I would try to study the effects of individual humans, Great-Man vs Historical Inevitability style, by knocking out statesmen of a particular period. Hitler is a cliche, whom I’d nonetheless start with; but I’d follow up by seeing what happens if you kill Chamberlain, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin… and work my way down to the likes of Turing and Doenitz. Do you still get France overrun in six weeks? A resurgent German nationalism? A defiant to-the-last-ditch mood in Britain? And so on.
Then I’d start on similar questions for the unification of Germany: Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, Franz Josef, Marx, Napoleon III, and so forth. Then perhaps the Great War or the Cold War, or perhaps I’d be bored with recent history and go for something medieval instead—Harald wins at Stamford Bridge, perhaps. Or to maintain the remove-one-person style of the experiment, there’s the three claimants to the British throne, one could kill Edgar the Confessor earlier, the Pope has a hand in it, there’s the various dukes and other feudal lords in England… lots of fun to be had with this scenario!
Don’t limit yourself to just killing people. It’s not a good way to learn how history works, just like studying biology by looking at organisms with defective genes doesn’t tell us everything we’d like to know about cell biology.
Nu, but I specified the particular part of “how history works” that I want to study, namely, are individuals important to large-scale events? For that purpose I think killing people would work admirably well. For other studies, certainly, I would use a different technique.
For that purpose I think killing people would work admirably well.
If you’re ok with a yes or no answer, then it’s enough. If you also want to know how individuals may be important to events, killing may not be enough, I think.
I would try to study the effects of individual humans, Great-Man vs Historical Inevitability style, by knocking out statesmen of a particular period. Hitler is a cliche, whom I’d nonetheless start with; but I’d follow up by seeing what happens if you kill Chamberlain, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin… and work my way down to the likes of Turing and Doenitz. Do you still get France overrun in six weeks? A resurgent German nationalism? A defiant to-the-last-ditch mood in Britain? And so on.
Then I’d start on similar questions for the unification of Germany: Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, Franz Josef, Marx, Napoleon III, and so forth. Then perhaps the Great War or the Cold War, or perhaps I’d be bored with recent history and go for something medieval instead—Harald wins at Stamford Bridge, perhaps. Or to maintain the remove-one-person style of the experiment, there’s the three claimants to the British throne, one could kill Edgar the Confessor earlier, the Pope has a hand in it, there’s the various dukes and other feudal lords in England… lots of fun to be had with this scenario!
Don’t limit yourself to just killing people. It’s not a good way to learn how history works, just like studying biology by looking at organisms with defective genes doesn’t tell us everything we’d like to know about cell biology.
Nu, but I specified the particular part of “how history works” that I want to study, namely, are individuals important to large-scale events? For that purpose I think killing people would work admirably well. For other studies, certainly, I would use a different technique.
If you’re ok with a yes or no answer, then it’s enough. If you also want to know how individuals may be important to events, killing may not be enough, I think.