Asking history’s ‘What ifs’
The distinguished historian Margaret MacMillan has probably correctly noted a bias in her profession against overemphasizing the role individuals play in moulding the historical narrative. “Because history, like the other social sciences, has been influenced by economics, historians are sometimes uneasy with the role of personality and emotions in shaping events.” But MacMillan firmly believes both must be taken into account: “If history is a feast, the savour comes from its people.”
For proof, look no further than MacMillan’s new book, History’s People: Personalities and the Past, which contains the text of her Massey Lectures this year.
It very enjoyably explores how individuals not only make history, but also record it. Some of her subjects are Stalin and Hitler, Roosevelt and Mackenzie King.
Others are diarists such as the 18th century’s invaluable Samuel Pepys, or the 20th century’s Count Harry Kessler or Victor Klemperer, Germans who both brilliantly captured their tumultuous era.
At one point, MacMillan poses a number of “What ifs?,” or what historians term, “counterfactuals.” “What if Hitler had been killed in the trenches in World War One?” “What if Winston Churchill had been fatally injured when a car knocked him down in New York’s Fifth Avenue in 1931?”
The subtext being: Would there have been a Holocaust without Hitler? Would Britain have survived the Blitz without Churchill?
“As soon as we try to assess the impact of individuals on single events in history,” argues MacMillan, “we are, whether we realize it or not, thinking of an alternative outcome to the past,” she writes.
The most prominent Canadian in MacMillan’s book is dull, dour Mackenzie King, far and away Canada’s longest-serving prime minister at 22 years. Many believe his talent for appeasing Canada’s fractious regions explains his longevity.
“King, maddening though he could be, stood for conciliation and building consensus,” MacMillan writes. “‘The extreme man,’ he believed, ‘is always more or less dangerous, but nowhere more so than in politics . . . the art of government is largely one seeking to reconcile rather than exaggerate differences, to come as near as possible to the happy mean.’ ”
Both our incoming and outgoing prime ministers might well heed King’s words. Like the countless other characters in Macmillan’s book, he seems as relevant today as ever. Robert Collison is a Toronto writer and editor.