11.1 ‘Soft’ or qualitative interpretations

‘Soft’ or qualitative interpretations, especially in social and cultural history, focus chiefly upon meanings and significance, rather than quantity and scale. As already noted, they do not necessarily supply ‘easy’ or ‘self-indulgent’ answers. But ‘soft’ techniques do deal in interpretations and subjective views, rather than in ‘hard’ statistics and impersonal analysis.

In caricature, there is a sharp polar dichotomy in these ways of knowing. ‘Soft’ emotion sobs or cheers, while ‘hard’ reason analyses. In practice, however, deep thought combines both subjective and objective elements.¹

There is no reason, therefore, to shy away from ‘soft’ qualitative techniques, if undertaken with rational care. This chapter analyses the strengths and weaknesses of key approaches, showing how to get the best out of exercises in historical empathy; oral history; prosopography or group biographies; reading the silences; and ‘thick’ cultural description. A final section considers the study of history’s What Ifs, known as counterfactual analysis, which can be undertaken by using both ‘hard’ statistics and ‘soft’ intuitions. All these approaches can be used singly or in combination, as appropriate.

11.2 Empathy

‘Empathy’ tends to polarize opinion, partly because it can easily be misunderstood. John Major, as British prime minister, once unwisely urged, with reference to criminals, that society should ‘condemn more, understand less’.² But condemnation and comprehension are never polar opposites. A better understanding of despicable or dangerous behaviour provides better options for averting/changing/treating/punishing such manifestations. Empathy, after all, differs from sympathy. That warm, positive emotion entails sharing and resonating positively with a given set of views or actions. Empathy, by contrast, calls for a cool intellectual/emotional understanding, without either condoning or sympathizing.³ It calls for effort to ‘get inside the mind’ of others, however strange or alien their views and lifestyles may be.

A common application of empathy techniques is used to study the opposing sides in wars or civil conflicts. It is important to understand history’s ‘baddies’ and ‘losers’ as well as its ‘goodies’ and ‘winners’. (Indeed, those categories are often jumbled.) One problem for empathy exercises relating to societies before the advent of mass literacy lies in the limited evidence relating to personal motivations. Equally, historians need to acknowledge that the great bulk of written evidence, even when purporting to describe private feelings, is first and foremost designed to be read by others. Researchers seeking to reconstruct past feelings have therefore to recognize the potential gulf between what people say or write and what they experience inwardly.

Nonetheless, historians use their ingenuity to find whatever sources they can. And they also use proxy measures, by looking at people’s actions and (with caution) their inactions. A fine example is provided by Nicholas Stargardt in his study of ordinary Germans in the Second World War.⁴ The author’s intense recoil from Nazism is the bedrock upon which a judicious superstructure of applied empathy is based, using diaries, letters, recollections and other sources.

At one time, the historian R. G. Collingwood even defined the entire subject of history as an exercise in ‘reliving’ or ‘reconstructing’ past lives and thought.⁵ This branch of knowledge is known as hermeneutics, or the art of interpretation.⁶ However, Collingwood’s claim does not in fact apply to all forms of historical studies. Those analysing aggregated long-term trends – such as (say) fluctuations in the price of grain or the growth of the global population – are making statistical calculations rather than ‘reliving’ past lives.

That said, however, Collingwood’s elevation of empathy paid a significant compliment to its role in human thought and therefore in historical studies. The arts of interpretation, when applied with due caution and sensitivity, are thus much used, particularly in application to social, cultural and political history.

11.3 Oral history

Another way of retrieving the thoughts of ordinary people about the past is by asking them directly. For obvious reasons, however, the collection of witness testimonies, known as oral history, is always hurrying against the ravages of time.⁷ Today there are no living combat veterans of the First World War who can tell their tales anew. Yet collected interviews, carefully compiled, can fill the void. In the UK, the Imperial War Museum holds some 800,000+ personal testimonies of war and conflicts, covering twentieth-century British and Commonwealth history.⁸ And there are similar memory-archives relating to epic contestations such as the 1930s Spanish Civil War;⁹ and the Holocaust in 1940s Germany and Central Europe.¹⁰ This material provides subjective but invaluable evidence which is often entirely unavailable from official sources.

