Book: The Company of the Dead by David
Kowalski
Context:
Counterfactual History
I like to try and find the positive bits of any book I read.
It’s why I probably wouldn’t really make a very good book critic. It’s just the
way I was brought up – be polite and don’t say anything you wouldn’t like to
hear about yourself. Which is fine, unless you’re trying to give a balanced and
objective view about a book. However, I always feel that reading a good book is
like a love affair. While you’re in it, it can take up your whole life and when
it’s over, you feel the pain and some part of it will always linger on.
Unfortunately, reading this book was more like a school crush. It
starts with all hope of giving you something fulfilling, but ultimately ends up
just being a lot of running around. Suffice to say, I checked out of this
relationship early.
The premise of The
Company of the Dead is a world where time-travel has changed the course of
history, perhaps permanently. In 1912, a mysterious man, who is actually from
our present, is travelling on the Titanic
in full knowledge of what is about to happen. He tries to change the past – to
drastic consequences. In the new present of 2012, the world is unrecognisable.
Because J.J. Astor survived the Titanic,
the US never entered WWI, so the Central Powers were victorious. This in turn
led to an expansionist, but monarchical, German Empire, engaged in a Cold War
against a Japanese Empire with a Mexican Empire in control of South America and
a US which has engaged in a second civil war and emerged as two nations. The
point of the plot, as far as I could gather, was to try and reverse this by
going again back in time and killing the original time-traveller. I really
wanted to enjoy this. In fact, the first section depicting the Titanic sinking was very exciting, and I
did want to keep reading to find out of history was ever righted. Nearly halfway through, though, I found I
just didn’t care enough. As disappointing as I found the book, however, there’s
one part of it that has kept me thinking ever since. It’s something which
unites my love of history with a very amateur interest in science and
metaphysics – time travel.
Just imagine, for a moment, that it is actually possible to
go back to an earlier time in history. You press a button, or pull a lever and
*boom* you’re in the 1920s. At first, the novelty of the old-fashioned clothes,
houses and objects are very exciting. But if you’re going to spend a lot of
time here, what are the rules? Could anything you do affect future history, or
is it more like ‘Lost’ – Whatever Happened, Happened? The thing is, either of
these choices creates a complication in the way that we look at the world. If
history is so unstable that a small difference in 1920 can make huge
alterations for 2012, then what happens to the people who were alive in 2012,
but because of your changes will never be born? They were once alive, for you
saw and knew them. They had brains, hearts, blood, maybe souls. Do these just
disappear, and do they have any inkling of what is happening? But if history is
fixed, and you cannot change it no matter how hard you try, then what does that
say about free-will? Is our future so predestined, just as the past is? As a
character says in The Company of the Dead,
we can cope with the thought of aliens as that only affects the present, but
the idea of time-travel affects our past, present and future.
Of course, none of these questions have an answer because
time-travel is impossible, but we can use history to think about predestination
in a more practical way. It’s not just science-fiction that plays about with
alternative timelines, though there are some particularly good ones – Philip K.
Dick’s The Man in the High Castle is
one. There are lots of popular books out there like Prime Minister Portillo and Other Things That Never Happened. (For
those of you not from the UK, Michael Portillo is a British politician and
broadcaster who might well have been Prime Minister in 1997 if Tony Blair’s
party hadn’t won the election and Portillo hadn’t lost his seat). Another scenario imagined what US politics
and history may have been like had Kennedy not been assassinated. In an
entertaining way, you can start to think about the alternative options history
had, and how different it could have been.
I remember coming
across an article at university about ‘What-If’ history, or ‘counterfactual’
history, which sounds much more academic, which showed how history can treat
this concept in a serious way. In looking at what might have happened, you can
look at the consequences of what did
happen, and think about whether these were inevitable or if things could have
panned out completely differently. This doesn’t work, of course, if the
alternative situation is very unlikely – say, what would have happened if there
was a mass cholera epidemic in New York during the 2008 election. It’s got to
be an alternative that was just as likely to happen at the time. Let’s say, for
example, that Hitler had been killed in the First World War – a completely
plausible scenario. How different might Germany’s (and the world’s) history
have been? Hitler would obviously have been unable to establish the Nazi party,
but does this mean that a right-wing, fascist, racist party would never have
arisen in Germany? This raises questions about how important Hitler himself was
to the movement. Much is made about Hitler’s personal charisma, and this was
certainly an important factor in the party’s success, but the trend of history
is bigger than Germany’s own experience. Germany was hit hard by the Great
Depression – is it really plausible that Hitler was the only possible person
who would have responded as he did? Following the example of Italian and
Spanish fascism, it is not hard to imagine another German leader establishing a
totalitarian state in a similar vein to Nazism. The question then is to
determine how different this regime might have been to Hitler’s. Who would have
been in a position to become leader and to topple the democratic state? What
resources would they have had, and how would they have led the nation? Maybe
the rise of fascism in Germany was inevitable, and the existence of Hitler made
little difference. But fascism without Hitler would probably have been quite
distinct from Nazism.
An alternative outcome of the Battle of Hastings in 1066,
however, would have had a much more profound effect on British history. Had the
Normans not successfully invaded England, the culture, language and nature of
England would have been very different. The aristocracy would have been
Anglo-Saxon, not French, and might therefore have had a very different
relationship with the continental ruling classes during the Medieval period. How
different might the English class system be now if the aristocracy had always
been the same as the people? Would the English monarchs have intermarried with
French aristocrats as much? If not, then the wars between England and France
throughout the 14th and 15th century may never have
happened. Joan of Arc would have remained an ordinary peasant girl. English
kings and queens would never have held large parts of the continent, so England
(or Britain) may never have become a world power. What consequence would this
have had on American history? Would the New England colonies ever have been
established? Would the Mayflower ever have set sail? The United States of
America might have fought a War of Independence against the French or Spanish,
rather than the English, if at all. The possibilities are endless.
Perhaps the point that I’m trying to make is that by taking
individuals out of the equation, the picture only changes slightly. But by changing
events, centuries of history can become uncertain. The Company of the Dead, for all its faults, has a game go at grappling with this idea - getting us to think about the Titanic and its impact on 20th century history. So many separate factors led to the sinking; if just one had been different, for example if Freddie Fleet had had binoculars, would the ship still have sunk? But counterfactual history
is more than just a fun exercise – it can reveal how important certain people
and events were in history, and, taken seriously, you can really begin to
appreciate how history happens. Although it is kind of fun too!
FURTHER READING
The Man in the High
Castle by Philip K. Dick
Prime Minister
Portillo: and other things that never happened ed. by Duncan Brack and Iain
Dale
How We’d Talk if the
English had Won in 1066 by David Cowley
‘Counterfactual History: A User’s Guide’ by Martin Bunzl,
published in The American Historical
Review (June, 2004) http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/109.3/bunzl.html
‘Counterfactuals and the study of the American Presidency’
by Jeffrey M. Chwieroth, published in Presidential
Studies Quarterly (June, 2002) http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Counterfactuals+and+the+study+of+the+American+presidency.+(Articles).-a087354425
‘Making Books: The ‘What-Ifs’ That Fascinate’ by Martin
Arnold, published in New York Times (21st
December, 2000)
‘Taking Counterfactual History
Seriously’ by Naomi R. Lamoreaux, from the Institute on California and the West
Railroaded Workshop, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, July 9, 2011,
published in California History (December,
2011) http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Institute+on+California+and+the+West+Railroaded+Workshop%2c+Huntington...-a0276135151
‘Past Tense’ by Fredric Smoler, published in American Heritage (September, 1999) http://www.americanheritage.com/content/past-tense?page=show
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