940 is deeply ingrained in the British collective consciousness, so it is an audacious act to overturn it in this way. He turns our expectations on their heads throughout the passage: Hitler ignores ‘Anglo-America’; Austrian troops march into Berlin (rather than Germans into Vienna, as actually happened); Hitler meets not Chamberlain but Attlee; the British know nothing of tanks (in reality, a British invention). Ferguson sprinkles just enough real history – the invasions of Poland and France, the subjection of Bohemia and Moravia – to keep us in touch with reality, before confounding expectations again.Counterfactual history is a controversial topic and by no means all historians see any value in it whatsoever. It is one thing to say that Britain faced the possibility of German invasion and conquest in 1940 – no historian would deny it – and one might even use captured German plans or the German record in other occupied countries to speculate on what a German occupation of Britain might have been like; it is quite a different matter, however, to build up an entirely imaginary narrative based on not one but a number of counterfactuals. It might be said that to create one counterfactual makes it necessary in due course to create many more; critics say that this proves their point. The question to ask yourself is, having read this passage from Ferguson, what have you learnt?

http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/prospective-undergrads/virtual-classroom/secondary-source-exercises/sources-new-fields/ferguson-virtual-history-commentary

• http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/13/counterfactual-history-what-if-waste-of-time#img-1

• http://thecounterfactualhistoryreview.blogspot.hk/

http://history.arts.cornell.edu/HIST%201139%20FA11%20-Vrinte.pdf

Pros Cons

Think about causation Encourages imagination without evidence

Analyse the importance of specific events

Reliance on “Great Man Theory”

Creative thinking Not rigrous

Counterfactual History

Thomas Carlyle

• “The history of the world is but the biography of great men”

Great Man TheoryGreat Man theoryThe Great Man Theory was a popular 19th century idea according to which history canbe largely explained by the impact of "great men", or heroes: highly influential individualswho, due to either their personal charisma, intelligence, wisdom, or Machiavellianismutilized their power in a way that had a decisive historical impact.The theory was popularized in the 1840s by Thomas Carlyle, and in 1860 Herbert Spencerformulated a decisive counter-argument that remained influential throughout the 20thcentury; Spencer said that such great men are the products of their societies, and that theiractions would be impossible without the social conditions built before their lifetime.[1][2][3]For example, a scholarly follower of the Great Man theory would be likely to study theSecond World War by focusing on the big personalities of the conflict – Sir WinstonChurchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Charles de Gaulle (Allies); AdolfHitler, Benito Mussolini, (Axis); et al. – and view all of the historical events as being tieddirectly to their own individual decisions and orders.

• http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/history/Great%20Man%20theory.pdf

• Choose a key historical moment which interests you and imagine that it had happened differently.