Crucial in all oral history interviews is the rule that the interviewer must not lead the interviewee. It’s rigging the answer to say to an industrial worker: ‘Tell me about the class struggle in your youth’. Instead, questions should be open: ‘What did you think about your boss at work?’ And, depending upon the answer, this opener might be followed by: ‘Would you say that your attitude was generally shared by others who worked with you?’ Often, however, people’s memories don’t fit into neat models of class struggle or any other abstract category. So researchers shouldn’t press unduly for details on points that don’t get a response but instead proceed to those that do.

Having recorded the interviews, further obvious rules also apply. The primary source for oral history is the audio recording in its original format. It should therefore be preserved, even where a full transcript is available. New tools for the analysis of audio data are emerging all the time – and, at some future date, these sources may be re-analysed in new ways.

When making a transcript of an interview, every word should be recorded verbatim, including all the hesitations and circumlocutions of everyday speech.¹¹ The witnesses should then be invited to authenticate the record (most readily agree); and, ideally, both the recording and the transcript should be deposited in a relevant archive. If that is not possible, then they should at least be stored in some format that is open to inspection by others.

Public scrutiny of the original record provides the only good guarantee that the first collector has not invented, mangled or quoted material out of context. Once this new-minted historical evidence is publicly available, then it is open to study and interpretation by other researchers too. And they, of course, are equally enjoined not to garble, to cut unfairly or to quote witnesses’ words out of context. Original recollections need the same careful evaluation that is given to all historical sources. That is to say, living witnesses have their own subjective viewpoints and axes to grind. But a multitude of sometimes conflicting witnesses provide a spectrum of testimonies for historians to ponder. Oral history is particularly well used for recent political and military history, as well as to illuminate many themes in social, cultural and gender history.

11.4 Prosopography, or group biography

Interpreting the past lives of the silent and ‘ordinary’ people of history, especially in the eras before mass literacy, has triggered a variety of recovery techniques. One methodology which is popular in both historical studies and the social sciences is known as prosopography (a word that many stumble to pronounce!).¹² A simpler term is ‘group biography’. By putting many unremarkable life stories together, historians can detect bigger patterns, whether established statistically or in qualitative terms – and this technique also compensates for the fact that many lives are poorly documented. Prosopography contains ‘soft’ elements of interpretation but it tries to combine them with as much reliable factual data as can be discovered about the people under collective review.

One key originator of this methodology in historical studies was Lewis Namier (born Ludwik Niemirowski), the eminent British historian of Polish/Jewish heritage.¹³ Suspicious of grand ideas, he valued instead the stability of structures. In particular, he admired Britain’s eighteenth-century Parliament and he revised its political history by looking not at the frontline politicians but the quiet back-benchers instead. His specific conclusions were hotly contested. Yet his method, initially known as ‘Namierism’, was soon copied by others. Indeed, the History of Parliament Project, which he drove forward in the 1950s, continues to flourish today, providing in-depth biographical surveys of all MPs while also assessing their collective impact.¹⁴

Among the merits of a prosopographical approach is the quasi-novelistic weaving together of many different life stories. The effect is to curb an over-emphasis upon ‘great men (and women)’ in favour of ordinary mortals. And this approach encourages historians to take networks, linkages and relationships seriously – all of which are powerful historical forces. Recent developments in ‘network theory’ and computer-based analysis have generated new enthusiasm for this approach. For example, studies of group contacts across cultures and through time throw significant light upon the transmission of ideas and the diffusion of cultural values.¹⁵

Like many techniques, however, prosopography can be overdone if it is taken as the only valid focus. An exaggerated stress upon the structures of groups and networks can seriously underplay the impact of ideas – and leaders – and of long-term underlying forces – and short-term contingencies and accidents. And while computer-generated visualizations of networks are often impressive, they need to do more than simply demonstrate linkages that are already known.

