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Virtual History
Counterfactual history (also virtual history) is a form of historiography that attempts to answer the '' What if?'' questions that arise from counterfactual conditions. As a method of intellectual enquiry, counterfactual history explores history and historical incidents by extrapolating a timeline in which key historical events either did not occur or had an outcome different from the actual historical outcome. Counterfactual history seeks by "conjecturing on what did not happen, or what might have happened, in order to understand what did happen." It has produced a literary genre which is variously called alternate history, speculative history, allohistory, and hypothetical history. Development An early book of counterfactual histories is ''If It Had Happened Otherwise'' (1931) which features "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle at Gettysburg", by Winston Churchill, about a fictional Confederate victory at the Battle of Gettysburg (1863). As a text of counterfactual histories writte ...
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Historiography
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Scholars discuss historiography by topic—such as the historiography of the United Kingdom, that of WWII, the British Empire, early Islam, and China—and different approaches and genres, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with the development of academic history, there developed a body of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influenced by their own groups and loyalties—such as to their nation state—remains a debated question. In the ancient world, chronological annals were produced in civilizations such as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, the discipline of his ...
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Possibility And Understanding In History And The Social Sciences
Possibility is the condition or fact of being possible. Latin origins of the word hint at ability. Possibility may refer to: * Probability, the measure of the likelihood that an event will occur * Epistemic possibility, a topic in philosophy and modal logic * Possibility theory, a mathematical theory for dealing with certain types of uncertainty and is an alternative to probability theory * Subjunctive possibility, (also called alethic possibility) is a form of modality studied in modal logic. ** Logical possibility, a proposition that will depend on the system of logic being considered, rather than on the violation of any single rule * Possible world, a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been Other *Possible (Italy), a political party in Italy *Possible Peru, a political party in Peru *Possible Peru Alliance, an electoral alliance in Peru Entertainment *''Kim Possible'', a US children's TV series :* Kim Possible (character), the central character of ...
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Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po River, Po and the Piave River, Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta (river), Brenta and the Sile (river), Sile). In 2020, around 258,685 people resided in greater Venice or the ''Comune di Venezia'', of whom around 55,000 live in the historical island city of Venice (''centro storico'') and the rest on the mainland (''terraferma''). Together with the cities of Padua, Italy, Padua and Treviso, Italy, Treviso, Venice is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million. The name is derived from the ancient Adri ...
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Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of Genoa, which in 2015 became the Metropolitan City of Genoa, had 855,834 resident persons. Over 1.5 million people live in the wider metropolitan area stretching along the Italian Riviera. On the Gulf of Genoa in the Ligurian Sea, Genoa has historically been one of the most important ports on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean: it is currently the busiest in Italy and in the Mediterranean Sea and twelfth-busiest in the European Union. Genoa was the capital of Republic of Genoa, one of the most powerful maritime republics for over seven centuries, from the 11th century to 1797. Particularly from the 12th century to the 15th century, the city played a leading role in the commercial trade in Europe, becoming one o ...
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Song Dynasty
The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Song often came into conflict with the contemporaneous Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasties in northern China. After retreating to southern China, the Song was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The dynasty is divided into two periods: Northern Song and Southern Song. During the Northern Song (; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now Eastern China. The Southern Song (; 1127–1279) refers to the period after the Song lost control of its northern half to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the ...
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Globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20th century (supplanting an earlier French term ''mondialization''), developed its current meaning some time in the second half of the 20th century, and came into popular use in the 1990s to describe the unprecedented international connectivity of the post-Cold War world. Its origins can be traced back to 18th and 19th centuries due to advances in transportation and communications technology. This increase in global interactions has caused a growth in international trade and the exchange of ideas, beliefs, and culture. Globalization is primarily an economic process of interaction and integration that is associated with social and cultural aspects. However, disputes and international diplomacy are also large parts of the history of globalizat ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ...
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Robert Cowley
Robert Cowley is an American military historian, who writes on topics in American and European military history ranging from the Civil War through World War II. He has held several senior positions in book and magazine publishing and is the founding editor of the award-winning MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History'; Cowley has also written extensively and edited three collections of essays in counterfactual history known as '' What If?'' As part of his research he has traveled the entire length of the Western Front, from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Cowley lives in New York City, Connecticut and Newport, Rhode Island. Early life and education Cowley is the son of prominent writer and literary critic Malcolm Cowley and Muriel Mauer. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, graduating in 1952. Thereafter, he earned an A.B. degree in history in 1956 from Harvard College in Massachusetts. Personal life He was married to Blair Cowley; they later divorc ...
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What If? (essays)
''What If?'', subtitled ''The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been'', also known as ''What If? The World's Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been,'' is an anthology of twenty essays and fourteen sidebars dealing with counterfactual history. It was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1999, , and this book as well as its two sequels, ''What If? 2'' and ''What Ifs? of American History'', were edited by Robert Cowley. It was later combined with ''What If? 2'' to form ''The Collected What If?''. Cowley decided to create the book after several "What if?" articles were published in the ''Military History Quarterly'', which he edits, and received much attention. Essays *"Infectious Alternatives" by William H. McNeill ** What if a plague had not forced the Assyrians to withdraw from their siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC? *"No Glory That Was Greece" by Victor Davis Hanson ** What if the Persians had won the Battle of Salamis? *"Conquest Denied" by Jos ...
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Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand Social class, class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist philosophy, Marxist theory exists. In addition to the schools of thought which emphasize or modify elements of classical Marxism, various Marxian concepts have been incorporated and adapted into a diverse array of Social theory, social theories leading to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy, the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms dialectical mater ...
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Historical Determinism
Historical determinism is the stance that events are historically predetermined or currently constrained by various forces. Historical determinism can be understood in contrast to its negation, i.e. the rejection of historical determinism. Some political philosophies (e.g. Stalinism, Maoism and Marxism), assert a historical materialism of either predetermination or constraint, or both. Used as a pejorative, it is normally meant to designate a rigid finalist or mechanist conception of historical unfolding that makes the future appear as an inevitable and predetermined result of the past. See also * Bad faith (existentialism) * Determinism * Dialectical materialism * Economic determinism * False consciousness * False necessity * Free will * Geographic determinism * Geopolitics * Hegelianism * Human nature * Self determination * Whig history Whig history (or Whig historiography) is an approach to historiography that presents history as a journey from an oppressive and benighted p ...
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Niall Ferguson
Niall Campbell Ferguson FRSE (; born 18 April 1964)Biography
Niall Ferguson
is a Scottish-American historian based in the who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the at and a senior fellow at the