Det er lov å blogge kortfattet. For eksempel ved bare å komme med et lenketips, samt legge ved et fyndig sitat.
Derfor:
Harvard Magazine har en portrettartikkel om den meget aktive og profilerte historikeren Niall Ferguson. Ferguson har markert seg særlig som en “kontrær” historiker vedrørende imperier. Men han har også skrevet om kontrafaktisk historie.
Blant annet har han presentert et interessant perspektiv på 1. verdenskrig. Jeg siterer:
Had Britain stood aside—even for a matter of weeks—continental Europe could therefore have been transformed into something not wholly unlike the European Union we know today—but without the massive contraction in British overseas power entailed by the fighting of two world wars. Perhaps too the complete collapse of Russia into the horrors of civil war and Bolshevism might have been averted.…And there plainly would not have been that great incursion of American financial and military power into European affairs which effectively marked the end of British financial predominance in the world. Granted, there might still have been Fascism in Europe in the 1920s; but it would have been in France rather than Germany that radical nationalists would have sounded most persuasive….