The technique of prosopography thus works best when supported by a sufficient quantity of good, reliable sources. It also needs to be deployed in a suitable analytical context and applied to a historically coherent group. In the right circumstances, however, it can produce from patchy evidence much more than the sum of its component parts. As already noted, prosopography is used productively not only in political and religious history but also in social and cultural history, and in the history of ideas.

11.5 Reading the silences

‘Reading the silences’, meanwhile, is a counter-technique for interpreting documents against the grain, which is derived from literary and social studies. It corresponds with a current fascination among cultural historians with the history of silence itself.¹⁶ (Unsurprisingly, noise is attracting serious attention too.)¹⁷

Techniques of ‘reading between the lines’ direct attention towards what the sources do not say, alongside what they do.¹⁸ It can be applied to spoken words as well as written words. Therapists as well as historians and literary scholars are keenly aware that crucial things may be left unsaid and unwritten. Ambiguities can thrive on nods and winks, without being closely specified.¹⁹

Sometimes, indeed, major issues are deliberately kept secret. It can therefore be very liberating for oppressed individuals – and educational for society at large – to unlock the ‘silenced voices’. For example, communities which have traditionally avoided personal confessions about sexual matters can find it cathartic (as well as shocking) to acknowledge sexual diversity or to reveal direct experiences of sexual abuse. Notable historical examples include studies of the war-time exploitation of the so-called comfort women in the Far East. This research has broken taboos to add significantly to knowledge and also to prompt calls for sincere retrospective recognition/contrition.²⁰

With the active use of empathy and group biographies, ‘reading the silences’ within the archives can also be another way of addressing the well-known biases in many official, and indeed unofficial, source collections. As already noted, historians know of the past existence of innumerable populations – working people, the enslaved, the illiterate, the disabled – whose lives and views are very difficult to recover. Even when they do appear in reports, the accounts may be hostile or uncomprehending. Hence identifying significant gaps in the historical record – listening to the archival silences – offers one way of recovering the experiences of such groups.²¹ It’s a way of letting past themes lead the research rather than simply relying upon surviving evidence.

However, the process of silence-reading requires great care, especially when applied after a significant lapse of time. Assumptions and evidence need to be clarified, and allowance made for alternative interpretations. There remains a risk that later readers may project their own concerns into gaps in earlier sources, without appreciating how both languages and the conventions of communication have changed.²²

There’s also a related danger that later generations may be encouraged to castigate people from the past for not having said or written what later generations want them to have said or written. Such moves risk turning history into an exercise in anachronistic blame-games. So silences need to be analysed with great sensitivity to context – and the resulting interpretation supported by corroborative evidence, if at all possible. The technique, often used in literary studies,²³ can also be applied to the history of ideas and cultural attitudes. And it’s especially relevant when exploring all taboo issues, such as the difficult history of human abuse of other humans.²⁴

11.6 ‘Thick’ cultural description

‘Thick’ description is intended to signify ‘richly textured’, although unfortunately the adjective can imply something less flattering like ‘obtuse’ or ‘dense’. The concept came initially from the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle. He contrasted ‘thin’ surface observations with ‘thick’ contextual descriptions, as rival forms of analysis.²⁵ The usage was then propelled into global circulation by the US anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He delighted in ‘thickness’ as a way of interpreting everyday events within the web of social and cultural meanings which they held for the people involved.²⁶ This approach entails treating all communities with equal respect, on their own terms. It immediately resonated with anthropologically minded historians. One such was E. P. Thompson, who specifically sought, when writing British working-class history, to avoid the ‘enormous condescension of posterity’.²⁷ His dictum has been widely quoted, as it indicated the need for cultural humility. Other societies in other times – and other social classes – were not to be dismissed by historians as ‘primitive’, ‘savage’ or ‘backward’.

Bolstered by such credentials, a number of excellent in-depth social and cultural histories promptly followed. Celebrated examples included LeRoy Ladurie’s Montaillou (1975), which explored the lifestyles and beliefs of the early fourteenth-century inhabitants of a small village in the Pyrenees.²⁸ This study contributed to ‘history from below’ with the aid of a surviving cache of detailed Inquisition records. Its runaway success in fact encouraged a relative intellectual shift, within the French Annales school of historians²⁹ and elsewhere, towards in-depth studies of ‘mentalities’, and away from analyses of long-term trends. It was a powerful monument to ‘synchronic immersion’ (sinking deeply into one moment from the past).

