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Jun 19, 2026
Fabrizio Tassinari
If counterfactual history is motivated by a refusal to accept what many have deemed inevitable, it is newly relevant now that the West is marking the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum. Even if Britain's fateful choice was caused by deeper structural and historical forces, that does not justify fatalism.
FIESOLE, ITALY—In a short essay published almost 40 years ago, the French author Emmanuel Carrère observed that counterfactual history—imaginative accounts of what might have been—is driven by an abiding sense of intolerance for inevitability. For many in the nineteenth century, for example, it was simply intolerable that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and exiled to Saint Helena. One must rebel against the idea that it could not have been otherwise, Carrère claimed.
