Counterfactuals can be fun, as historians well know. What might have happened if …..? If some small difference in the course of events had happened, instead of what actually happened, how might history have been different? The classic historians’ topic for debate along these lines is, as you probably know, the question of what might have happened if Cleopatra had not had such a charming nose. Would she have had Roman generals falling at her feet? What might have happened if the famous plot against Hitler had succeeded, and he had been assassinated relatively early in his career? And so on.
It is a fascinating game, and artists can play it also. What might have happened if Michelangelo had discovered that he really didn’t have a head for heights? What might have happened if Georgia O’Keefe had first visited New Mexico in a period of really foul weather? How might the history of art have turned out differently if Caravaggio had been killed in an early fracas? We could play this game all night, of course, to no good effect, but with a great deal of fun.
Such questions can never be answered, but they can make us really think on some occasions. As I was preparing the dinner tonight one such came into my head. What would have been the probable outcome if Britain had lost the Falklands war? It will probably horrify a large number of my fellow citizens, but a part of me actually wishes that this had been the case. Margaret Thatcher’s successful gamble has led to a regrettable retrenchment of what were fading imperialist attitudes. Might it have been the case that we British could have been persuaded to relinquish the tattered rags of the image of “Great Britain”, and settled down to being an ordinary country?*
The context of my asking the question is, not surprisingly, the current political melee around the proposal to take us out of the European Union. The “Leave” campaign has been fuelled to a very significant degree by the illusion that it is possible to return the country to some largely mythical status of “greatness”. Did Thatcher’s audacious victory actually contribute to our current mess? I will never know the answer, but I find it instructive to ask the question.
In some respects it is hard to escape the habit of asking oneself counterfactual questions. This year I mistook the date for the submission of entries to the annual open competition of the Pastel Society. If only I had sent in the entry I had planned: it might have been spotted by some eminent collector, and my career really given the stimulus it needs. On the other hand, of course, I might simply have wasted my money.
*Of course, the reverse is equally plausible, if we look at German responses to the Treaty of Versailles after the Great War.