Indeed, some enthusiasts urge that the whole approach constitutes a new ‘interpretive turn’ in the making of knowledge.³⁰ But criticisms have also followed. Montaillou specifically was challenged as to how far the Inquisitorial records, written retrospectively, really provided reliable evidence of the inner beliefs of villagers who were summoned to testify.³¹ More generally, too, critics wonder how far the subsequent cultural interpreters were moulding the evidence to fit their own views, perhaps subconsciously.

Eventually, there was a risk of diminishing returns. How many affectionately detailed probes of specific populations at specific times are needed? What can ‘thick’ accounts convey, without some understanding of wider trends in play? Here, familiar tensions arise between short- and long-term histories; and between local and global views.

Taking the example of the Second World War again, a ‘thick’ description of life within Hitler’s Berlin bunker, exploring the mental world of Hitler and his closest supporters, has undoubted analytical value. Moreover, it’s a serious interpretative challenge to understand the Nazi viewpoint, without sharing or endorsing it.³² Yet the experiences of Hitler and his closest companions were but part of a global war, which also needs global analysis.

‘Thick’ cultural description thus best conveys an informative part of the whole, rather than an entire history, complete with trends over time. It is deployed most frequently in social and cultural history and in some political/cultural studies.

Since Geertz’s first intervention, there have been various other claimed ‘turns’ in styles of analysis.³³ One example stands proxy for many. Thus the ‘material turn’ (2010) entails a close study of historical artefacts and brings fresh perspectives from unexpected sources.³⁴ This subsequent diversification has taken some of the initial glamour away from ‘thick’ description. Yet the approach has intellectual value – and also attracts curious readers – so it will undoubtedly remain a welcome part of the historian’s armoury.

11.7 What ifs? Or, counterfactual history

Counterfactual history (also known as ‘virtual’ history) always remains conjectural and hence controversial. It goes in and out of fashion.³⁵ In many ways, that fate is hardly surprising. It’s hard enough to establish an authoritative history based upon accurate data, without wishing to think ‘counter’ to the facts.

Nevertheless, it’s worth reviewing the pros and cons of studying What Ifs?, since humans do think in terms of options, both when planning ahead and when assessing the past.

Such observations can also contribute to the search for so-called hinge factors in history: specific actions or non-actions which at times triggered key turning-points.³⁶ With reference to the Second World War, for example, it might well be argued that: Hitler’s greatest mistake was to invade Russia in June 1941. The implication-against-the-facts would follow that: had he not done so, the outcome of the war would have been different – or even that: Germany may not have lost. However, while it is easy to note the importance of Hitler’s decision, it is impossible to prove an alternative scenario. Often, conclusions are trite: things would have been quite otherwise. (Or cautious: the prevailing trends were such that, even with different decisions, things would have remained broadly the same.)

Moreover, the wider the scope of the counterfactual speculation, the more difficult it becomes to define an answer. What if European travellers had not sailed to North America in the fifteenth century? What if the French Revolution never happened? When one big variable changes, then very many others are highly likely to adapt also. So the answer to the above questions is really: Who can say?

For a while in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a fashion for counterfactual calculations to be undertaken by quantitative methods. Economic historians created a statistical mode of a given economy and then reran the model minus one key variable. Robert Fogel’s study of nineteenth-century American growth without the railways was a paradigmatic case.³⁷ His conclusion was counter-intuitive. The railways were allegedly not as important to the USA’s economic and political development as is generally assumed. Yet, as critics noted, if one factor is changed retrospectively, then it’s likely that others would be transformed too. No steam trains would presumably mean no steam power. So the basic structure of the economy – and hence its statistical modelling – would have needed a major rejig.³⁸ Would the Americans have invented some other technology instead? Or would their economy have remained wind-, water- and horse-powered? Again, the answer remains: Who can say with any certainty?

