The Uses of Counter-Factual History. Can there be a theory of historical turning points?

Samenvatting

The article deals with theories of historical turning points that assume that the course of history would have been changed dramatically by a single event. Most turning-point arguments refer to military events (a decisive war or battle), political events (an election, a legislative decision) or individual leadership (if a famous individual had died sooner, or lived longer). These arguments in general rest on weak assumptions. (1) They select one moment from the known chain of historical events and neglect the large-scale processes and patterns that are of a stochastic nature. (2) In the case of individual leadership, they overstate the importance of peculiar personality characteristics and deny the fact that such characteristics (including charisma) are socially formed. (3) They overstate the uniqueness of certain historical 'bottlenecks'. The author concludes that, in general, turning-point arguments cannot stand to the test of critical scrutiny on the basis of systematic sociological theories of causal processes. 34 References. Adapted from the source document.