Reddit reviews What If?: The World's Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (What If Essays)

There is counterfactual history. It has a very long tradition; Livy in the first century BCE was already asking what would happen if Alexander had marched west instead of east (Livy concludes Rome would have kicked his ass). This isn't quite what you describe in the sense that it doesn't have to make claims about necessary conditions for alternate outcomes (seems to me you get a get a laundry list. If one were to ask what would be necessary for Hannibal to win, you get answers like "it was necessary for Hannibal to have command of an army; it was necessary for Hannibal to gain access to Italy, it was necessary to mint coins, it was necessary to disrupt Rome's alliance system" all of which happened.)

I don't know how respected this approach is. In one sense counterfactuals are implied in any question that asks why something happened the way it did, and there are books like What If that have some very heavy hitters writing them. On the other hand, there are articles like this.
>But it's time to be sceptical about this trend. We need, in this year especially, to start to try to understand why the first world war happened, not to wish that it hadn't, or argue about whether it was "right" or "wrong". In the effort to understand, counterfactuals aren't any real use at all.

YMMV I guess.

If that's the case, you should really try What If?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002I1XRYU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

Settle down. This TIL is more speculative than objective but that doesn't mean it's worthless. Not to mention respected historians have tackled counter-factual (i.e., What Ifs) scenarios in a similar manner; indeed, there is a two-book series of books called "What If" that tries to tackle how things would have turned out during pivotal moments in history.

Moreover, one doesn't have to be an Anti-Persian xenophobe to contemplate how history would have differed with Athens as a satrapy of Persia. True, it's possible that Greek thought on philosophy, society and politics may have still happened, but it's likely their dissemination would have been impacted without Alexander the Great to spread Hellenism, which itself had an impact on the development of Christianity.

It's a fascinating question and it opens up an "Butterfly Effect" can of worms if you allow yourself to consider it.

So many possibilities. I recommend these books:

What If?

What If? 2

Some personal favorites (both from these books and from other srouces, including my own idle musings):

• What if William lost the Battle of Hastings? It was close; he was nearly killed, whic would most likely have ended the battle in Harold's favor. England would never have become Norman England, and would have remained a part of the Nordic economic sphere instead of becoming part of the Romance economic sphere. THere's a good chance that, instead of beginning to contract with the loss of the English economy, the Nordic economy would have continued to expand westward, leading to broader contact between Europe and North America hundreds of years earlier, and to engagement between Europeans and Americans on less lopsided terms.
  
  
• What if Alexander had not died in his 30s, but had lived long enough to consolidate his empire and realize his dream of a long-lasting Hellenic empire over most of the known world? His cause of death is not known for certain, but descriptions suggest it was due to a fever--a fluke occurrence that could just as easily never have happened. Alexander was not only one of the greatest generals in history, he was a missionary who desired to spread a vision of Hellenic civilization learned from his tutor Aristotle across the world, and made one hell of a good start at it before his untimely death. What might the classical world have looked like if he hadn't died in his 30s, but had lived to a ripe old age?
  
  
• What if John Adams had won the US election of 1800 instead of Thomas Jefferson? The election was extremely close, and the outcome depended on several fairly unlikely circumstances. It could easily have gone either way. If Adams had remained in office a host of important developments would most likely have turned out very differently.
  
  As one example, the Louisiana Purchase might never have happened, meaning that the whole center of the present-day continental US, including Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and more would have remained French (or perhaps even Spanish) territory. New Orleans would have remained a French city. The Purchase was a plan of questionable legality, a constitutional gamble on Jefferson's part that he managed to get away with.
  
  As another example, Adams and Hamilton had been supporters of the rebellion of Toussaint L'Ouverture in Haiti against the French crown. Jefferson was not. Hamilton and Adams saw L'Ouverture's rebellion as squarely in the same spirit as the American Revolution, a rising up of colonials against an oppressive foreign ruler. Moreover, they saw Haiti as a potential ally against the future ambitions of European royalists. Jefferson, on the other hand, as a Southern planter, was acutely aware that L'Ouverture's rebellioon was also a rebellion of African slaves against white masters, and knew very well that, whatever his own philosophical leanings might be, the southern American colonies would never tolerate an alliance with a state founded on a slave rebellion, because of fears that it would ignite a similar rebellion at home. Jefferson took the White House and the friendship between the US and Haiti failed to materialize--but it could have gone the other way.
  
  There are tons more interesting possibilities. The books I linked cover lots of them.