Pursuing ‘virtual’ speculations too far results in non-histories, which are beyond proof or disproof. Nonetheless, it is important for historians to be aware of this approach; and to be ready to challenge any overly dogmatic counterfactual assertions.

Furthermore, imagining the unknown is a theme of historical value in its own right. It is intriguing to review past speculations about alternative outcomes. These imagined possibilities could have at times a genuine polemical or visionary force.³⁹ In sum, counterfactual considerations are part of history. They can also remain relevant for historians when debating the impact of key decisions – for example, in political or military strategy. It remains the case, however, that these What if? speculations remain subjective assessments or calculations. However entertaining – or annoying – they may be, they do not constitute authoritative explanations of the unfolding past.⁴⁰

11.8 Summary: ‘soft’ approaches, not soppy outcomes

All ‘soft’ techniques of interpretation have great value, when used appropriately. They do begin to lose their heft if their claims are overdone, but that applies to all methodologies.

These ‘soft’ approaches are used to tackle immensely difficult and contentious historical themes, as shown by some of the examples cited in this chapter. When done well – with clearly explained methods and assumptions – they produce tough, important and validated conclusions, not soppy, irrelevant and sentimental outcomes.

Overall, qualitative assessments should really be renamed less pejoratively – or, conversely, the adjective ‘soft’ should get a better reputation. The art of interpretation is an intrinsic part of historical analysis. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are thus not rival but complementary modes of thought.

1. 1  A. R. Damascio, Descartes’ Error: Emotions, Reason and the Human Brain (London, 2006).

2. 2  John Major (PM 1990–7), as reported in The Independent, 21 Feb. 1993: <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/major-on-crime-condemn-more-understand-less-1474470.html> [accessed 30 April 2021].

3. 3  T. Retz, Empathy and History: Historical Understanding in Re-enactment, Hermeneutics and Education (New York, 2018); P. Towle, History, Empathy and Conflict: Heroes, Victims and Victimisers (Basingstoke, 2018).

4. 4  N. Stargardt, The German War: a Nation under Arms, 1939–45 (London, 2015).

5. 5  R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, ed. T. M. Knox (pub. posthumously, London, 1946).

6. 6  J. Zimmermann, Hermeneutics: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2015); J. D. Caputo, Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information (London, 2018); Retz, Empathy and History.

7. 7  Thompson, Voice of the Past; D. A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History: a Practical Guide (New York, 2015); A. Zusman, Story Bridges: a Guide for Conducting Intergenerational Oral History Projects (London, 2016); F.-A. Montoya and B. Allen, Practising Oral History to Connect University to Community (London, 2018); and discussion in sect. 1.5.

8. 8  The Imperial War Museum website gives details: <https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections> [accessed 30 April 2021].

9. 9  See JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Archives Hub, ‘The Spanish Civil War’, for source survey: <https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/features/spanishcivilwar.shtml> [accessed 30 April 2021].

10. 10  There is much key material in many different countries. The British Library’s guide provides a fine starting-point: see <https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/oral-histories-of-jewish-experience-and-holocaust-testimonies> [accessed 30 April 2021].

11. 11  T. Bergen, Transcribing Oral History (London, 2019).

12. 12  K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Prosopography Approaches and Applications: a Handbook (Oxford, 2007).

13. 13  For L. B. Namier, see L. Colley, Namier (London, 1989), and D. Hayton, Conservative Revolutionary: the Lives of Lewis Namier (Manchester, 2019).

14. 14  This project, first mooted in 1928, was activated in 1941 and has been funded since 1951 by the British Treasury: <https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org> [accessed 30 April 2021].

15. 15  See A. Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (London, 1995); A. Collar, Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: the Spread of New Ideas (New York, 2013); C. Barr and H. M. Carey, Religion and Greater Ireland: Christianity and Irish Global Networks, 1750–1950 (Montreal, 2015).

16. 16  A. Corbain, A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day, transl. J. Birrell (Cambridge, 2018); J. Brox, Silence: a Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives (Boston, Mass., 2019).

