Chapter ǴǴ: Uchronia, or Alternative History ȂȈȄalmost every Sunday, then for aboutȀȄminutes in English with his wife,
Stephanie Crofton. If I hadn’t been turned onto Spanish by Hugo’s book,
I would never have made these two close friendships. Ļis is a prime exam-
ple of a microstochastic event—an instance of randomness on a very small
scale—with major consequences for me.
And what if I had failed, like some of my colleagues, in a Japanese
language course during the war? What if I had followed my father’s (bad)
advice, offered because I had lost three years in the Army, to skip returning
to college and go directly into the business world? What if I had not hap-
pened onto books by Ludwig von Mises in the Oberlin College library
and by Wilhelm Röpke in a New York bookstore, works that greatly
influenced my understanding of economics and of libertarianism or quasi-
libertarianism? What if I had chosen the problem of innovation under
socialism as my dissertation topic inȀȈȄǿ–ȀȈȄȁ, instead of the other topic
I was considering, “An Evaluation of Freely Fluctuating Exchange Rates,”
which I did choose? (I know I would have had trouble finding much to
say about innovation under socialism.) What if I hadn’t taught at Texas
A&Mfor one year and at the University of Maryland for five, making
a few close friends at the two schools? A year in Maryland’s European
program came at just the right time of my life. What if an article of mine
had not brought me an invitation to move to the University of Virginia in
ȀȈȄȆ? By happening to take part in an Institute for Humane Studies pro-
gram in the summer ofȀȈȇȀ, I met a valued academic collaborator, Robert
Greenfield. InȀȈȇȃ, the idea of buying a big house with a big mortgage as
an inflation hedge tipped my agonizingly close decision toward moving
from Virginia to Auburn University. (Yes, not only inflation but uncer-
tainty about it can disrupt even personal planning.) Speculation not only
about episodes in world history but also about turning points in a single
life can make for lively but serious conversation—with others, and with
oneself.
I’ve saved for last an example of uchronia that, for two reasons, is my
favorite. Like many of the examples above and as best I can remember,
I thought of it myself. More importantly, it is an extreme example of its
type; arguably, it even bears on the philosophical issue of free will and
determinism. Suppose that inȀȇȀȇQueen Victoria had been conceived as
a male rather than a female. Her (or his) sex determination was surely a
microstochastic event. Except only for this accident of sex, the crowns of
Great Britain and Hanover would have remained united after the death
of Victoria’s uncle, WilliamIV , inȀȇȂȆ. Women could succeed to the