Anybody have any controvesial alternative views of the past they want to share? Not intending to rewrite hstory here, and can’t really be bothered to argue that I’m “right”, just looking for alternative points of view about anything and everything.
For instance, Pearl Harbor was America’s fault. Not just because they denied Japan access to resources in the '30s, but because they forced Japan to industralise and play the imperialist game in the first place.
The Japanese were quite happy chopping each other up and boiling each other in oil in splendid isolation for hundreds of years. Left to their own devices they would still be at it, and wouldn’t be any trouble to anyone else. Sadly the US despatched Matthew Perry to force them into opening up to trade, resulting in the ‘unequal treaties’ of the mid-late nineteenth century.
Other western powers were doing similar things, especially to China, so the Japanese could see that they were being set up for conquest, and chose to play the game - and learn to play it well - instead of meekly submitting. Rapid industrialisation and consolidation of power was the inevitable result of pissing off a highly energetic and warlike people, and who can blame them for adopting an ‘expand or die’ mentality? First stop the Ryukyu Islands, which Perry had used as a base, and that brought them within spitting distance of Taiwan at a time when everyone was taking bites out of China. (Perry had recommended to congress that the US annex Taiwan.)
Siding with the winners in World War 1 allowed them to claim Germany’s possessions in China, providing a beachhead for a more serious invasion, and the rest is, er, history. It’s natural to bitch about how they played the game of imperialism, but nobody ever seems to remember that it’s a game they were forced to play by the major powers of the day.
Any more? Jesus was Jewish, Thomas Jefferson was English, Christopher Columbus was a fool, the Norman ‘invasion’ was a good thing, etc.
But having studied a lot of ancient and mediaeval English/Euro/classical history and literature I’ve often wondered which were the absolutely pivotal events which shaped the way modern Europe turned out.
What if…
Caesar had stayed in his tent, not gone paddling in the Rubicon?
Rome had not plunged Europe into a dark age by overex-tending their empire?
Rome had not sponsored Christianity as a means of quelling Jewish rebellions?
Boudicca had got her shit together?
Anglo Saxons had been ninjas not pirates?
England had not spent its entire history fighting with the French?
It was less muddy during the battle of Agincourt?
And, jumping forward, if Henry the Eighth had just let it go?
Ever noticed how perceptions of Spartans are always sexier than Athenians in pop culture, these days? Not only because of ‘300’ (sit down, the chief). Fascist Roam-uns, too. Not insignificant, methink.
That’s ironic because the Spartan society was very unsexy in real life. Sexual relations were strictly regulated by the state…not so unusual considering that the state strictly regulated all other aspects of Spartan life. As a treat for their honeymoon, the husband was allowed to slip into his wife’s barracks late at night and stealthily bang away while her roommates pretended to ignore them, and then he slipped back to his place and celibacy until he was given another ‘conjugal pass’ by the army…men and women lived totally separate existences, with most Spartan men not marrying until past 30, and even after marriage had little time for sex considering that they spent most of their lives at war or on military duty away from home. The Spartans were the first recorded society to die out from a declining birth rate. By Roman imperial times, there were only a few hundred left, making their living entertaining Roman tourists by carrying out their ancient rites at temples in the old city.
Oh, yeah, and Spartan women all shaved their heads, too. Now, on some girls, the butch crewcut look works, but on 99% of girls, it just ain’t sexy.
…
As to the “What If…?” subgenre of fiction, the two most overdone are:
a) What if the South had won the American Civil War?
b) What if the Nazis won the Big One?
Neither subject should ever by touched a writer ever again. Done to death.
What if some morons hadn’t had the bright idea to pick up a handful of weeds and smoke it? Would’ve saved us non-smokers a lot of secondhand odor.