17. 17  See P. Hegarty, Noise/Music: a History (London, 2007); D. Hendy, Noise: a Human History of Sound and Listening (London, 2013); and song history, as in Palmer, The Sound of History.

18. 18  R. Batchelor, Interpreting Silence (Victoria, BC, 1994).

19. 19  See the classic study by W. Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (London, 1930); and also E. Williams, Reading Beyond the Lines: Exercises in Inferential Comprehension (London, 1978).

20. 20  S. J. Friedman, Silenced No More: Voices of Comfort Women (Hong Kong, 2015); and debates about the aftermath in J. E. Stromseth (ed.), Accountability for Atrocities: National and International Responses (Ardsley, N.Y., 2003).

21. 21  For an excellent example, see Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives.

22. 22  See assessment in B. Poland and A. Pederson, ‘Reading between the lines: interpreting silences in qualitative research’, Qualitative Research, iv (1998), 293–312.

23. 23  L. Brosnan, Reading Virginia Woolf’s Essays and Journalism: Breaking the Surface of Silence (Edinburgh, 1997).

24. 24  For another case-history, see S. Kalayci, Reading Silences: Essays on Women, Memory and War in Twentieth-Century Turkey (London, 2021); and for the domestic context, see N. A. Jackson (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Domestic Violence (London, 2007).

25. 25  G. Ryle (1900–76), On Thinking (London, 1979).

26. 26  C. Geertz, ‘Thick description: towards an interpretive theory of culture’, in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), pp. 3–30. See also D. N. McCloskey, ‘Thick and thin methodologies in the history of economic thought’, in The Popperian Legacy in Economics, ed. N. de Marchi (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 245–58.

27. 27  Thompson, Making of English Working Class (1968 edn), p. 12.

28. 28  E. LeRoy Ladurie, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village, 1294–1324, transl. B. Bray (London, 1978).

29. 29  P. Burke, The French Historical Revolution: the Annales School, 1929–89 (Cambridge, 1990); A. Burguière, The Annales School: an Intellectual History, transl. J. M. Todd (Ithaca, N.Y., 2009); and criticisms explored in J. Tendler, Opponents of the Annales School (Basingstoke, 2013).

30. 30  D. R. Hiley et al. (ed.), The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991); D. Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture (London, 2016). Note on terminology: American English prefers the elided form of ‘interpretive’, while British English commonly sticks to ‘interpretative’, except in this particular context.

31. 31  C. Hay, ‘Review of Montaillou’, Oral History, vii (1979), 70–1.

32. 32  J. Fest, Inside Hitler’s Bunker: the Last Ten Days of the Third Reich, transl. M. B. Dembo (London, 2004); S. F. Kellerhoff, The Führer Bunker: Hitler’s Last Refuge (Berlin, 2004).

33. 33  S. Susen, The Postmodern Turn in the Social Sciences (Basingstoke, 2015); H. Marsh, The Comic Turn in Contemporary English Fiction: Who’s Laughing Now? (London, 2020); G. Dürbeck and P. Hüpkes (ed.), The Anthropocentric Turn: the Interplay between Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Responses to a New Age (London, 2020); L. Moyo, The Decolonial Turn in Africa and the Global South (London, 2020).

34. 34  T. Bennett and P. Joyce (ed.), Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn (Cham, 2010).

35. 35  See N. Ferguson (ed.), Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (London, 1997; New York, 1999); J. Black, What If? Counterfactualism and the Problem of History (London, 2008); C. Gallagher, Telling It Like It Wasn’t: the Counterfactual Imagination in History and Fiction (Chicago, Ill., 2018).

36. 36  E. Durschmied, The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History (London, 1999); A. Axelrod, 100 Turning Points in Military History (London, 2019).

37. 37  R. W. Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History (Baltimore, Md., 1964, 1970).

38. 38  P. D. McClelland, ‘Railroads, American growth and the new economic history: a critique’, Journal of Economic History, xxviii (1968), 102–23.

39. 39  J. McTague, Things That Didn’t Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678–1743 (Woodbridge, 2019).

40. 40  For a robust critique, see R. J. Evans, Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History (London, 2014).